Chain of Gold (The Last Hours #1) - Cassandra Clare Page 0,120

Charles, and none of us wants that.”

She pulled the shawl tighter about herself. “You don’t understand. We all do what we must. I am doing what I have to do.”

“James has loved you, sincerely, since he was a child,” said Matthew. “And now you tear his heart to pieces? And for what? Charles will never feel half of what James feels for you.”

“Feelings,” she said with contempt. “That is all men think women want, isn’t it? Sympathy—sentiment—nonsense. I have never felt any tenderness for anything or anyone living—”

“Have you truly never felt anything for anyone?” Matthew demanded, half-angry and half-curious.

She was silent for a long moment. “My brother,” she said at last, with a peculiar half smile. “But then, he is not now living.”

“So you never cared for James at all,” he said, full realization dawning slowly. “Has James disappointed you in some way? Or were you just tired of him before you even came to London? All the time you’ve spent with Charles, all the bloody carriage rides, all the whispering in corners—Lord, you planned this like a military campaign, didn’t you? If the first regiment falls, always have a replacement at the ready.” He laughed bitterly. “I told myself I was a fool for being suspicious that you were going behind James’s back. I didn’t imagine half the truth.”

She looked paler than usual. “You would not be wise to spread such rumors. Let it be, Matthew.”

“I cannot.” He started in on his coat again; oddly his hands were steady, as if anger had flattened his nerves. “Charles is a bastard, but even he doesn’t deserve—”

“Matthew,” she said, coming closer and laying her hand on his elbow. He paused in surprise, looking at her face, upturned to his. He could see that the shape of it was indeed lovely, almost doll-like in its perfection.

She stroked her hand down his sleeve. He told himself he should pull back from her, but his feet seemed rooted to the floor. It was as if he were being drawn toward her, though he hated her at the same time.

“You feel something for me now, don’t you?” said Grace. “Kiss me. I demand that you do.”

As if in a dream, Matthew reached for her. He grasped Grace’s slim waist in his hands. He pressed his hungry mouth against her lips and kissed her, and kissed her. She tasted of sweet tea and oblivion. He felt nothing, no desire, no yearning, only an empty desperate compulsion. He kissed her mouth and her cheek and she turned in his arms, still holding his wrist, her body against his—

And then she stepped back, releasing him. It was like waking from a dream.

He flinched back in horror, stumbling away from Grace. There was nothing timid in that glance, nothing of the girl with her face downcast at the ball. The color of her eyes had turned to steel.

“You—” he began, and broke off. He couldn’t say what he wanted to say: You made me do that. It was ludicrous, a bizarre abdication of personal responsibility for an even more bizarre act.

When she spoke, her voice held no emotion. Her lips were red where he had kissed her; he felt like being sick. “If you get in my way after this, if you do anything to impede my marriage to Charles, I will tell James you kissed me. And I will tell your brother, too.”

“As if they do not already know I am a terrible person,” he said, with a bravado he did not feel.

“Oh, Matthew.” Her voice was cold as she turned away from him. “You have no idea what terrible people are like.”

13 BLUE RUIN

Twenty bridges from Tower to Kew

Wanted to know what the river knew,

For they were young, and the Thames was old,

And this is the tale that the River told.

—Rudyard Kipling, “The River’s Tale”

James sat on the edge of a stone bastion atop Blackfriars Bridge, his legs dangling over the edge. The dark-jade water of the Thames flowed by below. Small rowboats and lighters chugged alongside river barges, distinguished by their characteristic red-brown sails, like splotches of blood against the cloud-darkened sky. Aboard them, men in flat caps yelled to each other through the river spray.

To the north, the dome of St. Paul’s glowed against a backdrop of thunderclouds; on the other side of the river, the Bankside Power Station puffed black smoke into the sky.

The rhythmic slap of the tidal river against the granite piers of the bridge was as familiar to James as