they first appeared.
“You’re here for more than the cipher machine plans, aren’t you?” Sebastian asked. “Why?”
“Bring me the plans.” Darius skimmed his sharp gaze over Sebastian again. “Eight o’clock next Tuesday. I’ll explain then.”
Sebastian pushed his chair away from the table and left without looking back. He walked down the street, skirting around pedestrians. Carts and horses rattled on the cobblestones, and lights began to glow in the windows of the braziers’ workshops lining Houndsditch. He hired a cab and instructed the driver to leave him at Blake’s Museum of Automata on Old Bond Street.
Mrs. Fox was pulling on her cloak when he entered the foyer, and she gave him a somewhat severe frown. “I’m sorry, Mr. Hall, but the museum is closing. I intend to lock the door behind me.”
“That’s fine, Mrs. Fox, as I’m not here for a tour. Are Mr. Blake and Mrs. Winter available?”
She sighed. “You’ll have to go look for yourself. Mrs. Marshall is fixing dinner, so you’d best not disturb her.”
Sebastian nodded, flinging his hat and greatcoat onto the rack before heading into the depths of the museum. He found both the music room and parlor empty, then paced to Granville’s workshop, which was cluttered with boxes and machine parts.
Clara knelt beside an opened crate, leaves of creased paper and disordered notebooks scattered around her. Dust covered her apron. Her sleeves were rolled up to the elbows, and long tendrils of hair had escaped their pins to wind around her throat.
Sebastian’s fervent urge from earlier returned, this time thumping in time with the beat of his heart.
“Hello, Clara.”
“Oh.” She started and rose to her feet. She rubbed her cheek with the back of her hand, leaving a smear of dirt. “I didn’t know you were here.”
“Just arrived. Nearly skewered by Mrs. Fox’s glare. Deadly as a poisoned arrow.”
She smiled. He thought he’d do anything, including stand on his head and whistle a tune, if she would continue to smile at him like that. He moved closer. Close enough that her skirts brushed his legs like the glide of fingertips.
“Why have you come back?” she asked.
“I wanted to see you,” Sebastian said, only recognizing the truth of the statement after he spoke. With her standing in front of him, all other reasons and motivations faded away and left only the bright, shining possibility of Clara becoming his wife.
She looked at him. He inhaled her scent and lifted his left hand to wind a stray lock of hair around his fingers. He brushed his thumb against her neck and felt the quickening beat of her delicate pulse even through his glove.
“Do you trust me?” he asked. He was so close to her he could have counted her eyelashes. The color of her eyes was muted, but the blue flecks in her irises sparkled like light on snow.
She was silent, her gaze skimming across his mouth, warming his lips. A tremble coursed through her, vibrating against his palm. His breath almost stopped as he waited for her response.
“Do you?” he repeated.
“Yes.” The word escaped her on a whisper. She lifted her hand to his mouth. Heat pooled low in his body at the touch of her fingertips, the stroke of her thumb in the indentation beneath his lower lip.
He captured her hand in his and turned her palm upward. Rough scrapes lined her skin, gritty with dust. She closed her fingers and tried to pull her hand from his. He didn’t allow it, stroking his forefinger over the thin scratches. “You haven’t found them.”
“I will.” A tremble shuddered in her voice despite the declaration. “Uncle Granville is helping, but there are at least twenty crates and boxes to inspect, not to mention the sheer number of papers and diagrams. If Monsieur Dupree didn’t write down the purpose of his inventions, I have to ask Granville to interpret them for me. It all takes…time.”
Time that neither of them had.
Sebastian looked at the scratches on
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