Chain of Gold (The Last Hours #1) - Cassandra Clare Page 0,22

Will, and as she did so, James dropped Cordelia’s hands.

They were no longer dancing. James turned away from Cordelia without a word and strode across the room toward the newcomers. She stood, frozen in confusion, as James bent to kiss the hand of the stunningly beautiful girl who had just walked into the room. Titters rose on the dance floor. Lucie had stepped back from Matthew, her eyes wide. Alastair and Thomas both turned to look at Cordelia with expressions of surprise.

At any moment, Cordelia knew, her mother would notice that she was drifting in the middle of the dance floor like an abandoned tugboat and charge toward her, and then Cordelia would die. She would die of the humiliation. Cordelia was scanning the room for the nearest exit, ready to flee, when a hand grasped her arm. She was spun around and into an expert grip: a moment later she was dancing again, her feet automatically following her partner’s.

“That’s right.” It was Matthew Fairchild. Fair hair, spicy cologne, a blur of a smile. His hands were gentle as he swept her back into the waltz. “Just—try to smile, and no one will notice anything happened. James and I are practically interchangeable in the public consciousness anyway.”

“James—left,” Cordelia said, in shock.

“I know,” said Matthew. “Very bad form. One should not leave a lady on the dance floor unless something is actually on fire. I’ll have a word.”

“A word,” Cordelia echoed. She was beginning to feel less stunned and more angry. “A word?”

“Several words, if it will make you feel better?”

“Who is she?” Cordelia said. She almost didn’t want to ask, but it was better to know the truth. It was always better to know the truth.

“Her name is Grace Blackthorn,” said Matthew quietly. “She is the ward of Tatiana Blackthorn, and they have just come to London. Apparently she grew up in some hole in the country in Idris—that’s how James knows her. They used to cross paths in the summers.”

It is a girl who does not live in London, but she is about to arrive here for an extended stay.

Cordelia felt sick to her stomach. To think she had thought that Lucie was talking about her. That James could have felt those feelings about her.

“You look ill,” Matthew observed. “Is it my dancing? Is it me personally?”

Cordelia drew herself up. She was Cordelia Carstairs, daughter of Elias and Sona, one of a long line of Shadowhunters. She was the inheritor of the famous sword Cortana, which had been passed down through the Carstairs family for generations. She was in London to save her father. She would not fall apart in public.

“Perhaps I’m nervous,” she said. “Lucie did say you didn’t like many people.”

Matthew gave a sharp, startled laugh, before schooling his face back into a look of lazy amusement. “Did she? Lucie’s a chatterbox.”

“But not a liar,” she said.

“Well, fear not. I do not dislike you. I hardly know you,” said Matthew. “I do know your brother. He made my life miserable at school, and Christopher’s, and James’s.”

Cordelia looked over at James and Grace reluctantly. They made a stunning picture, his dark hair and her fair icicle beauty. Like ashes and silver. How, how, how could Cordelia ever have thought someone like James Herondale would be interested in someone like her?

“Alastair and I are very different,” Cordelia said. She didn’t want to say more than that. It felt disloyal to Alastair. “I like Oscar Wilde, for instance, and he does not.”

The corner of Matthew’s mouth curled up. “I see you go directly for the soft underbelly, Cordelia Carstairs. Have you really read Oscar’s work?”

“Just Dorian Gray,” Cordelia confessed. “It gave me nightmares.”

“I should like to have a portrait in the attic,” Matthew mused, “that would show all my sins, while I stayed young and beautiful. And not only for sinning purposes—imagine being able to try out new fashions on it. I could paint the portrait’s hair blue and see how it looks.”

“You don’t need a portrait. You are young and beautiful,” Cordelia pointed out.

“Men are not beautiful. Men are handsome,” objected Matthew.

“Thomas is handsome. You are beautiful,” said Cordelia, feeling the imp of the perverse stealing over her. Matthew was looking stubborn. “James is beautiful too,” she added.

“He was a very unprepossessing child,” said Matthew. “Scowly, and he hadn’t grown into his nose.”

“He’s grown into everything now,” Cordelia said.

Matthew laughed, again as if he was surprised to be doing it. “That was a very shocking observation, Cordelia Carstairs. I