Stranger:. Zoe Archer

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      “Erm, thank you,” he muttered, and resumed his pacing.

      “When did you become a Blade?” she asked. When he hesitated in his answer, she added, “This can be, as we say in journalism, ‘off the record,’ if you’re worried I might write about you.”

      “I would appreciate that.” He scanned the afternoon sky for any suspicious avian activity. The Heirs often made use of birds’ sensitivity to magic, binding them with spells and forcing them into service as surveillance. Catullus wondered if Lesperance was having any difficulty on that front. However, considering how well Lesperance had handled himself in Canada, Catullus shouldn’t be overly concerned. That didn’t stop Catullus’s mind from whirling, though.

      “So …?”

      He snapped out of his thoughts at her prompt. No wonder he could never sustain a relationship with a woman. Always spinning off into the kingdom of his own mind. No woman could tolerate such perceived neglect. His arrangement with Penelope, the wealthy mercer’s widow in Southampton, worked because they expected only bodily gratification from each other. Their usual pattern had him arriving between eleven and eleven thirty in the evening, after most of her staff had gone to sleep. He and Penny barely exchanged pleasantries. Once in her bedroom, they silently took off their clothing and had sex, sometimes in bed, sometimes elsewhere in her room.

      He made sure Penny felt pleasure, and she gave it, as well. But the truth was, the whole process bordered on mechanical, stripped of real connection. Half the time they were together, his thoughts drifted to current projects and inventions. Penny wasn’t offended. She only wanted his cock. Not his mind, not his heart.

      What would Gemma want? Would she be bothered by his straying thoughts? She did not appear impatient now, nor did she seem unconcerned, like Penny.

      Gemma patiently waited for his response.

      “I became a Blade at eighteen,” he answered. “On a mission to protect a Source in the Åland Islands.”

      “Seems awfully young!”

      “Not for my family. We’ve been providing mechanical assistance to the Blades for generations. It was simply a matter of time before I became an official Blade of the Rose.”

      “Generations,” she repeated. She raised her head, frowning in confusion.

      He saw the source of her bewilderment. “Great-great-grandmother Portia came to England from a sugar plantation in Jamaica. She came with her owner as a gift to his daughter in London.”

      The implication of that statement widened Gemma’s eyes.

      “Yes. She was a slave.” He didn’t stop his pacing, though he slowed, out of consideration for Gemma’s balance.

      “Oh, Lord, Catullus,” she gulped. “I’m so sorry.”

      “Why? You had nothing to do with it.”

      “I know, but … it’s awful to think about. Someone in your family actually being considered … property … instead of a human being.”

      He shrugged, long inured to this. “Great-great-grandmother Portia wasn’t the only one. A third of my male relatives were slaves in the British Caribbean at one point in their lives.”

      “No one would blame you,” she said slowly, “if you hated England.”

      “My skin’s pigment does not define me, no more than your freckles define you. Although,” he mused to himself, “I am extremely fond of freckles.”

      He wasn’t actually aware that he had spoken this last bit aloud, until Gemma said with a smile, “That’s good news, since I have quite a lot of them.”

      He blinked at her response, and then repressed an urge to yell his triumph. He’d done it! He’d said something flirtatious, and received a very encouraging reaction! That should be recorded in one of his journals, like an experiment.

      Though his response to Gemma had little to do with science. Perhaps biology. And something beyond the body. Was there a science of the mind, of the heart? There ought to be.

      His attempt at flirtation had been purely accidental, so he couldn’t repeat the procedure. Gemma looked up at him with those sparkling eyes, fringed with red-gold lashes, and he didn’t know what to say. The volley ended with him, like a missed tennis ball whiffing past a racquet. He forged onward, taking up his pacing again so that he wouldn’t have to dwell on the fact that he was not, and would never be, a rake.

      “But, ah, to return to great-great-grandmother Portia.” He turned in slow circles, his eyes on the horizon for any possible hazards. “She displayed a tremendous talent for mechanical devices of all kind. Fixing clocks, perfecting the springs on carriages, even making adjustments on the fireplaces so they burned more efficiently.”

      “She sounds quite remarkable,” she said, thoughtful.

      Despite his relentless scrutiny, nothing loomed in the distance, except his increasing interest in Gemma Murphy. “Never met her, myself, but all accounts described her as a singular woman. Eventually, her mistress freed her, and Portia found work in a household in Southampton. That household was, in fact, the headquarters of the Blades of the Rose. And that’s how the long association began. So it continues to the present day with myself and my sister Octavia.”

      “Is Octavia married?”

      “Yes, and a mother, but she continues to develop devices for the Blades, when she has time.”

      “And you?”

      “I’m always developing devices,” he answered abstractedly, preoccupied by a shape on the horizon. He ought to have his shotgun ready, and cursed himself for not thinking of it sooner. But as he bent to retrieve the firearm from its case, her softly stated question caused him to freeze like a startled fox.

      “I mean, are you married?”

      He bolted upright, weaponry forgotten. “Good God, no!” Catullus swung to her, plainly appalled. “You don’t think that I’d … that I would even consider …”

      “Kissing me,” she filled in helpfully. He remained mute, stunned into silence, so she shrugged. “Married men have been known to kiss women who weren’t their wives.”

      “I would never do that!”

      She contemplated him for several long moments, while Catullus’s heart threatened to burst from his chest and find its own way to Southampton. “No,” she said after some time. “I don’t believe you would. And, on the record,” she added, “I don’t kiss married men.”

      “Well …” he said, “that is a relief.”

      The candor of her gaze revealed that she found them both, at that moment, a little ridiculous.

      He’d traveled all over the civilized world, and battled his way through the uncivilized one, as well. Polar seas, barren deserts, obscure jungles. Glittering world capitals and villages that could fit inside a rabbit hutch. And yet the exotic country of Gemma Murphy left him lost. It was easier to dwell in action than dwell on the conversation they were now having.

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