“Give me your hand.” I jerked off my glove and held out my bare fingers. “Now.”
He pulled off his own glove and did so. His hand was warm, almost too warm, and patterned with sweat. I barely felt either.
Memories came to me, fleet and clear. Lewis shooting at the Zealots. Lewis shaking the hand of another Guild soldier. Lewis with his hand on the back of Madge’s chair at the opera, surrounded by music. Lewis shaking hands with Mr. Moran, standing on a pier with the river wind in his hair.
It was that last I held onto. I felt Lewis’s reluctance. I felt a spike of panic too, and dread. I followed that feeling and found another, connected memory—that of him sitting in a carriage across from Madge, her leaning forward.
“We both want the best for her, Mr. Illing,” my sister vowed. “Trust me, in this. And tell my husband nothing.”
Frustration. Injustice. Powerlessness. Indecision. Lewis’s raw, unfiltered response to my sister’s words were a blazing fire behind a barrier of ice as he calmly replied, “Thank you, Mrs. Moran. I will not let you down.”
One last memory came, drifting to the surface as the carriage and Madge disappeared. It was Lewis striding down a familiar hallway in Golden House. To one side of thepassageway, a Silver Guild soldier saluted. On the other, the door to my prison lay.
In the memory, his eyes drifted to the door. His steps faltered, if only just. And the feeling inside him—the swell of worry, of need, ofaffectionhe felt at the thought of me on the other side of that door?
I took what remained of my reserve and hurled it into the river.
The alleyway came back to me, along with the feeling of Lewis’s fingers in mine. I quickly dropped them and pulled my glove back on, but not before his gaze, which had lingered on my face, dropped to my engagement ring. He seemed startled to see it.
“I believe you,” I said, gathering myself. It was not easy. I was shaken. Actually, I was shaking, quite literally, a shiver not only in my hands but in the core of my bones.
Lewis cared for me. It was not quite love, but it was something, and it was powerful and confusing and persuasive.
“I am with you,” he assured me. There was a vulnerability behind his eyes just then that prodded at my careworn heart, and I was truly done for when he added, “I still want the future we planned.”
“Even if Mr. Moran knows of it? If he will try to stop us every step of the way? We certainly cannot sail out of Harrow or the Sunrise Isles.”
“It was always going to be hard,” he said, and I sensed he was reassuring himself as much as me. “It changes little. We can leave tonight, Harden will get us out. Where have you hidden our funds?”
My stomach dropped. “About that…”
“Ottilie,” another voice drifted towards us. Between one blink and the next Pretoria appeared, shedding a skew of time with a ripple in the air, like hot sun on stone. She surveyed Lewis while, behind her, Perry became visible. He held Maddeson’s assistant by the arm.
“Illing,” Pretoria said caustically. “What are you doing here?”
I took a half step between them. “Tori, all is well.”
Lewis’s hand still dropped to his pistol. “Rushforth. I am here for your sister.”
“In what capacity?” she asked. “As Guild dog?”
Lewis rankled. “I am no one’s dog.”
“Let us test that,” she said, holding up a finger. With her other hand she dug around in her pocket. “I have a biscuit here somewhere.”
“Pretoria, the museum,” I reminded her. My own hackles were rising, incensed on Lewis’s behalf. “Now.”
“Oh, you told the hound about that?” She pulled out a smattering of pocket lint and puffed it at Lewis. “Now,sit, boy.”
“I was about to,” I snapped, brushing stray lint off my shoulder.
Lewis bore all this with a clenched jaw. He picked more lint from his moustache as he said, “Ottilie has verified my story.”
“Hm.” Pretoria studied us a moment longer, then dusted her hands. “Well, we haven’t time to waste. If you betray us, Illing, you will never see the sunrise.”
“Unoriginal,” he muttered.
“You know Perry, and this is Geoffrey. He is our prisoner.” Pretoria flapped a hand behind her, to where Perry and Maddeson’s assistant stood. “Shall we carry on? That other Starlight may prove a nuisance if we do not keep moving. Did you recognize her? Loretti. Always a tedious girl, never an original thought. Ottilie, you can apprise Lewis of the situation en route.”
