Emma Holloway - A Study in Silks

Evelina shivered, and as Nick ran his hands down her arms in a time-honored gesture of comfort, magic tingled along her skin. Her throat constricted with unspoken pain. The very spark that made them who they were made it incredibly dangerous to be together.

Swallowing back a rush of sadness, she took a deep, steadying breath. It had taken so long to get over the loss of him that he couldn’t—he just couldn’t be there. The sight of him brought back too much pain. She pushed him away, wanting to stop the reunion before old wounds began to bleed. “You’re damp with rain.”

He pressed a hand over his heart. “That is enough to send me away? A little rain shouldn’t frighten you. We’ve slept together under the open stars.”

She crossed her arms, keeping her embraces to herself. “I was eleven, and it was disgustingly cold. And Old Ploughman was snoring a dozen feet away.”

“Your memory lacks romance.”

“I like accuracy.” She shot the words back before the sheer physical presence of this new, fully adult Nick could cloud her mind. Her gaze roved over him, taking in the lean hips and strong shoulders, the long, lithe legs of the horseman. There was nothing of the boy left in the hard muscles she’d felt under his shirt, or in the graceful power of his every gesture. Her skin felt hot and tight, as if she’d suddenly contracted a fever.

“You pierce my heart, fair lady.”

“Rot. Don’t waste your patter on me; you’re impervious to a mere comment. I’m willing to wager you have more knives on your person than Lady Bancroft has place settings.”

He shrugged—the gesture so familiar it brought a throb to her chest. Memories crashed in, stifling in their urgency. When they had parted, Nick had been seventeen years old; she had been not quite fourteen. If she had stayed with the travelers, they would eventually have wed as surely as summer followed spring.

But that hadn’t happened. She looked at him now, wondering what he would have been like as a husband. Wondering what secrets this older Nick had hidden behind his cautious smile and those silken rags. The thought of it left her empty and aching.

“What are you doing in my bedchamber?” she demanded.

“Do you think I am here to ravish you, after all this time?”

She allowed herself a smile. His showman’s persona never quite came off with the costume. “I doubt you’ve kept the image of my pigtails and pinafore etched on your soul.”

“How little you understand me,” he said with another flash of teeth. “I was not whisked away by a long-lost and eminently respectable grandmamma. Perhaps my memory can afford to be longer.”

“Why are you here?”

“I asked for you at every stop the traveling show made, from Scotland to Dover.”

“No.” She had to deny it. She couldn’t bear the idea of him suffering anything like what she had felt. But then Nick, for all his faults—including the foolhardy bravery that had brought him there tonight—had always been loyal.

“It’s true.” He reached across the distance between them, his fingertips barely brushing her cheek. They were rough, but she didn’t flinch away. Instead, she felt turned to stone, mesmerized by his plain, almost coarse accent. No Mayfair polish here.

“Stop,” she whispered.

“I knew you would grow into a beauty. Skin like the moon and hair like a starless night, as the old song goes.” His voice was husky. “We were close once. Are you so far above me now? I suppose you are.”

As long as no one burst in and found them together. At the very least, that would send her plunging back to the mud as fast as the laws of gravity allowed. She had to make him leave.

Still, Evelina wanted to know everything. Where he’d been. If he still devoured any and every book that fell into his hands. If he had found another girl to follow him around like a worshipful duckling. She had run away to find him once, when her courage failed at the beginning of their life apart. Her Grandmamma Holmes had locked her in the cellar.

The questions jammed up, tangling her tongue. “Are you still with the show?” she managed.

He dropped his hand, a mix of irony and pride flickering over his features. “Where else would I be? I’m the Indomitable Niccolo, supreme knife man and best trick rider in all Italia.”

“You’ve never been farther south than Kent,” she said in caustic tones. And she suspected his parents had been more Romany than Italian, but no one actually knew. He’d been a foundling who knew his first name and nothing else.

“Italia plays better with the crowd. Besides, it’s no more a sham than you playing at gentlewoman. Your father was one of us.”

There it was, the betrayal. She’d left Nick behind.

“But this,” Evelina gestured at the elegant room, “was my mother’s world.” And she was caught between, half gentry and half vagabond, two halves that never knit properly together.

Nick’s gaze roved over the bedchamber, lingering long on the silver candlesticks. Instinctively, she moved to screen his view of the box. “Why are you here?” she repeated. “What are you doing in London? Ploughman’s never wintered here.” It wasn’t one of the big, famous shows. She remembered when all the performers had taken a cut in wages so the show could afford to buy the lions.

“We’ve been here since November.”

That meant they were moving up in the hierarchy of the circus world. That should have been good news, but Evelina’s throat tightened at the thought of her Gran, of Nick, of all the circus folk she’d grown up with being in the same city and never knowing it.

“I’ve been watching the house, wondering what was the best time to come see you, if you might be happy to see me. But then I saw you climbing a tree tonight, and I knew that at least part of you was still the same girl I knew. What were you doing, little Evie?”

The old endearment stung, reducing her back to the barefoot girl picking up pennies the crowds threw for her elders. “It’s none of your business anymore.”

His face went solemn. “Perhaps. But I saw you two days ago. In the street. I had given up hope of ever finding you. But a little silver to your groom and a gardener let me know where you sleep.”

The look Nick gave her was far too soft. She felt blood mount to her cheeks. How she had wished he would look at her like that, once upon a time. How it had finally started to happen when it was time for her to leave him. Now it was too late. “You know it’s madness for us to be together.”

“I do. I’m not stupid, Evie, but knowing you’re safe is worth the risk.”

She bit her lip. He didn’t have the right to choose that risk for her. “Are you so certain about that?”

He blinked, his face falling back to his insouciant expression. “I don’t expect you to come home with me. I just needed to know that you are happy. Is that so wrong?”

She took a breath, held it, and tried to find the right answer. “No. Are you? Happy, I mean.”

He shrugged. “You know me. I am content as long as I am the best.” He looked around the room again, as if trying to memorize it. “So what do you do with yourself now? Have tea parties? Look for a husband?”

It was a good question, and one Evelina asked herself daily. She was caught between her circus past, with its hidden magic and its poverty, and her present, with schooling and science and enough to eat. She’d thought long and hard about another option, a place where she might find a brand-new path. “I want to go to university. There are colleges for women.”

His gaze came back to her, wide with surprise. “Why do you want that?” Probably no one in his acquaintance had set foot inside a proper schoolroom, much less a lecture hall.