The Wondrous and the Wicked (19 page)

“What will happen to Nolan?” she whispered.

“I wouldna worry.” Rory speared his Cornish hen with his fork and carved it using one of his own blades instead of the one laid on the table before him. “He’s a fox when he needs to be.”

Nolan
was
a fox, sly and cunning and quick. But he’d still appeared shaken that afternoon in the carriage. Not being able to trust the Alliance must have felt like the earth giving way underneath his feet.

“You don’t trust Hugh Dupuis,” she said, thinking of the angel blood and her plan to take it to him. Nolan had left the carriage with the blood, saying he’d see her soon; she hoped it would be by tomorrow. There was simply no time to waste.

“I don’t trust any man till he’s saved my skin at least once,” Rory replied, laying down his fork without finishing his hen. She hadn’t touched anything since the soup course. Cook Edna would be vexed.

Rory wiped the blade of his dagger with one of the dinner napkins. “I don’t trust Hugh Dupuis, but I do trust ye,
laoch
.” He pushed back his chair and stood. “If ye trust him enough to bring him angel blood, I won’t stop ye.”

Rory bid her a good night and left the dining room. Gabby
sat back in her chair, her eyes drifting toward the corvite demon at the window. She didn’t know if she trusted Hugh, but she did know that there was only one way to find out.

Gabby stuck her tongue out at the corvite and made her way up to her room. She passed a number of guest chambers and was equal parts glad and frustrated that Nolan wasn’t able to occupy one of them. She was proud of how she’d acted in the carriage earlier, refusing to melt into a puddle at his feet. She wasn’t so pigheaded as to deny that she’d missed him, or that she had wanted to crawl into his lap and kiss him until they were both gasping for air. But Gabby’s pride had been akin to iron, easily crushing the urges.

She entered her room and found that her maid had prepared it for her. The lamps were on and the fire was going, her nightgown draped over the duvet.

“Kendall?” Gabby shut the door and moved toward the bed. Her maid wasn’t in sight, but Gabby’s senses were humming.

Someone else was in her room. And she knew exactly who it was.

Nolan stepped out from behind her four-panel silk changing screen. He’d shaved and changed his clothes, but his shoulders still looked like they were winched tight with a line of rope.

Gabby drew to a stop to stare at him and quickly realized that she’d drained every last ounce of her steely pride that afternoon. Tears welled up swiftly and unexpectedly. She didn’t even have time to be mortified by them. She didn’t see Nolan crossing the room, but then he was there, his arms closing around her, his lips in her hair. “I’m sorry, Gabby. God, I’m so sorry, lass.”

She couldn’t speak, her throat swollen with a suppressed sob, so instead, she wiggled her arm free and punched him in the stomach.

He answered by tucking her closer against him. She made another fist but only thumped it against his shoulder. How could he so quickly, so effortlessly, undo her like this?

“I know I did everything wrong,” he said, clinging to her, his lips trailing kisses through her hair and over her forehead. “I know I hurt you. I know I should have fixed things.”

Gabby found enough strength to untangle herself, but she couldn’t look up into his eyes. If she did that, she knew she’d just fall right back against him.

“But you chose to ignore me instead,” she said, busying herself by blotting the tears on her cheeks with as much dignity as possible.

“I couldn’t apologize on paper, not for the things I said to you. Not for the way I treated you that night,” he said.

He’d been cold the night his father had been killed, not allowing her even to touch him. Telling her she had to leave Paris and then acting as if he couldn’t have cared less.

“It would have been better than silence,” she said.

Nolan hung his head, his hands on his hips. He didn’t have any more excuses. He wasn’t the type of person to throw them out ahead of himself to clear a path anyway.

“I thought that you—” She took a breath, preparing to humiliate herself. “You told me you loved me.”

He clutched her arm and tipped her chin up so she couldn’t avoid looking into his eyes any longer.

“Did you really believe I’d stopped?”

Gabby itched to punch him again. “What was I supposed to believe when I didn’t hear from you for a month?”

“I was wrong, Gabby, and I’ll apologize for it forever if you want me to. But the truth is I couldn’t face you. If I came to you and you sent me away, if I knew for certain that you didn’t want me anymore … God in heaven, Gabriella Waverly, I’ve never been so bloody afraid of a lass before.”

