Finally he spoke. “You smell like lemon and roses.”
Impressive. Her bottle of tincture was with her, of course, but tightly shut. “It’s so good to see you again, Soap.”
“I might better have believed that if you’d come to call when you first entered London.”
“Be reasonable. I’m staying with my sister.”
“Reasonable would remember you are trained in the art of subterfuge. How challenging is it for you, of all people, to sneak out of a town house?”
“Touché.”
“So? It is Lord Mersey after all?”
“Felix? Don’t speak gammon. His father is a Pickleman.” Surprise shook Sophronia out of her stillness. She looked directly into Soap’s eyes. His face hadn’t changed much, though he clenched his jaw more.
“His father always was a Pickleman.”
“Yes, but once I thought he might rise above that. Now I know he can’t.” Why are we talking about Felix?
“Because he betrayed you on the tracks?”
“Because he betrayed all of us, and you were killed because of it.” Sophronia allowed a little of her frustration to leak into her words. Why is he simply standing there?
“Oh, I remember that part.” Soap moved finally, so that they stood shoulder-to-shoulder, like spectators, watching Mr. Pilldorff and the ladies unpack and exclaim over the box of goodies. The ladies vied with one another to try on scarves, to compliment each other on such exquisite taste. Dimity and Agatha might have noticed Sophronia’s visitor, for they seemed intent on keeping Petunia occupied.
“So, why haven’t you come to see me, then?” Soap spoke in one breath.
He sounds… what? Frightened? “I didn’t know if I would be welcome.” Sophronia didn’t care for artifice with Soap. She never had. He was the only one granted the privilege of complete honesty. I wonder if he realizes that.
“You bargained your freedom for my life. I can’t”—Soap paused, almost choking on his words—“I can’t ever repay that.”
“You see? There it is. I don’t want debts owed between us.” She shifted infinitesimally closer to him and put two fingers very gently on his forearm where it curled at his waist.
He looked down at her touch, then quickly up again. “Then what do you want between us?”
“Friendship would be a start.”
“No, miss, friendship would be a finish.”
AN INVITATION TO DINE IN OR ON?
Soap’s tone of voice was no longer servile, but colored with the attitude of an equal. He was now an immortal, and he had the superiority of time on his side. True, he would have to fight for that privilege against other werewolves. Much as he had to fight against madness for his soul every full moon. Sophronia supposed that would change anyone, even a former coal scuttler. With one bite, Soap had gone from sootie to supernatural. Where once skin and station had held him back, wolfskin and loner station had made him her equal in rank in the eyes of the law—if not society.
He wasn’t going to dance to her whims anymore.
Perhaps that’s really why I stayed away. So much has changed between us. Am I afraid that I am no longer the one in control? Bitter with herself, Sophronia lied. “I’m not afraid of you.”
He moved then, supernaturally fast, one second the prescribed distance for renewing an old acquaintance, the next plastered up against her in an intimacy that would be permitted to no one in public—not husband, not brother, not child.
“Soap! What are you—?”
He slipped one hand about her waist and whirled them, as if in a waltz, behind the curtain and into the workroom. Sophronia’s feet never touched the ground. Soap had always been strong, but now she was nothing to him—biscuit light.
Before she could get her bearings, his other hand reached up to touch the side of her face, a peculiarly Soap-ish gesture. She fixated on the fact that he hadn’t lost the calluses on his fingers. They had come with him into eternity. He was marked forever by a menial upbringing.
She loved those calluses.
Unthinking, Sophronia turned her face into his hand. Then she remembered how off this all was. How impossible. She moved as Captain Niall had taught her, a dip and twist, using leverage rather than strength to break his grip. It worked, but only because he was surprised.
“It’s not only lemon and rose. You smell delicious.”
Werewolf ability. Am I food? Sophronia wondered.
She felt Soap lean in close enough for his breath to muss her curls, the ones skillfully arranged by Petunia’s French maid to fall over one ear.
“No more friendship, Sophronia. That boiler is dry.”
“What, then? We can’t be more.” Her voice almost hitched, and she forced it to steady. “There’s no future for us.” They could never marry, not even if the dewan blessed the match and permitted Soap to come out into supernatural society. Right now his metamorphosis was closeted. The dewan kept his cards close, and a new werewolf was an ace in the hole. Or is that ace in the closet? I’m getting my metaphors mixed up. She wasn’t sure on his reasons.
Sophronia blamed her distracted thoughts on the persistent heart flutters that Soap’s proximity caused. Or was it excitement from their verbal sparring? Must be that.
“I can hear them, you know.”
“My thoughts?” Sophronia panicked, suspecting unreported werewolf abilities.
“No, silly, your heartbeats. Gives me hope.”
“I didn’t think they were that loud.”
Soap tilted his head at her. “Supernatural hearing, remember? At first it was so strange. I had no idea there were so many small sounds all the time, everywhere. It took me months to function in the outside world and hear only what was important. And that’s not the half of it. Now I understand why new pups need an Alpha to guide them.”
His speech patterns were so refined. Part of his werewolf training? Sophronia wondered.
He drifted his hand over her cheek, sure but slow, as if gentling a horse. His old familiar grin lit up his face.
“Soap, this is most unseemly.”
The hand dropped.
“And you could kill me in a thousand different ways if you wanted to.”
“Not anymore.”
“Lost your ability?” Soap could not believe that.
“Mostly trained for humans, remember? You’re a werewolf. I’ve only got about three ways to kill you in my repertoire. They’re good ones, though, so take care.”
He tugged her in so she was flush against him again. He was warm, which surprised her. She had thought an undead creature would be cold.
“So I can court you?”
“What did I just say?” Sophronia was terrified by the inevitable end of any romance between them. Her parents were not so progressive as to permit their daughter an alliance with a werewolf, even a landed Alpha, let alone one who was lowborn, newly made, and black. Safer not to start. Then she might get to keep a small part of him.
Soap was not so easy to put off. “Blast the future.”
“So says he who has too much of one.”
“And whose fault is that?”
Sophronia winced. Her shoulders sagged.
Soap clearly regretted this accusation. “I don’t blame you.”