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Then he brings his gaze back to me. “There is no way I could miss such an occasion.”

“Lord Dorian, do you delight in the hunt?” Richard asks with a note of genuine astonishment. “I would have taken you for a man of the drawing-room rather than the moors.”

Dorian’s gaze remains anchored to mine, as if Richard had not spoken at all.

“Do you enjoy hunting, then?” he insists, amused.

I lift my gaze toward Richard, just enough to suggest he should not press further.

But in that very instant, I hear Lord Dorian’s breath hitch and then release slowly. I turn toward him. A slight tremor runs down his neck beneath his elegant collar, his wrist rotates slightly.

“You have no idea how much.”

5

Proklyatiye

Dorian

My fingertips glide along the smooth barrel, tracing every joint and fitting.

Every screw, every mechanism receives precise attention. I press, turn, slide, and pass the cloth.

“Possession of the appropriate weapon distinguishes the one who dominates from the prey that trembles.”

My valet slowly settles the case for my rifle upon the table.

“I find it arduous to believe, Lord Dorian, that you could ever find yourself at the mercy of anyone.”

“Never have I found myself in greater agreement with you, Laurence.”

I let my fingers slip along the edge of the dark brown case, feeling the firm leather beneath my knuckles.

“I believed, my lord, that you had no intention of taking part in the Marquess of Houghton’s hunt. You had termed it... tedious.”

“I have changed my mind.” I let my gaze sweep across the table.

“To what, or to whom, is this change owed, if I may venture to ask?”

“I trust I shall find there a pastime worthy of my attention.”

He takes my jacket and slides it over my shoulders. In my service for eleven years, he has never failed.

I turn and seize my doeskin gloves. The feel of them recalls the satisfaction I find in molding clay to my will.

“Have you then discovered some pastime worthy of your attention?”

I freeze at those words, my hands suspended in the air, my jaw tightening beyond my control.

Laurence’s words dissolve into the air, and my mind returns briefly to Silverbrooke Manor. Precisely to the first appearance of that embodiment of intransigence before my eyes.

I was skeptical, in truth, too much praise and too many gazes ready to kneel before the aristocratic prodigy.

And yet upon his entrance, every movement in the room slowed. I could not avert my eyes. When the strings of the cello began to vibrate, time stopped completely. There were only his hands, the bow, and the notes gliding through the air.

An enchantment, I dare say, yet it dissolved the moment I drew near.

They paint him as an ethereal creature, unreachable, but he is merely a boy made of flesh and blood.