Nolan’s mouth hovered over hers and she could see the fear bright in his eyes. She wanted to laugh. Nolan Quinn, a fierce swordsman who picked battles with Underneath demons on a regular basis, was afraid of
her
? But she couldn’t laugh. He was
being completely serious, and for the first time Gabby felt the weight of what that meant. He was real and he made mistakes, but he loved her.

“Please forgive me,” he said, still worried she wouldn’t. He traced her scars with his thumb with such tenderness it made her ache.

Gabby was certain she kissed him first, but after a moment, it didn’t matter who had started it. Nolan had her against his chest and he was kissing her as if she were his air source.

She had the urge to pull him closer even though there wasn’t a single gap between their bodies. His hands were everywhere; raking through her hair and uncoiling her chignon, coasting down the curve of her spine and fanning out over her hips, his fingertips brushing dangerously lower. He murmured her name as he drew her hair aside and nuzzled her neck. He lifted her from the floor, spun around, and set her down again, this time on the edge of her bed.

He stood in front of her, breathing hard. His eyes traveled from her loose curls down the front of her dress, to her legs, and then back up again. He must have noticed the heat in her cheeks, but he didn’t tease her the way he normally would have. Nolan had gone acutely sober. Predatory. Gabby had seen something close to it in his eyes before, in her rectory bedroom when he had climbed through her window and asked her to lie beside him for a while. Nolan had promised to be a gentleman then. However, as he took a step closer to the bed and tilted her chin up, she understood that he no longer wished to be a gentleman.

Gabby couldn’t breathe. The room was too hot, the fire in the grate roaring. She closed her eyes when Nolan’s fingertips brushed down the curve of her throat. He leaned forward to trail kisses in their wake, and Gabby honestly believed her body might combust. Her back met the forgiving plush of the duvet and she opened her eyes to Nolan, holding himself on one elbow over her, the palm of his free hand flat against her stomach.

He said nothing as his hand grazed over her ribs, tightly cinched in a corset that Gabby suddenly despised more than ever. She hitched her breath when he continued his exploration, allowing his palm to shape around her breast. Nolan then took her mouth in the sort of kiss that said things. Things that would sound graceless if bound by words.

She twined her fingers through the silk of his hair, arching her back in an attempt to be closer to him. When he pulled away, Nolan stared down at her with an unexpected hint of trepidation in his eyes. He put on one of his half smiles.

“This isn’t very gentlemanlike, is it, lass?”

No witty comeback surfaced, and after a moment of simply staring up at him, her fingers running over his lips, she watched as Nolan pushed himself off of the bed.

She sat up, suddenly realizing with stark clarity what had just nearly happened.

“I have to go,” Nolan said, buttoning the top buttons of his shirt. Gabby blushed furiously. Had she undone them?

“Of course.” She averted her eyes and touched the side of her head and the mess of loose curls.

“I don’t
want
to go,” Nolan said, his husky voice rich with disappointment. “Someday I won’t.”

Gabby forgot her untidy hair. She fixed her eyes on his, heat coursing into her cheeks yet again.

“I love you, Gabby.”

Air. There wasn’t enough of it. Nolan stood a moment while Gabby stared up at him, stunned speechless, just as she’d been the first time he’d said the words to her.

He gestured to the silk screen. “The case with your sister’s blood is over there.”

Gabby blinked. He was just giving it to her?

“Will you come with me?” she asked.

“I thought you didn’t require my presence,” he said, quirking one brow.

Gabby smiled but looked down, thinking how haughty she must have sounded.

“I don’t require it,” she said. “But I want it. So will you come?”

He stayed back from the bed, though she knew he wanted to come closer. Instead, he cleared his throat and went to her door. She had no doubt he’d be able to sneak out of the house the same way he’d sneaked in.

“I’m at your service, as always, Miss Waverly,” he said, and with a playful bow, disappeared into the corridor.

I
ngrid had seen a number of maps of Paris. The layout of the city had always reminded her of an inked thumbprint. The roads all seemed to swirl inward, crossing, merging, and growing tighter together until they reached the two islands in the Seine. Ingrid knew the city was large and sprawling, that there were over a million people living here and going about their daily lives without fear of the Underneath or of a vengeful fallen angel. For those people, it was life as usual.

