Sovereign Hope (21 page)

What made him
bring me here with him? What could he possibly have thought was
going to happen? He came here to see Jamie, knowing what it would
do to him, knowing that it would tear him down to the bone, and he
had brought me along for the ride anyway. Surely he knew I wasn’t
heartless, that I would want to make him feel better somehow, and
yet he seemed determined to be as cold and distant as possible.
Something tired and brittle snapped inside me.

“
Okay. So you don’t want to go after your dead
brother.”

Daniel looked up as though I’d slapped him. He narrowed his
eyes. “
No.”

“
Okay. So what
do
you want to do?”

He took a deep
breath, looking up and down the street. He seemed to be attempting
to pull himself together. “I want to do something I haven’t done in
a long, long time.”

“
Laugh? Take a bath? Tell the truth?”

He gave me a
sour look. They were lame remarks, I knew. Daniel laughed
occasionally, though admittedly it was usually at my expense. And
he always smelled amazing, some combination of limes and smoke, a
scent entirely unique to him. Maybe there was something in the
truth thing, though. Who knew when he was telling the truth.

I was curious
what he wanted to do, regardless. I quirked an eyebrow at him.
“Come on, then,” I demanded. “What is it?”

He hesitated, fiddling with his cane, then locked me in a
look so inescapable it made me break out in a nervous sweat. His
whole
demeanor
changed in a heartbeat.
The suggestion of a wicked smile pulled at the corner of his mouth.
“Can you dance?”

******

I drew a deep breath as I stood on the steps of Gatti’s
Charing Cross music hall
.
I was a child the last time I’d come here. There
were always white-eyed musical Kaffirs at Gatti’s Under The Arches,
as well as sword swallowers and shipwrecked sailors, but me and
Jamie had loved the tightrope dancers and the performing animals
best of all. Despite being a player’s theater, after a certain time
of night the proprietors always pushed back the furniture,
banishing their extraordinary performers to make way for dancing
and music.

Now, faced
with the familiar, half-remembered façade of the Villiers Street
building, I suddenly suspected that this wasn’t such a good idea.
But the sight of Jamie, happy and smiling, had scrambled my insides
into a nervous mess. I had to do something to take my mind off my
scattered thoughts. The box inside my head where I’d locked away
all the guilt and pain and regret associated with Jamie’s death
rattled ferociously, demanding attention, and I was too
apprehensive to even acknowledge it. If I did, who knew what would
happen. It wouldn’t be pretty, that was for sure.

Farley was an
inch behind me, almost as close as my shadow. I could sense her
willowy frame pressed at my back. As always when I was close to
her, my heart stuttered in that awkward, ridiculous way.

She cleared
her throat nervously. “I’m really not sure about this, Daniel.”

“
Don’t be such a coward.” I looked back over my shoulder,
seeing her staring up at me, her eyes wide and intimidated. The
sight of her in that dress, her hair piled artistically up on her
head with just a few stray strands resting gently against the
porcelain skin of her neck, had done something terrible to me. I
could barely breathe when I’d first seen her. Coming back here was
always hard, but with Farley at my side it was almost even
crueler
. A reminder of a life, a
perfect life, I could have had if things were different. If I
hadn’t nearly died. If Farley had been born earlier. If the Quorum
wasn’t watching my every step. A sharp frustration worked its way
into my chest, and I shoved it aside, locked it out cold. It was no
good dreaming in
ifs
.

“
You can’t tell me you’ve never been dancing
before.”

“
Of course I have,” she grumbled, “but there aren’t any set
steps. You just sort of… move.”

I hid the ghost of a smile, making sure I looked nonchalant
when I faced her again. “Don’t worry. I’ll let you stand on my
feet. You can
just move
with me.”

“
My grandfather used to do that with me when I was a kid. I
think I’m a little too big these days.”

