Vix flashed her teeth at him, glinting in the twilight. She held up her hand, the thimble sitting on the tip of her ring finger, just above her wedding band. “How did you know?”
He only sighed in response.
“You are wondering what she asked for,” Vix guessed, admiring the flash of silver on her fingertip. “I shall tell you, because you are being such a good boy. But only once we arrive at the Tod & Vixen.”
“The Vixen?” he repeated, confused. “I thought you were going home.”
“Stop trying to think, Roland,” she tutted, pulling her hand away and sighing. “You are so very pretty.”
He sighed again as the carriage made a rumbling turn in the direction of the gaming hell, the sounds of early evening in St. James beginning to trickle through the doors.
“What are you afraid of, Roland?” Vix asked suddenly. “Do you know?”
“Heights,” he answered immediately, his gaze following the flash of top hats under the moonlight out the window. “Hate heights.”
She clicked her tongue in annoyance. “No, I mean something that really terrifies you. That chills your blood.”
He looked back at her, annoyed. “Heights,” he said again, slowly this time so that she could comprehend it.
She rolled her eyes. “Do you know what scares me? What truly terrified me down to my soul for the very first time in my life?”
“The prospect of humility?” he guessed, winning a smirk from her.
“Ambrose,” she said, touching her wedding ring. “It was Ambrose.”
He immediately straightened, a flash of rage whipping through him. “What?!”
“No, not like that, you daft slinky ermine,” she said impatiently. “Well, maybe a little at first. At first I was afraid of letting him in. Really afraid. Afraid of what I felt and that, if I gave in to it, he would have all the power over me that I swore to myself no one ever would. And then, I thought, well, Victoria, just give in. Give it over and have it done with, and you won’t have to be afraid anymore. So I did. And that was worse.”
“Worse?” he repeated, drawing his brows together. “Why?”
“Because now I know that I could lose him,” she said, frowning down at the glint of her ring, at the twisting bands of gold and silver and the flash of amethysts and sapphires. “And I cannot live without him, you know. Not now that I’ve lived with him. And then came the baby, and it started all over again, and so I named him Ambrose as well, so when I face down what I am afraid of, the answer remains simple. Ambrose. The both of them.”
“Vix,” he said, hesitating for a moment and then reaching out across the carriage to take her hand. “They aren’t going to be lost.”
She gave a tiny little smile, turning her hand up and gripping his. “I think you’re right,” she answered, giving a little sniffle and shaking her head as though to banish her silliness. “But fear doesn’t care. And now I have to wonder, when you think of Mae, do you have that fear too?”
He watched her, the words settling over him. “Fear,” he repeated, unsure.
“Imagine,” Vix whispered. “That she wasn’t there anymore. That she was gone. Or worse, that she remained but was no longer yours. How does that feel?”
He blinked, a flash of Mae’s hands clasped in Ravi’s rising in his memory. He frowned, squeezing his eyes shut, but all he could see was his flat now that she’d been in it, and how wrong it seemed to be empty again.
“Good,” said Vix, watching him. “That is good.”
The carriage rumbled to a stop, giving him an excuse to release her hand and sit back again, stunned and a bit cold inside at what she’d proposed. She had to snap his name at him to get him to alight, the door hanging open with Vix herself somehow already waiting on the sidewalk.
He followed her into the club in a kind of daze, her words echoing in his head. Her scenario creeping into his veins like crushed glass.
Tod and Matthew were seated at the bar; there were only a few players at the tables so early in the evening. They both looked up as though they were expecting this intrusion and waited for Vix and Roland to reach them.
Matthew, Roland thought, looked very odd when he wore plain clothes.
“Good,” said Vix, nodding happily as she pulled herself onto a barstool, letting the fortune of fabric that made up her skirt billow over it like an afterthought. “We’ve many things to discuss, of course, but something unexpected has taken precedent, and so we will begin with that.”
“Naturally,” her brother muttered, sounding completely unsurprised.
Vix smiled at him and produced the thimble, setting it between them on the glossy surface of the bartop. “There,” she said. “It’s come back to me.”
