“Exactly,” she said. “That’s what I thought. My father made mistakes, yes, but I was just a child. Interesting that your brother also didn’t recognize me.”
“You were so young,” he muttered.
“So, you do remember me.”
“I always remembered you. I just didn’t realize the little girl I remembered was the woman standing before me.”
Tension filled the air between them, their sharedpast a reminder that their future didn’t have to be the same, that there was another way forward – if they worked together.
“If we do this,” he finally said, and she lifted a brow, waiting. He cleared his throat, twining his fingers together. “If we do this, how does it work? Do we ask everyone else to be involved?”
“Maybe eventually,” she said. “But for now, I think it’s just you and me.”
“You and me,” he repeated, as the carriage jerked to a halt. Ada, caught off guard as she had been too intent on Jonny instead of her surroundings, lurched forward into him, but he was already reacting, his arms lifting, his hands wrapping tightly around her shoulders as he kept her from falling.
“Thank you,” she murmured, awareness tingling every place they touched, from their knees to his hands, still wrapped around her upper arms.
“Of course,” he said, looking everywhere but at her. “Where are we?”
“Well,” she said with a wry smile as she retook her seat, “if we are where we are supposed to be, we are at your residence.”
“How do you know where I live?” he asked in a sharp tone.
“I made it my business to know all I could about you once you involved yourself with Minnie’s rescue last year,” she said with a shrug. “Just in case.”
He shook his head at her as he made his way toward the carriage door, his hand brushing against her leg as he moved by her.
“You going to give me back the ledger?”
“I’d like to look over it first. See if there’s anything interesting within that we can use.”
“I’d like a look at it myself.”
“We’ll meet up. I’ll send you a note.”
He sighed in resignation before looking around him as though realizing what he was sitting in for the first time.
“Whose carriage is this?”
“Lily and Colin’s.”
“Do your parents know where you are?”
“Of course not,” she scoffed. “They think I am upstairs in bed.”
“I’m not sure what to think of you, Ada Jones,” he said in that low, gravelly voice of his that did terrible things to her insides. “Every time I encounter you, I find myself surprised all over again.”
“That sounds terribly fun,” she said as he climbed down the stairs of the carriage, “for every time I see you, I am proven right, again and again.”
At that, he shut the carriage door, and she grinned at his retreating back.
She had won this round, in a game that he didn’t even know they were playing.
Chapter Nine
Jonny hated being at Ada’s mercy, waiting for her to summon him whenever she felt inclined.
But at this point, he didn’t have much choice.
