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A click from behind sent Rafe’s spine rigid. Metal on metal, an unmistakable sound—like a death knell.

The breeches fell from his grasp. They puddled around his bare feet with a whoosh. All he could see was his discarded pistol, its silhouette laying inches from his reach. The pistol he’d not yet checked. That might not even be loaded. That might not save him.

“Think yourself fine-headed, do you?” Russ’s scoff ended with him spitting.

The sound crawled over Rafe’s skin like a thousand biting ants. The man sounded near, but not so close. That must explain how Rafe hadn’t heard his approach, coupled with the wind and his idle, dreaming thoughts.

“All a scheme, was it?” Russ asked. “I’d say as it didn’t turn out. You’ve just cost the old man his life.”

Quickness. He would have to be exceptionally quick. Hand to grip, finger to trigger, turning, aiming, trusting all in the exact same instant.

“That’s not to speak of your lunatic mam or your wench.” Russ’s sneer, his self-satisfaction, lived in the shape of his words. “It mayn’t go so fast for them. Because I will find them, Balfour. Don’t think I’ll spare you now just for questions’ sake.”

Rafe moved. Executed the series of frantic, blood-racing maneuvers he’d promised himself to. Time slowed to a crawl. Life existed in fragments: The Hampshire sun. His cold skin. Sophie’s voice. Her pulse against his lips.

Vis vitae. A Latin term learned from his tutor. The man had been dismissed after he’d challenged Thomas on a mathematical matter. Rafe had never received instruction again, but began working at the store. Why should he remember the phrase? Why now?

“It means vital force.” His tutor’s voice shut out Sophie’s as Rafe faced the barrel of Russ’s pistol. “Flame. It is greater than the sum of our physical beings and material earnings. It is a place to rest the things we know to be, but cannot explain. It is what exists inside. Even after death.”

There was a bifurcated click, the slow motion thrust of Russ’s finger squeezing his pistol’s trigger. Rafe’s hand seemed not quite his, but a white thing out before him, a mirror of his captor’s actions.

Vis vitae. His love for Sophie. The work communicated by light and shadow, by brush and color. The silent force that keeps one moving forward, forward, through the darkest of times. The flame that never allows one to fully quit praying on the light.

Somewhere, powder flirted with spark. A great, splintering clap rent the air.

A single gunshot.

thirty-two

One day later

London, England

Sophie saw Anne in her periphery, struggling to keep up. She didn’t slow her stride.

“Do you really not intend to hire a hackney, at least, miss?” Anne asked.

“I’m a lady of my own means, beginning today.” It was why she had refused to use her father’s carriage for this errand. “It’s time I became wise with my money.”

It all felt very real, now. Mr. Price had made two visits in as many days, spending long hours alone with Lord St. Quinton on the first occasion, and then repeating the exercise with Sophie present. She now had control over her dowry, though most of it was tied up in the five-percents, and a familiar cottage that awaited her south of the city.

She would go there tomorrow, whatever the outcome of today.

“You can’t mean to walk the whole way to Greenwich,” Anne said in a quiet grumble. “Especially not if the child agrees to come with you. We’d be gone the whole of the day, past dark and all.”

Saturday had drawn out the shop-goers. They clogged Pall Mall in a sea of fringed poke bonnets and beaver hats, all walking much too slow.

“I daresay this is not the best path to take, at any rate.”

Sophie at last turned her head. “Anne, you seem to have lost all manners now that you’re in my employ.”

The maid’s cheeks collected hot red color instantly. “Forgive me, miss. I fear I’ve grown used to speaking frankly with you. And I find this—this—venture most distressing.”

“I should usually encourage your frankness, but I must tell you”—Sophie bent her chin and dipped her voice to a whisper—“you are annoying me, just now.”

That sent Anne’s shoulders back, snapped her features into that reverent, holy, schoolmistress expression that she often let define her. Sophie’s mouth quirked into a half smile.

A break appeared in the crowd, and the pair of them slipped through it, emerging before the Balfour’s storefront. The glossy indigo doors beckoned her, put a lump in her throat. “Anne, why don’t you remain here. There’s one last purchase I’d like to make before leaving town.”