“It’s your pet,” Gabby said, incredulous.
“I have many of them here. Practically a rookery,” he replied, standing up. He appeared even shorter than he had at the docks, especially with the giant bird perched on his arm for comparison. “Although, at my last count, the number had dropped by one.” He shot her an accusatory glare.
Gabby remembered Rory hurling his dagger at the corvite on her windowsill.
“You sent them?” she asked. “You’ve been spying on me?”
Hugh touched the side of his nose and then pointed his index finger at her. “Ah, Miss Waverly, that is my limitation with these birds. They can’t exactly spy for me. They can, however, answer simple yes-or-no questions.”
He came out from behind his desk, which was much lower than most. Should Gabby have stood beside it, the tabletop would have been level with her thighs instead of her hips or waist.
“So you had them answering questions about me,” she said. “And your gargoyle. You had him follow me to the Battersea docks.”
The gargoyle, Carver, had not accompanied Hugh to the London docks the night before. Not in plain sight, anyway.
Hugh approached an iron perching stand and, with a soft nudge and whispered instruction, transferred the corvite from his leather gauntlet to the long arm of the stand.
“You cannot blame me for wanting to keep an eye on you, Miss Waverly. Things got rather messy in Paris, did they not?” He gave the bird another loving rub on its domed skull and then turned to Gabby fully. “However, Carver must have come to you of his own accord. He has free rein, of course.”
Hugh busied himself with the laces on the leather gauntlet. The crown of his head reached Gabby’s well-corseted chest and no farther. His torso appeared to be the longest part of him, his legs and arms curiously stunted. His appearance, other than his height, held no other malformations.
“You may ask,” he murmured, finally removing the gauntlet and hanging it on another arm of the perching stand.
“Ask?” she repeated.
“Whether I am a dwarf.”
She felt her cheeks go warm. “It isn’t polite to ask such things.”
He peered up at her, his sandy-blond hair falling rakishly over his forehead. “It’s also not polite to kill other people’s pets.”
Gabby turned away from him and moved toward the hearth. “I am afraid that general rule cannot apply to demon pets, Mr. Dupuis. And I didn’t kill it. Rory did—the man who was with me on the docks.”
Though there was no fire in the hearth, it was warm in the study. She felt a few beads of sweat gathering under her veil and wished to push back the tulle, but she didn’t want to expose her scars just yet.
“Your Alliance muscle is not with you this morning.”
Hugh leaned against his low desk and crossed his arms, appraising her silently. He wasn’t overtly handsome, but he had distinctive features that might have been considered charming. Like full lips and wide, dark brown eyes. The most intriguing thing about him wasn’t any physical feature, however. It was the keen intelligence that glowed behind those wide eyes of his.
“You are Daicrypta.” Her statement required no further explanation.
Hugh didn’t appear offended. “Most Alliance would not knock upon my door.”
“I am not Alliance,” Gabby retorted, but then added, “Not yet, at least.”
He remained quiet, his inspection of her seeming to probe even deeper.
“I would like to know more about the diffuser nets,” she said, uncomfortable with the stretch of silence. “You said your father invented them?”
He clenched his jaw with what looked like displeasure. “He did.”
The thought of Robert Dupuis soured her expression as well. “Your father was a madman. If he hadn’t been stopped, he would have bled my sister dry for her angel blood.”
Gabby had plenty more to say on the subject of Hugh’s father, but she forced her mouth shut. She wanted information on the diffuser nets too badly to risk being tossed out.
To her surprise, after a moment, Hugh laughed. “I see we aren’t very different in our esteem of him, then. He was a madman, Miss Waverly. I left the Paris seat many years ago to put distance between us.”
He walked away from the perch, toward where Gabby stood in front of the sofa.
“You see, my father was a genius, but his moral compass was no more evolved than those of the demons he studied. What he wanted rose above all else, and what he wanted was power.”
“And you wouldn’t have done the same as your father? You wouldn’t have tried to drain my sister’s blood so you could sell it to the Alliance?”