Chain of Iron

Lucie felt herself blush. “Then why—”

“Did I get so angry? It must have seemed to you that I hated the book,” he said, his voice low and rapid, as if he wished to get to the end of what he had to say before his nerve failed him. “Or hated your writing, or hated that character—Jethro—but it was nothing of the sort. If anything, I was jealous of the bastard. His one purpose is to say exactly what he feels.” He looked up at the sky, the snow. “You have to understand that I always, always assumed that you could never feel anything for me. And that is why I thought that it was safe that I felt the way I did about you.”

Lucie stood motionless. She couldn’t have moved had a charging Shax demon suddenly appeared. “What do you mean?” she whispered. “What do you mean, the way you felt?”

He pushed himself away from the wall. He was truly agitated now, she realized, so much so that when he gestured, the movement of his hands seemed to shimmer in the air. It was something she had seen before, when ghosts became desperately upset—not that she wanted to think of Jesse as an ordinary sort of ghost like Jessamine, or Old Mol. “It’s almost a joke,” he said, and the bitterness in his voice surprised her. “A ghost falling in love with a living girl and pining away in a dusty attic while she lives her life. But I could survive that, Lucie. It would just be a tragedy for me.”

A ghost falling in love.

A small flame lit in Lucie’s chest. An ember, the beginning of a blaze. “It’s never a tragedy to love somebody.”

“I think Romeo and Juliet would disagree with you on that.” His voice shook. “And don’t you see? If—if you loved me back, then that is not just a tragedy for one of us; it’s a tragedy for both of us. For there can be no future in it.”

“Jesse,” she said. “Jesse, are you shivering?”

He looked up and around him with a sort of amazement. For a moment she saw the boy who’d saved her in Brocelind Forest when she was a child, the one she’d thought was some sort of changeling prince—pale-skinned and green-eyed. “I think,” he said, in a hushed voice, “that at this moment, perhaps, I am able to feel the wind.”

“See?” She caught hold of his hand; it was neither warm nor cold, but seemed to catch warmth from her own skin, his fingers curling over hers. “We have a future. I promise you we do—”

He stroked his free hand down the side of her cheek. “Command me, Lucie,” he said roughly. “I am asking you: command me to dance with you. Show me this waltz from Peru.”

Very slowly, her eyes never leaving his, Lucie unbuttoned her coat, slipping each circle of leather out of its buttonhole with gloved fingers. At last she stood before him, the coat hanging from her shoulders, the wind plastering the lacy scraps of her dress to her body. Jesse could not seem to look away; she could feel the gold locket at her throat rise and fall with her breath.

“Dance with me, Jesse Blackthorn,” she said. “I command you.”

He reached out, sliding his arms inside her coat, pulling her against him. She laid a palm against his shoulder; his free hand spanned the side of her waist. She fitted her body to his, and color swept into his face, flushing his cheeks. She did not question it. One should not, she felt instinctively, question miracles too closely.

The night was hushed, enchanted. They danced, with only the sound of the softly falling snow as music. It dusted Lucie’s cheeks, her eyelashes. She couldn’t stop looking at Jesse. He was so beautiful, so awfully, terribly beautiful, like a marble carving of an angel—but no carving had such dark, tumbling hair, such secretive eyes. He held her tight against him as they danced, and for the first time she felt his body close to hers, the shape of him, the strength in his arms, the lean hardness of his chest beneath his too-thin shirt.

Her skirt brushed a path in the snow, though when she looked down, she could see only her own footsteps, crisscrossing each other. There was no sign at all of where Jesse had walked. She tipped her head up and found him watching her, his gaze slipping from her eyes to her mouth. It was as if his fingertips brushed her lips, shaping them; his gaze clung, neither of them looking away—

The front door of the Institute slammed in the distance. As if the music had stopped, they stilled, both frozen, gazing toward the courtyard.

“Don’t go,” she whispered—but there were footsteps on the path coming toward them. Reaching out, Jesse plucked a gold comb from Lucie’s hair, closing his hand around it. His eyes burned like stars against the night.

Lucie heard her uncle Gabriel’s voice, calling out her name, and then the rattle of the gate. Turning away, Jesse vanished, melting into the darkness like snow.

 

James was uncharacteristically quiet when they returned to the house after the dinner party. Cordelia could not help but worry that after a night spent with her family, he was regretting marrying her, even if it was only for a year. Once they’d dispensed with their coats, she thought he might make a break for the stairs, so he could be alone with his thoughts about his bizarre in-laws, but instead he turned to her, his gold eyes unreadable.

“I’m not ready to go to sleep just yet,” he said. “Would you like to join me in the study?”

Definitely. Anything was better than going back to her room alone and worrying she’d horrified James permanently.

The study was snug and cozy as always; Effie had built up the fire, and a plate of chocolate biscuits had been set out on the chess table. Cordelia curled up in a brocade chair beside the hearth, sticking her cold feet and hands out toward the fire like a little girl. James, more decorous as always, sank onto the sofa, looking thoughtful.

“Are you all right?” Cordelia asked, as the fire crackled into the silence between them. “I cannot imagine tonight was enjoyable for you.”

James looked surprised. “For me? I’m not the one who suffers when there is tension in your family, Daisy. I was only there to make it easier for you. If I didn’t help—”

“Oh, but you did. You absolutely charmed my mother. She would marry you herself if she could. And my father was delighted to have someone to tell the old stories to. And—I hadn’t known you were learning Persian.”

“I remember Lucie studying it to impress you,” he said, with a sideways grin. “I thought it was the least I could do.”

“Lucie only ever managed to memorize a few sentences,” Cordelia laughed. “She’s much better in English.” She cocked her head to the side. “So you aren’t looking so—so serious—because you had an awful evening?”

James gazed into the flames. They danced, moving gold inside his golden irises. “You told me before that Alastair kept your father’s condition from you during your childhood. That you never knew about it.”

“That’s true.”

“I suppose I never realized until tonight what a great effort that must have taken. It is not an easy thing to hide. And not an easy thing to confront someone about, if you fear they have—such an illness.”

“I have felt guilty since Alastair told me,” Cordelia said. “When I was young, I believed Alastair was jealous when he scowled to see me with my father, but I know now he only feared I would realize the truth, and be hurt.”