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Minutes later, the carriage pulled up outside the toy store, its lights blazing as always.
“Wait a moment.” I jumped down and tried the door, finding it locked. The sign read CLOSED, just as Devere had said. The side door was locked too. There was no sign of Devere or the mob. What if they’d caught him between the shop and the graveyard?
I returned to the carriage and ordered the driver to take me along the back streets, then scanned the quiet, snow-covered sidewalks for any sign of footfalls or a fight. But Minerva was eerily quiet.
There was nothing—no signs of a scuffle and no shouts, as though they’d vanished.
I had the driver go around the streets again. He was happy to take my coin so long as I continued to offer it. When the cold became too much, the carriage dropped me off at the toy store, where I shivered in the doorway. I peered through the fogged-up windows at the wall of clocks. Only one told the right time, and it was long past midnight. Devere and the mob weren’t returning.
What if they’d caught him? What could I do? I’d tried to hold them off, tried to find him.
I trudged to the inn, climbed the stairs, my head awhirl in its own storm, and opened the door to my room.
Devere stood up from my chair. “You’re all right!”
The door had been locked. I held the key. “How did you—” But none of that mattered.
He swooped in, so fast and with so much intensity that I reeled back a step.
“You’re hurt,” he said, and his precise fingers cupped my face, then stroked down my jaw. The touch sizzled through my veins, so bright and fast it stole my breath. His fingers brushed a cut, making it burn.
I hissed and turned away—relieved to be out from under his intense gaze but viciously furious too. “I’m fine. I thought they’d caught you,” I snapped, knocking the privacy screen aside. My bruised and bloody face glowered out from the mirror. “Dammit, Devere. I thought I was going to find your body swinging from a tree. I’ve been out there looking for you, for any sign that you were all right, and you were here this whole time?”
“Much of it.”
He didn’t seem the least concerned. In fact, if anything, he seemed somewhat annoyedwith me,as though I were overreacting. “Did anyone see you enter the inn?”
“No.”
“Good.” Then we wouldn’t have to worry about more gossip accusing us of all manner of things. Murder or being queer, this town didn’t seem to know the difference. I flung off my jacket and poked at the cut on my chin. Another cut on my cheek had clotted.
I unbuttoned my shirt and winced around a sensitive ache under my ribs. My wounds would heal. Had the mob caught Devere, his would not have.
“Do you wish for me to leave?” He still stood in the middle of the room, adrift.
I sighed at his reflection. I wasn’t angry at him. I’d been the fool. “Leave Minerva, yes. First thing. Take the early stagecoach to anywhere, and never come back. That is the only way out of this.”
He blinked. “I meant… leave your room?”
“Not yet. They’ll find you.” I grabbed a clean cloth, poured fresh water into the basin, and looked up to find he’d moved up behind me. “Did you hear me? You must leave Minerva tomorrow.”
“Allow me?” he asked.
He stood close, closer than was appropriate. I needed him close, wanted nothing more than to throw my arms around him and pull him tight and beg him to leave tomorrow, fearing—knowing—he wouldn’t.
He took the cloth from my hand, propped a hip against the washstand to my right, and hesitated, waiting for permission.
“Fine.”
After wetting the cloth again, he dabbed at the cut on my cheek, burning it. I hissed and he huffed through his nose. “Stay still or this will hurt.”
“Your bedside manner is atrocious,” I grumbled.
“Perhaps it is my patient who is atrocious.”
I watched his face as he concentrated on mine. I’d tried to sketch him once and failed miserably. I wasn’t an artist. Not that he needed an artist to make him beautiful. Rather, he needed one to do his beauty justice. I’d become frustrated when I couldn’t capture the line of his jaw or the sweep of his dark lashes. Now, so close, those fine details were all I cared to see. He looked nothing like his father. His fine looks had to come from his mother, a woman he refused to speak of. I wanted to know him, all of him, but he kept himself guarded from the world, from me.
“What do you see?” he asked, his voice a soft rumble. He continued to dab at my face.