There was a
fixed, defiant look on her that made me want to reach down and take
her face in my hands, kiss her for all her endearing stubbornness,
but instead I kept my face neutral. “Suit yourself.”

I started up
the steps towards Gatti’s. Soft strains of music filtered out into
the dusky night air, bringing back all kinds of buried memories. I
found myself startled by how vivid they were, despite them being a
lifetime ago. Many lifetimes ago. The New York Ballet. Dancing with
Cassie at the disused airdrome in Manchester when the news came
that the war was over. Playing piano with Aldan back in the
quarters when I was small, when I was still new at this life. A
soft kind of sorrow nestled in my ribcage, aching a little.

“
You don’t even look like you want to go dancing.” She looked
at me, wringing a scrap of silk in her hands. I took it from her
without thinking, noting the intricate
f.s.h.
at its edge. I hitched an
eyebrow.

“
What’s the S for?”

“
Not that it’s any of your business, but it stands for Sophia.
After my great grandmother.”

“
Hmm. Kinda makes your initials look like
fish.”

“
Shut up,” she growled. “I suppose your initials are
D.T.M.”

“
And what would that stand for exactly?”

“
Daniel The Magnificent. I would have thought that was
obvious.”

A laugh escaped me before I could stop myself. I looked
askance to find her giving me an astonished look. “Well, I
am
magnificent.”

“
No. You’re a narcissist. And a megalomaniac.”

“
You sound like my therapist.”

“
You have a therapist?”

“
What do you think?” I let the sarcasm ink my tone.

“
I don’t know. I don’t know anything about you.”

“
Well, if only in the interests of clarity, I’ll tell you
this: my initials are S.D.M.”

“
Great,” she said, in a way that suggested she wanted me to
think she couldn’t care less. I knew her better than she obviously
thought I did, though. She was clearly itching to ask.

“
Come on. Let’s go in,” I said, as if the matter were
forgotten.

She let out a
sharp, “Fine,” and followed on my heels as I approached the heavy,
wooden doors ahead. A tall doorman stood at the door, dressed in a
fine black suit with long coattails that reached the back of his
knees. Delicate silver brocading ran down the front of his jacket,
and he wore an expensive-looking velvet top hat along with pristine
white gloves. His hands were folded in front of him. He didn’t
acknowledge our existence as I skipped up the steps with Farley
following reluctantly behind me.

“
Isn’t he supposed to open the door for us?” she asked as I
tugged it open. The sounds of the string quartet within grew louder
and swelled out onto the deserted twilight of Villiers
Street.

“
Not if he doesn’t see us.”

“
Oh. So some people can see us and some can’t?”

“
That depends on Aldan. If he went to a certain place or
interacted with certain people, then they will respond to you more
than others. It’s all a matter of what the old man has stored up in
his head.”

“
So Aldan hasn’t been here?”

“
He’s been here. Although not on this particular night. He
probably never spoke to that particular doorman, either. Just saw
him in passing.”

She fell
silent for a moment while I inhaled, smelling things I hadn’t
smelled in so very long. The luscious aroma of fresh, raw silk,
lavender water perfume, jasmine, the chemical tang of the gas lamps
that bordered the dance hall.

Crystal
chandeliers hung from the ceiling like waterfalls of light, a
gentle, warm light that couldn’t be had from electricity, and
elegant women walked the room on the arms of their chaperones with
fans in their gloved hands. The men were gathered in groups
discussing politics in their finery, whilst others had already
taken to the dance floor and were spinning ladies round like
whirling tops, all laughing and dizzy.

“
Wow,” Farley breathed. “There’s no way I’m going to be able
to do
that
.”

A deep pang of
longing rose in my throat. There was nothing more in the world that
I wanted to do at that moment than make her laugh the way the other
women were, carefree and abandoned.

“
We’ll see.”

