She opened her mouth to say… something.Whatever it was died on her tongue.“Are you… complimenting me?”
He leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his thighs.The boredom she’d sensed in him when he’d been gazing out the window dropped away like a dying glamour, revealing reality.His blue eyes were bright, intense.Like the blue flames they’d conjured between them in the potion shop.“What I mean is you’re a bold woman, and any man who wants you, but refuses to have you with a little… excitement in your past, is not bold enough to deserve you.”
Hewascomplimenting her, whether he intended to or not.It clearly made him uncomfortable to do so.His cheeks were rose red, and he wouldn’t meet her gaze.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Don’t do that,” he growled, looking out the window once more.
“Do what?”
“Pretend I’m worth your gratitude.”He hung his head between his hands then looked up at her from behind a rakish lock of hair.“We can hire a new chaperone.I’ll travel as a groom, stay at Foggy Hill as a groom, too.No one will recognize me.It’s been decades since I was there.I don’t even remember it.My grandfather preferred his properties along the southern shoreline.More sunlight.What I’m saying is no one has to know.If remaining innocent and pure in truth and in reputation is so important to you and whatever beef-witted alchemist you plan to marry, then”—he leaned into the squabs, crossing his arms over his chest, looking grumpy as a small child denied a treat—“I’ll travel disguised.No one has to know.”His face brightened a bit.“Might be diverting after all.”
How tempting.
No!It was utterly ridiculous.
“Why?”she demanded.“Why would you purposefully ride off into obscurity with me?”
He slipped his hand through the glamour and pulled out a small metal rod, narrower on one end.“Because of this.”Into the pocket and out again, this time revealing the long, misshapen disk of gold.“And this.”
On his palm, the iron and gold were small and heavy at the same time.Sybil felt as if their weight dragged the coach’s wheels into the dirt, made time move more slowly.
“Stone asked me to spy for him.”He spoke softly, gazing, as she was, at his palm, the objects cradled there.“To use my connection to your family to find out where you are?—”
“I knew it!”
“You know nothing.I don’t want to tell him where you are.He’s offered me money, a real and influential position in the Guild.But all of it without mastering a single basic element of alchemy.It’s power.But hollow.I want something real.And you, Sybil Grant, are the only one who can give it to me.”
She ventured a look, a hesitant peek upward and into his face.The fine lines of it were sharp, and the brightening morning outside the coach threw shadows in the hollows of his cheeks.She could not read his eyes.The flames there doused, replaced with something deadly serious.
Give this man power?
Seemed a dangerous thing to do.
He grasped her hand, pulled it over his, atop the iron and gold.They were palm to palm and eye to eye, and his words seemed like coals dropping into her chest.“You teach me alchemy, and I’ll teach you.Everything I’ve learned and observed from a year in Stone’s forge.I know more than I’m capable of doing.And you’re capable of doing more than you know.Together”—he squeezed her hand between his, a gentle thing yet full of lightning—“we can make a whole alchemist.”The corner of his mouth quirked into a lopsided grin.
How tempting.Letting him stay, allowing this rogue to travel with her… it felt like bolt cutters in her hands.She couldn’t escape this fate, but she could defy it in some small way.
She wet her lips.“You’ll tell me everything?”
“Every little thing.I swear it.”
“Fine.”
“Fine as in…?”
She pursed her lips.This was it.This was stepping off a cliff and into the unknown.If she agreed, it could change everything.Something tugged at the corners of her lips.
“I need the words, princess.”
She turned away from him to hide a smile.“Fine you can travel with me.”
“I knew you’d see sense!”He launched backward into the squabs, a wild grin bold across his face.“I’ll pretend I’m your groom.Perhaps I should get rid of the coachman.A hammer to the head.No, a love potion?—”
“No, no.Nothing overly intricate.We’ll get caught.”
“What’s your plan then?”
