“There is an office at the Flaming Fox,” she pointed out. “And you were already there stuffing envelopes.”
He paused, an odd expression flashing quickly over his face. “I don’t like to use that desk,” he said. “It is a versatile piece of furniture.”
“What?”
“In any event,” he said, without elaborating, “you’ve crossed a line here today. You understand that?”
She narrowed her eyes, an argument bubbling just below her lips, a sniping, sharp and petty impulse. But the shame was there too, the remnants of that blush she’d been wearing earlier.
“Yes,” she said, setting her jaw. “I do.”
“Good,” he replied with a nod of approval. “Now I am going to cross one too.”
She opened her mouth to ask him just what the hell he meant by that but never got the first syllable out. Any sound she might have made was captured by the fall of his lips against hers. He wove his long, freckled fingers around the back of her neck, pulling her tightly into the kiss, and used his other hand at her waist to pull her flush against the lean, hard lines of his body.
She fell into it like one falls into molten lava, sinking and burning and doomed.
She managed to whimper, a sound of something like protest or something like surrender accompanying the involuntary cling of her fingers into the loose fabric of his shirt. He sighed in return, urging her lips apart with the sharp demand of his tongue and sampling all the unspoken words on hers.
Her eyes slid shut, her body melting against the heat of his, the thoughts in her mind thinning into thin, gossamer strands of nonsense in the wake of sensation. It was like the time she had inhaled ether to see what it felt like, floating and dreamy and utterly indulgent.
His fingers slid over the dip of her waist, tracing along the small of her back, his breath warm and sweet as he tilted her head to taste her from another angle, both of them forgetting to breathe in the process.
He groaned, his hand tightening over the curve of her throat, forehead pressing into hers as he pulled his lips back with what felt like great reluctance, his breathing just as ragged and labored as hers had been after running through half of London trying to get here.
He stopped kissing her, but he did not let her go.
Not for some time.
She kept her eyes shut, memorizing the way he felt so close, the way her body buzzed and warmed and seemingly reached toward his. She inhaled him, sharp and sweet, and trembled in his grip.
She didn’t open her eyes again until he stepped back, his hands sliding off her body with agonizing slowness.
They held one another’s gaze in silence, though for Mae, it took a great deal of effort not to let her own slip down to his lips, to try to find the impact she’d left there, proof of her mark on him.
“Come on,” he said, holding a hand out and nodding toward the door. “Let’s go see the coroner.”
CHAPTER 12
Roland would have liked to have taken the walk in silence.
It felt like an appropriate moment for silence.
Unfortunately, they were in the company of Sybil Lutch.
“And I was very cross with him after that story, you understand,” she was saying to Mae, swinging her arms as she wove around every other cobble in her path. “He couldn’t get around telling me how he’d ended up with black thread in his arm, so I got the whole thing out of him, and when I tell you the coin I could have made if I’d have been there to draw a study of the procedure.”
“We couldn’t pause it for you to draw,” Mae replied, her brow furrowed, casting several concerned glances over her shoulder at Roland, who was trailing behind them, hands in his pockets, watching this conversation unfold with resigned fatigue.
“No, you wouldn’t have to,” Sybil said, shaking her head. “I could do close-up drawings of the sutures, the incision, the whole area beforehand if it was visibly rotting. Oh! The amputated foot! I bet you just threw it out. What awaste!I could have had steakdinner for a month on multiple detailed angles of an amputated foot and then the boiled bones besides. Gracious.”
“Sybil,” Roland murmured from behind them.
She flapped her dirty hand at him over her head. “It’s why I kept asking Roland to bring me to the clinic. Foryears, you understand, but he never wanted me to meet his people from outside the brothel. I’m not good enough for the likes of you, of course. Never have been. I’ve never met the vicar either. Or the big ’un and his fancy sister. But I know about them, and I suspect they don’t know about me, so I suppose that’s a kind of winning in a way, innit?”
He sighed.
“The … the brothel?” Mae repeated, looking alarmed. “Oh, do you also work as … erm …”