I grabbed her
hand before she could protest and pulled her into the spinning tide
of people, waltzing around the dance floor. We were swept up in the
flow of movement, and the steps came back as if it hadn’t been more
than a week since I danced a waltz. In truth, I preferred something
with a little more energy, but right now this was perfect. My hand
moved naturally to her waist, slim and narrow underneath my
fingers, which I gripped lightly, afraid to really feel her. I held
her hand in my other my one. She faltered for a moment before
reaching up for my shoulder. She blushed furiously, something I was
used to since she did it at least five times daily, but it still
hit me every time, how delicate she could look on occasion. In
between looking like she could murder me, or that she wished the
ground would swallow her up, that was.

The blushing,
aside from all her intelligence and stubbornness, was just one of
the reasons I was so attracted to her. She couldn’t hide her
emotions. Despite how unintentional it was, she was always
inadvertently sharing something personal with me. That concept had
almost destroyed me a couple of times already, almost had me
forgetting everything that I’d promised the Quorum.

When she
blushed like that, it seemed natural that I should bury my face
into her beautiful hair and breathe her in. Seemed frighteningly
simple to run my fingertip across the fullness of her reddened
lips. Seemed so easy to lose myself in the curious expression of
her eyes—eyes that stared up at me now like I was the cruelest
person on the planet.

“
You must really hate me,” she said.

“
Pardon me?”

“
This is hardly my idea of dancing. I’m terrible at
it.”

I swung her to
the left to avoid another couple and gave her a cautious smile.
“You’re better than you think. At least not terrible, anyway.” It
was true. For every step I took, she followed naturally, moving
with me and matching my pace. She was fluid, like a ballerina,
elegant and beautiful, and she didn’t even know it.

“
Whatever. You owe me.”

“
Sounds fair. We can go dancing in some seedy nightclub
tomorrow. Does that make you feel any better?”

She
straightened up, giving me a begrudging look. “Yeah, actually. It
does.”

The color in
her cheeks deepened, and I swallowed down the urge again, the urge
to grab her and press my lips to hers. To stand on the dance floor
with the people surging around us, clutching hold of her, lost in a
moment so fierce it felt the world might end. I drew in a sharp
breath and blinked.

“
What is it?” she asked. I was staring at her, and with the
deadpan expression trained on my face, I probably looked quite odd.
The music grew in pitch, swelling into a sweet climax that made my
head spin. Her chest rose and fell quickly, as though she were out
of breath, and yet we were barely moving now. Her lips were parted
and I could feel the thread of her pulse growing stronger in her
fingers that were intertwined with mine, matching my own racing
heartbeat. Could she see it? Could she see what must be written on
my face?

Panic shot
through me, and I pushed back into the dance, startling her. She
managed to step, too, but not quite far enough, and she stomped
down on my foot. It was enough to unbalance her, and she stumbled
into me. Without thinking, I wrapped my arms around her. For a
second our bodies met. I could feel her heart beating against my
chest, see the look of confusion in her eyes. Her hand somehow
found its way to the back of my neck, probably where she reached to
stop herself from falling, and the warmth of her bare skin against
mine sent my pulse into overdrive.

“
Well, well! Fancy meeting you two here!”

We sprang
apart as if we’d been doused with a bucket of cold water. Farley
brushed down the front of her dress in a manner so characteristic
of the flustered women of this time that I almost forgot she wasn’t
a Victorian lady. And me… I was pretty sure I looked like I was
going to pass out.

Aldan stared
at the two of us, pulling off an excellent impersonation of the cat
who’d gotten the cream. But in his case it was champagne.

This was the
old Aldan, the Aldan I met all those years ago, the Aldan who had
changed me into what I was. His hair was short against his head,
still grey, though. He wore full evening attire, a black suit with
a blood-red necktie. The chain of his pocket watch glinted gold
against the dark material of his waistcoat, and he wore a pristine
white handkerchief in his breast pocket. I couldn’t remember the
last time I’d seen him wearing something other than a faded rock
t-shirt.