Page 31 of Go, Rogue

“And women too, I presume?”

“Aye. Lasses too. And on that night, it felt like every Scottish lad and lass in London was there. It was too hot and there were too many people, so I took myself outside. I remember looking up at the sky. It was early to be that dark. Heavy clouds were rolling in fast, and I could feel the wet air pressing in on me.

“I knew a storm was coming, but there was something else too, something more than the weather that was crawling its way up my spine. Something was brewing in those dirty, twisty streets. I just didn’t know what it was yet.

“And then there was the lightning and the thunder and the crash of a carriage as it careened past and, Elphame help me, I should have taken myself back to my rooms as I’d planned. Crawford and I had had a long day, trying to find our funding, and I had no business doing anything but going home so we could try afresh tomorrow.”

“Why did you turn back?”

He stares at her big, blue eyes across the table. She’s leaning forward, and he exhales a little more, because the awful things he’s said to her don’t seem to have caused too much damage. And because she’s still here, with him, in this cabin.

Outside, the sun casts its light through the window—that particular peachy color of sunset over water. He loves that color, that light, and the way it makes everything seem to glow.

“I turned back because I heard you,” he says. “You screamed after the carriage crashed. And then there was all that noise: horses whinnying, a lad yelling, more screams.

“It was chaos, as it should be after a carriage accident. But the chaos was followed by silence, and I knew that wasn’t right. It was the silence that made me run, sweat soaking me straight through. It felt like forever until I could get to you, turning corner after corner, back the way I’d just come.”

“You said you turned back because you heard me,” she says, “but you didn’t know it was me.”

He only shrugs. “Didn’t I? Not then, I suppose. Not until I saw you. But fate’s a wily mistress, and she was pushing me forward, toward you, whether I knew it or not. The rain had just started, and I was out of breath and soaked through, and I turned one more muddy corner, and there you were, on the ground.

“Janet was kneeling beside you, helping you up. And I felt only relief for a moment that you were alright.”

“But how could you tell it was me?” Catherine asks. “I was on the ground and it was raining and I was wearing a bonnet that, as I recall, was so wet and drooping that I could barely see anything at all beyond its brim. There was no way for you to have known. We’d only met that one time before in the park.”

“I’d know your face anywhere, lass. In profile or covered in mud or behind a stupid, wet hat. I’ll always know you.”

He’d all but memorized that face of hers.

She blinks at him as she did last night when he told her she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.

“And I knew Janet, too,” he adds quickly, trying to recover himself. “She’s a Scot, and every Scot in town makes their way to Nowhere sooner or later.”

Catherine only nods at that, so he carries on. “And then I saw that boy in the corner, holding the horses, looking into the shadows for whoever was about to come out of them. And I felt that jolt run up my spine again. He was waiting on someone or something. Something I knew would hurt you.

“And then the vermin crawled out of the dark. One to Janet and one to you. Janet was closer, and the bloke had his back to me, so it was an easy enough blow to the head, but your fellow—”

“Don’t call him that.”

“Aye. Your bit of scum with the knife to your throat was making threats, and you…” He pauses to watch the peachy-golden sunlight stream across her face. “You said—” Even now, six months later, he can barely believe her moxie.

“I said, ‘I wouldn’t come any closer, if I were you.’”

He chuckles. “Aye. Like the queen herself. Head held high, spine straight. Fists raised in a pair of gloves that cost more than my rented rooms for the month. And I saw, in that moment, who you were, Menace.”

She looks at him then, eyes narrowed. “And who is that? A spoiled earl’s daughter who bludgeons everyone around her with her money and her station?”

“Aye, sometimes.” He shakes his head. “But you’re more than that too. You’re the eye of the storm. The center where all the power is concentrated. One step in the wrong direction is chaos to be certain, but that’s not you. That’s just life. And life has collateral damage. You deal with it the way any powerful person might, and you shouldn’t be sorry for it.”

He holds her stare. “I’m the one who ought to be sorry, for all those things I said to you earlier. It was not well done of me. You shouldn’t be anything other than what you are.”

She’s still listening, but he wants her to start talking. To fill this small room with her energy and her warmth and her smile, so he asks her a question.

“You never told me why you held your fists up,” he says. “Were you going to fight the bastard? Plant a facer even though he held a knife to you?”

She smiles at him, and he hopes it’s in forgiveness. It’s too beautiful a smile to be for anything else. He wants to still the picture she makes; preserve it like the dried flowers Esmee sometimes keeps. As if he could hold that light and her smile and this moment in his hands and keep them forever.

“I’d been studying boxing,” she replies. “But it wasn’t the same in the situation as when I’d read about it.”