But for the past handful of days, it had seemed to Ingrid as if the thumbprint of the city had started to smudge and disappear, as if those other people didn’t exist and the only things that were real had to do with the Alliance and Dispossessed and the scattered Dusters, driven into hiding.

Ingrid didn’t want to hide. She’d had the intense urge to leave her arrondissement for some other part of the city she didn’t normally see. To experience something that reminded her that that thumbprint was still there. That those other people were real.

Marco was at the reins of the landau, directing the horses down rue de Berri. She wasn’t certain Vander would be in his apartment, but she knew better than to go to Hôtel Bastian again. Marco would have refused to bring her there anyhow. He must have trusted Vander; he’d only put up a mild stink about acting the part of lowly driver.

Ingrid was restless. She couldn’t go to Hôtel Bastian, she shouldn’t go to gargoyle common grounds, and she definitely couldn’t stay at the rectory or abbey any longer. If Vander wasn’t at his apartment, she would direct Marco to Clos du Vie next, despite Constantine’s message that lessons had been suspended.

The landau drew to a stop, and a moment later, Marco handed her down to the curb. Ingrid saw Vander’s wagonette parked in front of them, the traces at rest on the pavement and his black mare likely put away in the stable behind the church.

“The Seer is beneath your station, Lady Ingrid,” Marco said, scowling up at the building that shared a wall with the apartments next door.

“It’s not like that,” she said. “He’s my friend.”

Marco gave her a look of pity. “And does the Seer know that is all he is?”

Ingrid gathered her cloak around her and pushed past Marco, heading toward the door. She’d only been to Vander’s apartment once, but she remembered the way in.

“I’ll be back in an hour,” Marco called as he climbed into the box.

Ingrid turned around. “You’re not waiting here?”

“You do realize I’m not truly your servant, don’t you?” He released the brake and guided the horses away from the curb. “I’m going to Yann’s bridge. If you need me, I will know.”

Marco merged into traffic, and with a groan of annoyance, Ingrid entered the apartment building.
And does the Seer know that is all he is?
Marco’s question poked at her as she ascended the stairwell. Saying Vander was just her friend had been a lie, though Ingrid
wished it hadn’t been. Everything would be so much simpler if they hadn’t kissed those few times. If he hadn’t told her how much he wanted her in his life. Vander hadn’t yet told her that he loved her, but at this point the words weren’t necessary.

He knew how she felt about Luc. Didn’t he? Words weren’t necessary for that, either. Were they? Ingrid turned onto the third-floor landing and a quiver of nervousness weakened her legs. She had to tell him. Perhaps that was what she’d come here to do. She suddenly felt sick to her stomach. As soon as she told Vander about Luc, she would lose him—and she didn’t
want
to lose him. The idea of it sent her heart into a flutter of panic, and then a sharp twinge ignited at each shoulder.

The current leaked from her fingers before she could rein it back in. It sparked off the metal discs in her gloves, sparing the electric bulbs strung along the short hallway. Vander’s door was just ahead. She would tell him. She’d get it over with.

Ingrid reached his flat and was about to knock when a familiar voice sounded from within.

“Is it working?” the muffled voice asked.

Ingrid leaned closer to the door. What on earth was
Grayson
doing here?

Vander’s voice followed. “Well, how do you feel?”

“Amazing,” Grayson answered. Ingrid could hear his excitement. “I only started feeling the itch to shift this morning. I can smell blood now, but it’s been two days.”

Ingrid pressed her ear against the wood, unable to believe she’d just heard her brother correctly. He’d gone
two days
without scenting blood?

“That’s … I don’t know what to say,” Vander replied. “I think we should tell Ingrid. I’d already tested our compatibility before Nolan took the blood stores, and it didn’t clot.”

Grayson: “Do you think she’d go for it?”

Vander: “What Duster wouldn’t?”

Enough. Ingrid had to know what they were talking about.
She opened the door without knocking and entered the small room, which somehow appeared even more cramped than it had the first time she’d seen it. Her brother sat in a chair at Vander’s desk, his arm propped on the top and his sleeve rolled above his elbow. Vander stood beside him, piercing his skin with a needle.