“Then let me help.”
He stepped away from her. She made fists in his coat for a moment and then released him, stepped back. And with one last look into his glowing eyes—no winks there anymore, no mirth—she darted inside, putting a large door between them.
6
NOT DEAD. JUST MAIMED.
Three days before Christmas Eve found Nico walking through the hospital garden with Jane once more. She was terribly pretty today, as she was every day, wearing a serviceable gray gown and matching mantle, her rosy cheeks all but hidden beneath the wide brim of a formidable bonnet. She was also terribly irritated with him.
“I’ll not agree to marry you,” she hissed, “if you insist on dying soon after.”
“I’ve not offered marriage, and I’m not going to die. Might be maimed a bit, but?—”
A child barreled into them, and Jane righted him.
“Sorry, Miss,” he said.
“Be careful, Jem.” She patted his head.
Jem grinned and fled, his too-skinny legs pumping and his lungs calling out to his friends with joy.
“I’ve sent word to the Grants,” Nico said, voice lower. “To see if they’ll help place more of the children in apprenticeships. I’ve also contacted Mr. Stone at the Alchemist Guild. He should be able to place others.” Alchemy could be taught, but not all children would take to it. It had to be a thing you wanted, anobsession in your blood, and only some followed the call. Placing the Bristol Hospital foundlings in apprenticeships with Guild members was a solution, but not an ideal one.
She nodded. “I’ve widened my net in town. But the seamstress and the inn are not in need right now. I’ve checked at the docks, too, but I cannot bear the thought of putting them on a ship. Such backbreaking work…” Her hands wrung the edge of her cloak.
“We’ll find them homes, Jane,” he whispered. In the past three days, he’d tried to keep her focused on the children, a necessary distraction from other topics of conversation that fanned her anger like a wild wind. Marriage. Christmas Eve.
God, he wanted to marry her. He’d known she was a great temptation, but when she’d said her brother planned to give her away to some stranger, he’d almost lost control. His anger could have warmed an entire house in the middle of winter.
“Wecan do nothing,” Jane said, “ifyouare dead.”
“Not dead. Just maimed.”
“Do not shrug off the loss of your life.”
“Potentialloss of my life.” He wanted to lift her hand to his lips, kiss her, reassure her. But she might read into that, think his resolve was melting. Still… impossible not to flirt. “You’re adorable when you growl.”
“I seem to be growling often of late.”
“Hm. Wonder why.”
She poked him in the chest. “We have spent days talking, and you still refuse to listen to sense.”
He shrugged. “I’ll find a way.”
“Oh, yes, stepping through a window in the dead of night and into the barrel of a gun. If you escape the guns chasing you down outside first.”
Moments like this, he believed she might love him just a little, believed she might want to marry him for reasons other than survival.
He cleared his throat. “A sleeping potion is an excellent idea. If Mrs. Tottle is adept with potions, as you insist she is, then it will be easy to?—”
“Have her locked up on charges of poison. You know it’s illegal.”
When practiced on men. “I know.”
“Oh!” She grabbed the pocket of his waistcoat, pulled him closer. “I’ll do it. You stay at Bowen, and I’ll sneak downstairs and distribute the gifts. Then?—”
“Miss Dean.” He took her hand and looked about the garden. The children had tumbled one another into a great big laughing pile, and the guards had ambled out of sight. He stepped her backward under the cover of a naked, low-branched tree. “Jane.” He slipped her hand into his pocket.Mine. “No.”
