Chapter Seventeen

Isolde's POV

For three days I did not go back to the apartment.

Dacre did not ask me to move. He did not say a word about it. On the night of the break in he simply drove me to Marlowe Street, helped me up the porch steps, and told my grandmother in a very quiet voice that he would feel better if two of his men slept in a car outside. Grandma looked at him for a long moment and said, "They may come in for breakfast."

So that was how I spent the week. Sleeping in my old room, with the basil on the windowsill and the ceiling fan creaking, while two large silent men in black coats sat in a sedan at the end of the road and ate my grandmother's eggs.

I went to work every day. I made myself. I typed my twenty five words a minute, I kept the calendar, I took the calls, and I did not once look at the empty spot on my desk where I used to keep the little silver frame. Marcus Hale, who had decided at some point that I was worth protecting, appeared at my elbow at odd hours with tea I had not asked for. Celeste from accounting, of all people, stopped me by the elevator on Wednesday and said, stiffly, "I heard about your apartment. If you need somewhere to stay, my sister has a spare room." I could not speak. I just nodded, and she looked away, embarrassed, and walked off.

On Friday night I stayed late.

I did not need to. I told myself I had invoices. The truth was that the thought of lying in the dark in my old bed, listening to every car that passed, made my skin crawl. At nine Dacre came out of his office, put on his coat, and stopped at my desk.

"I am driving you home."

"Pell can."

"Pell has the night off." He said it so smoothly that I knew it was not true. "Get your bag."

I got my bag.

The garage under the tower was cold and quiet, lit by long strips of yellow light. His car was in the far corner, a black sedan, and he held the door for me, and I slid into the leather seat with a small, tired sigh. He walked around and got behind the wheel himself. I had never seen him drive.

"You are smiling," he said.

"You look nervous."

"I have not driven in nine years."

"What?"

"I have a man for it." He started the engine. "It is rather like riding a horse. You assume the animal remembers."

I laughed so hard I had to hold my stomach. He glanced at me sideways, and the corner of his mouth lifted, and the sound of the engine filled the little space between us like something warm.

We were two blocks from the tower when he looked in the rearview mirror and went quiet.

"Isolde."

"Yes?"

"Do not turn around."

My skin prickled. I kept my eyes forward. "Is it a car?"

"Gray sedan. It has been behind us since the garage."

"Brandt."

"I would imagine." His voice didn't change. "Put on your seatbelt."

"It's on."

"Hold the handle."

He took the next corner without signaling. The sedan behind us took it a second later. He swung hard left, then right, then left again, down a narrow side street lined with parked cars, and I gripped the door handle so tightly my fingers ached. The sedan stuck to us like a shadow. A horn blared. The streetlights smeared into long gold lines.

"Dacre," I said. "I don't think you've remembered how to ride the horse."

"Hush."

"You are going very fast."

"I am aware." The corner of his mouth moved again. "Shall I tell you a secret?"

"Now?"

"I used to race. At twenty. Illegally."

I stared at him. In the dim light his face was keen and bright and alive in a way I had never seen. "You're enjoying this."

"A little."

He turned sharply into an alley. At the far end a second black car sat across the exit, its headlights flaring. Two men stepped out. I recognized the taller one. He had slept in a sedan outside my grandmother's house for six nights and eaten six breakfasts.

Dacre stopped. The gray sedan skidded in behind us, and for a few seconds nothing moved. Then the doors of the car at the end of the alley opened, and four large men converged on the gray car and dragged the driver out. He was heavy and gray coated and swore the entire time.

I sat very still. My heart thumped against my ribs. The baby, I thought stupidly. The baby is fine. I put my hands over my stomach and I felt nothing, and everything, and I took one long breath, then another.

Dacre switched off the engine. He turned in his seat.

"Are you hurt?"

"No."

"Look at me."

"I'm all right." I was. My hands were shaking, but my voice was steady. "I'm just tired."

He said nothing. He got out of the car, and I thought he was going to the men in the alley. Instead he walked around to my side, opened my door, and crouched beside the seat so that his eyes were level with mine.

"Come with me," he said. "Please."

His apartment was at the top of a quiet building on the north side of the park. It was spare and dark and tasteful and smelled very faintly of cedar. He put me on the sofa, brought me a blanket and a cup of ginger tea, and stood in front of the long window with his hands in his pockets, looking at the lights.

"Brandt will be handled," he said. "Mr. Thorne will be handled. Nothing like tonight will happen again."

"You can't promise that."

"I can."

"Dacre." I held the cup in both hands. "You've done more for me than anyone has any right to. My grandmother's house. The apartment. The guards. I don't know how to pay you back."

"I do not want to be paid."

"Then what do you want?"

He did not answer right away. He turned from the window, and in the lamp light his face looked older, and bare, as if someone had taken something off it.

"I want to say something," he said. "And you do not have to answer. Not tonight. Not for a year, if you need it."

My throat tightened.

"I love you," Dacre said.

The words dropped into the room and sat there. I did not breathe.

"I have loved you since the day you walked into my building with red eyes and a cheap handbag and told Marcus Hale you wanted to work. Possibly before. I have been trying to find a graceful way to say it and I have failed. I do not want to buy you. I do not want to rescue you. I want to stand beside you, if you will let me. And that child, Isolde." His voice roughened. "That child is not a burden to me. It is a gift. I would count it an honor."

I put the cup down. My hands would not hold it.

"I'm carrying another man's baby."

"You are carrying yours."

"I'm not ready."

"I know. I did not ask you to be." He stepped closer, and stopped, and lifted one hand and dropped it again. "I only wanted you to know that when you are ready, I am here. That is all."

I stood up. My legs were unsteady. I wanted to say something clever and kind, and what came out was, "I need to go home."

"I will have Pell..."

"I'd like to walk to the door. Just to the door."

He nodded. I crossed the room toward the entrance, passing his study, and the door was ajar, and a lamp was burning inside. I glanced in without meaning to.

On the wall above the desk hung a single framed photograph.

It was old. Slightly faded. A charity ballroom, gold and blurred, and in the middle of it a young woman in a plain black dress, carrying a tray of champagne glasses and trying very hard not to spill any.

Her hair was pinned up. Her eyes were frightened.

And behind her, half cropped out of the edge of the frame, a tall man in a tuxedo reached out one hand to steady the tray.

I knew that girl. I knew that dress.

I turned around slowly. Dacre was standing in the hallway, perfectly still, and the look on his face told me everything. He had not hung it for me to find. He had hung it for himself, and had kept it for five years.