I resisted the urge to clear my throat. I did sit back though, folding my hands in my lap and crossing my ankles beneath the table. We were far enough from the other patrons that I doubted the nuances of our conversation could be discerned, so I said, “No, he does not.”
“You’re sure of that?”
“Amply. But he knows what you are?”
“Aye, I assume so. Being a detective and all,” he replied, cocking his head to one side.
“Are you inferring that he has discovered my secret?”
He shrugged expressively, like a stage performer determined to be seen by the back row. The expression turned into a grin as a girl of perhaps sixteen appeared with two mugs, which she deposited before us after giving the table a quick wipe with a cloth.
“Ale, unless the lady prefers otherwise?” she said, patting Harden on the shoulder with brief familiarity and casting me a genuine and unpossessive smile.
“Ale will suffice,” I said, too distracted by her and Harden’s mannerisms to smile back. “Thank you.”
“Somethin’ to eat?” She glanced from me to him.
“Not tonight, Lottie, love.”
She smiled again, flicked her cloth at Harden in parting, and disappeared back into the tables.
“A bit young to be your sweetheart,” I noted.
“My niece,” Harden replied, a flicker of amusement in his eyes. “Jealous creature, you are.”
I frowned over my ale at him, first in exasperation (only slightly feigned) and then in increasing distraction. “Lewis told you of our arrangement?” I said, repeating his admission from earlier.
He nodded and took a drink, now watching a nearby table. The occupants leaned close to one another conspiratorially, snickering over something in the newspaper. “Aye.”
I hesitated, but my curiosity, myneedto know what Lewis had said of me, made me press on. “What did he say, precisely?”
“Said it was a match made bythem, with some strategic influence by your sister. He helped you escape and you flitted off for a few years God knows where. Then you met again by chance in Sarre Grand, at which time you commiserated over your mutual unhappiness and decided that leaving it all behind was the best choice, rather than trying to change anything for the better.”
His words were obviously intended to jab, but I was too interested in Lewis to pursue that now. “And?”
“He turned to smuggling, as they pay him nix, and you came to Harrow and found Mr. Stoke,” Harden finished.
“That is all?” I said, trying not to sound disappointed.
“You were expecting something more?”
It was my turn to shrug and take a drink. The ale was very good, dark and satisfying, and yet left a sick feeling in my stomach.
“No,” I said, resigning myself once more. I conjured a smile and cast it across the table at Harden, silently forcing myself to consider the fine line of his jaw, the focus of his gaze, and the breadth of his shoulders. I would not moon over Lewis when another interested—and attractive—party sat across the table from me. I wouldnot. “I simply need to know how much you have on me.”
“A fair bit,” he observed.
“Yes, and I am at the disadvantage,” I admitted. I sat forward, set down my mug and tapped the pads of my fingers absently against its cool side. “How have you managed to evadethem?”
His eyebrows rose. “You are bold, asking me that in public.”
I gave him a flat look. “My past has already been aired, why not yours?”
“Your and Lewis’s past, not yours, individually,” he pointed out. “Not yet, anyhow.”
“You first,” I prodded.
“I was tested, as a child,” he said after a moment. “Labelled an Affinate and left to my own devices. Turned out I was no Affinate.”
