She pretended not to notice.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he said.
“Neither should you,” she murmured, checking the exposure. “And yet… here we are. Like fate. Or bad decisions.” Another whisper rustled through the trees, thin and cool and unmistakably not the wind. She smiled faintly. There. “She’s here,” she said.
There was a pause. “Your mother?” he asked, his voice dipping into something softer.
“Of course. She’s probably hovering behind you right now, judging your posture and your cravat.” A chill slithered up her spine. That familiar pressure, like invisible fingertips brushing her collar. Thea didn’t flinch. She welcomed it. “Let me guess,” she added aloud. “Grandmother’s here too?”
She could practically hear him tense.
“Naturally,” she answered herself. “She thinks you’re very handsome. She also thinks you could use a good starching.”
A muffled curse came from Alaric’s direction.
Thea grinned and snapped the shot. The camera plate sizzled. Light exploded. Just for a moment, the air around them felt charged, like lightning trapped in glass. And somewhere, deep in the fog, past the crypts and curled ivy, Thea could swear she heard a laugh that sounded a lot like her grandmother.
She adjusted her stance, stretching one leg out from beneath her skirt to brace against the sloping hill. Her boots sank slightly into the wet ground—rich loam and leaf rot, the kind that clung to fabric and stayed there for days. She barely noticed anymore. Around them, Highgate breathed. Gravestones leaned into one another like gossiping old friends. A cracked-winged cherub stared mournfully from a nearby crypt, its face worn smooth by time. Low iron fences twisted into rusted curls, and somewhere far off, a fox barked once—sharp, startled, gone again.
This place had always felt more alive to her than most drawing rooms.
Pulling a cloth from her satchel, Thea dabbed the mist off the camera lens. She kept her hands busy, because her chest was too tight, and shewould notcry in front of him. Not here. Not ever. No matter how much she missed her mother.
“You know,” she said, without looking up, “if you just admitted you were a little bit intrigued by all this, your head might not ache so much.”
“I’m intrigued by the number of ways you insist on risking arrest,” Alaric muttered.
“Well, that’s not very romantic.”
“I didn’t come here to be romantic.”
She glanced at him then, really looked. His jaw was locked, coat unbuttoned just enough to hint at a waistcoat beneath, one hand clenching and unclenching at his side like he wasn’t sure whether to strangle her or pull her closer.
Probably both.
She smirked. “Then it’s a good thing we’re already engaged.”
That got him. He shifted his weight like the word physically hit him, shoulders going taut. Not that he denied it.
Thea turned away quickly, heart thudding. She hated how that word hung in the air. He’d said it (he’d proposed, hadn’t he?), but he’d said it like someone fulfilling a debt, not offering a future. Their grandmothers’ wish, he’d called it. An agreement between old friends. A sentimental favor.
“Our grandmothers would’ve been pleased,” he’d said. “It’s the right thing to do.”
And she’d nodded, awkward and flustered and far too aware of his mouth. She hadn’t meant to laugh—God, shehadn’t—but it had slipped out. She’d brushed it off with a joke and said she’d think about it. That was it.
The next minute, she’d ended up in jail at Metro Station, and everything changed. She’d been wet. Muddy. Furious. And she’d yelled—quite loudly—down that station corridor that he was her fiancé.
It had been raining then.
Chapter Two
Blackwood Family Parlor, Highgate Hill
October 30, 1847
The night before…
Thea’s boots squelchedas she stomped through the wrought-iron gate, skirt sodden and clinging to her legs like a second, swampy skin. Her bonnet dripped in a steady rhythm, water slinking down the slope of her cheekbone, trailing along the collar of her coat, sliding with intimate certainty into places she’d rather not feel in public.
