“A judge wanted to buy my friend’s little girl and turn her into his dollymop. I gave him inheritance powder and he died dreadfully.”
“Not so dreadfully as he should have done. And I know Jack Ghosh personally, my darling, so does that make up the full roster?”
“Yes.”
Reader, I wanted with every cell in my bloodstream to fly from the room and weep for days, but I was prevented; the grim line above his clear-cut nose appeared, and he pursed his lips sternly.
I waited, frozen in terror.
“I don’t think much of your list, y’see,” he declared, and though his eyes were warm they were wet as well. “A more sorry lot of rubbish than you’ve dispatched I’ve not heard tell of. Why, in battle, Karman killed dozens of strapping British and Bengal gents who’d not have pissed on these dregs if they were on fire. We simply must raise your killing standards, my darling, because I’m frankly ashamed at the quality of chaps you’ve—”
We were both laughing through tears by the time I had flung myself the short distance into his lap and was kissing him, so warm and so real underneath me. His shoulders under my questing hands were at first as tense with worry as mine, I think, for I had alarmed him; but soon, they calmed, and he cradled me more softly, and dropped his lips against my neck with a breath like a prayer.
“That was egregiously unfair of you,” he murmured against my skin. “I thought you were about to confess to fatal consumption, or a fellow whose company you prefer, or the fact you’ve been called back to faerie, something bloody important.”
“Do you know that you’re entirely insane?” I had pulled the black ribbon from his head and buried my hands in his hair.
“Yes, actually, but this form of madness is far preferable to that of a fortnight since, don’t y’agree?”
“God, yes.” I calmed myself. “And I never thought that mad, only tragic.”
He set his hands softly at my waist, frowning in thought.
I passed quiet fingers over his hairline and waited, wondering whether his torment had been constant or more like owning a heart which had stopped like a broken watch; I wondered whether he knew himself.
“I hated the hands which couldn’t help her,” he concluded hoarsely. “And all those dead, Jane . . . Even after coming here, when I would walk into a pub or a square, I couldn’t look at humans without seeing them as corpses.” He shook his white head. “Then I saw you. You are so alive, Jane Steele, you make my breath catch, as if a glowing creature from the depths of the forest had lit upon the end of my finger. You had already endeared yourself to me by greeting Sahjara so courteously, as if somehow it were a happy circumstance for you to accidentally enter our madhouse. When I saw you fall from Nalin that night, I knew you were dead, my darling, I knew it with such certainty, because how could anyone I had liked so well from the first survive such an accident? Then you sprang up wielding invective and knives and I adored you. I thought it lunacy that you should take such a frank interest in my history.”
“Only insomuch as your history makes you who you are today. I dreaded your knowing mine, sir.”
His eyes, so wistful seconds previous, narrowed in amusement. “Had you not better call me Charles?”
Laughing, I pressed my forehead to his. “I love you, Charles Thornfield.”
He placed his hand over my heart, and I could not help but wince at the sting; where once he had been about to speak, he stilled in chagrin, and I realised any further intimacy would reveal the injury inflicted by Mr. Sack. This was distressing. I wanted no words on the subject of the Company to distract us; I wanted fewer articles of clothing between, and ideally a bed, though the nearby sofa would do, or the rug barring that.
“It’s nothing, only a scratch.”
“A scratch from what manner of animal?” he demanded.
Clearly I was to be thwarted in any attempt to keep the injury secret; I unbuttoned my dress at the neck a few inches, and then several inches more than was necessary, and watched as my love’s heated gaze darkened to black. The gash was indeed an ugly one, a crusted purple line.
“Very well, precisely whom am I meant to murder this evening?” he snarled.
“I thought I was the expert on that activity.”
“Jane, I demand satisfaction!”
“Might we employ other avenues in our search for satisfaction?” I said in his ear.
“There have been too many outrages upon your person in our brief acquaintance, and it will not be tolerated a moment longer, not while I have breath, do you hear me?”
I placed my hands along his stony jaw, set upon having my own way.