Page 37 of A Treacherous Trade
Now, when I watched the dark shapes of his arms beneath, I’d be able to conjure exactly what the ropes and cords of his sinew looked like.
I wasn’t certain how I felt about that.
“You never told me why you prefer The Orchard,” I blurted before I could think better of it.
He slid me a speaking glance. “I don’t touch the women at The Velvet Glove. Neither does the Hammer.”
I wasn’t quite sure what to do with that information. It certainly created more questions than it answered. Of course I wonderedwhy, but also how long he’d been coming to The Orchard.
And with whom he usually… visited.
Suddenly the image of Indira in his arms shoved its way into my mind’s eye. An Indian and someone who had been mistakenly labeled thus, sharing their distaste for our pallor and our ignorance. Their lovely, tawny bodies tangled in the curtains of shining ebony hair as they moved in congress.
I reached for the bedpost, suddenly needing the support.
Without ceremony or self-consciousness, Night Horse wrestled the hem of his shirt into the snug waist of his trousers, and I found the sight oddly endearing and intimate.
What was happening to me?
“Why leather?” I wondered aloud, if only to fill the taut and strange silence between us. “Does it remind you of… where you come from? Of home? Surely it isn’t more comfortable than linen, cotton, or even softer skins.” I wisely didn’t mention wool. Even most of the Irish knew almost no one wore it for comfort so much as for warmth.
“I wear leather because it’s what others expect of me,” he answered.
“Odd, I didn’t think of you as someone who did as others expected.”
He lifted a shoulder. “It’s easier to identify who—or what—I am. It disarms people from being able to do so.”
I shook my head in disbelief. “I’d likewise never think of you as disarming.”
As he glanced up sharply, I swore I saw something like a spark in his eyes before the cold darkness reclaimed them. “You don’t think much of me at all, evidently.”
“That—that isn’t true.” Was it?
Dropping his hands to his sides, he curled them into fists, studying me as if I were a conundrum that needed to be solved. As if I’d done something he couldn’t begin to understand.
“I wouldn’t blame you.” He looked away. “You should hate me. I’ve half expected you to chase me into the shadows searching for vengeance, just like you do with the Ripper.”
My every muscle tightened as my bones began to vibrate, the violent storm threatening the stillness of the night once again.
No.I violently rejected all mention of the past.
“We needn’t speak of that night,” I croaked, through a throat thickening with emotion.
“That night will fester like a boil if we do not lance it,” he said. “I can see the fire in your eyes. Fire and my own darkness reflected back at me, even when you are civil. Do you not want to scream? Do you not want to slice and slash at me? Does your memory not burn with the sight of what I’ve done?”
I filled my entire chest with air until I felt as though my ribs might separate. Slowly, deliberately, I released the breath.
So, we were going to do this here.
Now.
In the back room of a brothel.
What Aramis Night Horse had done.
For a bleak moment I was back at St. Michael’s Cathedral watching in abject horror as Father Aidan Fitzpatrick, the love of my life, imprisoned the Hammer to his altar, and used a coal-heated knife to flay the skin from right below his clavicle.
Fordays, the police and I had been tearing the city apart, believing that Jack the Ripper had returned, as increasingly bloody murders imitated his own dastardly autumn of terror.
