“Why not now?” she pressed.
“Because right now I want to know why you’ve left the gallery opening. If your mother finds out, she’ll have even more of a reason to hate me.”
Lord and Lady Brickton had looked the other way when Luc visited the rectory in the days following Grayson’s death, but that was over now. He couldn’t imagine that Lord or Lady Brickton would seriously entertain the idea of a gargoyle’s coming to call on their daughter.
Ingrid closed the book and set it down, shaking her head. “Oh, she doesn’t need any more of a reason to dislike you. Finding you in my room, unclothed, was quite enough.”
Luc crossed his arms and walked through the path of books toward Ingrid. “Well, at least I’m clothed. For the moment.”
He liked flirting with her and seeing her flush. He liked the mystery of trying to figure out what she was thinking and feeling.
When he’d held her on her bed those days after the Champs de Mars, he’d kissed her temple, her forehead; he’d been there to comfort her. Now, with Ingrid standing before him, her misery fading, he felt the draw of her. She held his gaze, her blush rising another moment before she looked away, toward the curtained windows.
“How is your wing?” she asked.
He’d been coalescing every few days, just to see how things were progressing. The bones had grown some, along with new membrane, but the truth was, regenerating an entire wing hurt like hell.
“It will be a while,” he answered. There was no point in telling her that his back ached constantly, or that coalescing felt like breaking and then setting a bone.
Ingrid perched herself on the edge of the sofa. “What do the other Dispossessed think?”
Luc neared the fire and, though he knew it would prove dangerous, lowered himself to sit beside her.
“About my wing?”
“No.” She stared into the fire and worried the lace cuff of her dress. “What do they think about me? About us?”
Things had been peaceful the past few weeks as Paris recovered from the Harvest, but Luc—and apparently Ingrid as well—was far too realistic to believe things would always stay this calm.
Perhaps it was being elder, or that his turning down Irindi’s invitation to enter Heaven had spread like all gossip did amongst the gargoyles, but Luc didn’t sense any immediate danger from the Dispossessed.
“Don’t worry about them,” he told her, allowing his knee to brush against hers. “We’ll take this day by day. And you’ll be protected, Ingrid. You have Marco and the Alliance. You have me.”
Her knee pressed against his more ardently. “You suggested a few weeks ago … you said something about my being your human again. You asked me to go with you to common grounds.”
Luc leaned back and rested his head against the sofa’s plush cushions. He remembered that overzealous proposition. “I still want that. But it’s too soon. It will be some time before I trust the rest of the Dispossessed enough to have you here.”
Ingrid shifted to face him, the curves of her bodice and the tempting lines of her bare neck a distraction.
“When I reach my majority, if I haven’t yet married, I can do what I wish with my inheritance.” She clutched a fistful of her black moiré skirt. “I want to buy H?tel du Maurier.”
He held still. Watched the jump of her pulse in her neck.
“You said Irindi disapproved of your preference for me, but if I’m your only human charge—”
Luc sat forward. “When?”
If she bought this wreck of a home, she would have every right to be here. His territory. Her property. It would give Luc one more layer of security against any gargoyles who objected.
Ingrid’s shoulders softened and her posture rounded. “When I’m twenty-one.”
She was seventeen now. Christ. Four years. Luc reached for her hand and cupped it against his cheek. He then kissed the center of her palm. What was four years? “I can wait.”
Ingrid closed her eyes and sank against his chest. “I can still be your human, though? Like this?”
He wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her closer. “Always.”
He knew what she was thinking. That she would get old. That he would not.
“Day by day, Ingrid,” he murmured in her ear.
She moved closer to him and tucked her legs up, over his lap.
“Will you tell me now what happened with Irindi?” Her breath fanned over his collarbone and against his neck. He’d thought about that meeting in Constantine’s library numerous times, but he had not once regretted his decision.
“Marco and Gaston couldn’t stand, but you could,” she pointed out while drawing a scrolling line with her fingertip along his neck.