A bored-looking mundane porter appeared when she rang the brass bell beside the black double doors. He led her into the lobby. It was dimly lit, but Cordelia had an impression of a lot of dark wood and a mahogany desk such as one might find in a hotel.

“Ring Mr. Fairchild’s flat, please,” she said. “I am his cousin.”

The porter raised his eyebrows slightly. She was, after all, a Lone Young Lady, turning up in the evening to visit a single man in his flat. No girl of good family would do such a thing. It was clear the porter thought she was no better than she should be. Cordelia didn’t care. She was freezing and desperate.

“He’s upstairs in flat six, third floor. Get along with you.” The porter turned his attention back to reading the newspaper.

The lift was luxurious, all gold fixtures and expensive wallpaper. She tapped her feet as it creaked slowly upward to the third floor, disgorging her into a red-carpeted hallway lined with doors, each marked with a gold numeral. Only now was Cordelia’s courage starting to flag; she hurried down the corridor before she could have second thoughts and knocked sharply on the door of flat 6.

Nothing. Then footsteps, and Matthew’s voice. The familiarity of it sent a pang of relief through her. “Hildy, I’ve told you,” he was saying, as he swung the door wide, “I don’t need any washing done—”

He froze, staring at Cordelia. He was in trousers and an undershirt, a towel around his neck. His arms were bare, patterns of runes twining up and down them. His hair was damp and tousled. She must have interrupted him shaving.

“Cordelia?” he said, and there was genuine shock in his voice. “Has something happened? Is James in trouble?”

“No,” Cordelia whispered. “James is well, and—very happy, I think.”

Something in Matthew’s expression changed. His gaze flickered. He stood back, opening the door wider. “Come in.”

She stepped into a small square hall, an entryway of sorts, where one’s eye was drawn compulsively to the massive neoclassical vase standing in one corner. It was of the Greek sort, the kind a maiden would use to pour oil into a bath, though in this case that maiden would have to be twenty feet tall. It was painted all over with faux Greek figures engaged in either combat or passionate embrace, Cordelia could not tell.

“I see you’ve noticed my vase,” Matthew said.

“It would be difficult not to.”

Matthew wasn’t really looking at her, instead tugging nervously at the ends of the towel around his neck. “Let me give you the ha’penny tour, then. This is my vase, whom you’ve met, and that there is a potted palm, and a hatstand. Take off your wet shoes, and we’ll go through to the drawing room. Do you want tea? I can ring for tea. Or make some; I’ve become quite handy with a kettle. Or …”

Divested of her drenched shoes, Cordelia wandered into the drawing room. It was much nicer than the vase. She wanted to collapse immediately onto the soft pile of the Turkish rug but decided that was a little louche even for Matthew’s flat. But there was a warm, low fire crackling in the hearth, its tile surround glimmering like shards of gold, and a sofa with a velvet cover. She sank onto it as Matthew wrapped a blanket about her shoulders and arranged the throw pillows around her as a sort of protective fortress, like a child might.

Cordelia could only nod at the suggestion of tea. She had come here to unburden herself to Matthew, to someone, but now that she had arrived, she found she could not speak. Matthew cast a worried glance at her and vanished through a set of pocket doors, presumably on his way to the kitchen.

Chin up. Tell him the truth, Cordelia thought, gazing around at what she could see of the flat. What was most surprising was how well-kept it was. She might have expected something more like Anna’s place, with its mismatched patterns and clothes thrown about. Matthew, on the other hand, had furniture that looked like it had been ordered new when he took the flat, massive heavy oak pieces that must have been murder to get up to the third floor. In a stylish touch, he had hung his many colorful jackets on a row of hooks in the hallway. A steamer trunk bearing various stamps on its canvas surface was propped near the door. Oscar, wearing a bejeweled collar, was asleep by the fire, just beneath a framed drawing of several young men in a garden of plane trees—the Merry Thieves, Cordelia realized. She wondered who’d done the sketch.

She marveled again at the sheer freedom Matthew seemed to possess. Anna was her only other friend with the same kind of liberty, and she would always think of Anna as from an older set, more mature simply because she would always be years ahead of Cordelia. But Matthew was her own age and lived as he pleased. His family was wealthy, of course, much wealthier than hers or her other close friends here—he was the son of the Consul, after all—and surely that bought a certain level of freedom, but most of it was Matthew himself. Shadowhunters were a people bound to duty, but somehow he seemed unbound—to duty or anything else of earthly weight.

Matthew—who had found a shirt and thrown it on hastily—appeared with a silver tea tray and put it down on the side table. He poured and passed her a cup. “Have you thawed yet?” he asked, dragging a dark green velvet armchair close to the sofa. “If not, the tea should help.”

She sipped at it obediently as he flung himself into the armchair. She could taste nothing, but the liquid was hot and warmed her insides. “It does,” she said. “Matthew, I …”

“Go on,” he said, having poured himself a companionable cup of tea. “Tell me about James.”

Perhaps Matthew was right; perhaps tea was the solution to everything. Either way, something unlocked the words inside her. They came out all in a rush. “I had thought it might all work out, you see,” she said. “I knew when we agreed to marry that James didn’t feel for me what … I felt for him. But there were moments—not all the time, but moments—where I thought it was changing. That he cared for me. And the moments were becoming more frequent. More real. I thought. But it seems those were only moments that I was deluding myself. It was my delusions that were becoming more frequent.” She shook her head. “I knew, I knew how he felt about Grace—”

“Has something happened with Grace?” Matthew interrupted, a sharp note in his voice.

“She is with him now, at our house,” she said, and Matthew sat back in his chair, exhaling. “Matthew, don’t look like that—I don’t hate her,” Cordelia said, and she meant it. “I don’t. If she loves James as he loves her, all this must have been rather awful for her.”

“She does not,” said Matthew icily, “love him.”

“I didn’t think—but perhaps she does? She seemed panicked. She must have heard he was in danger today. I suppose they felt they had to see each other, after everything.” Cordelia’s hand shook, rattling the teacup in its saucer. “She told him she would break it off with Charles. And he said, ‘Thank God.’ She was holding him—he was holding her—I had never thought—”

Matthew had set his tea down. “James said, ‘Thank God’? When she told him she was going to end things with my brother?”

Charles, Cordelia knew, would not care in any real way about Grace’s abandonment. But Matthew did not know that. She sighed. “I’m sorry, Matthew. It’s not very nice to Charles—”