dropped a hand now to circle his wrist, her fingers sliding over the band of metal as if to make sure it was still there. Her fingers pressed against his pulse point. “Mama is mad with rage. I don’t know what she will do. She told Charles—”
“I know what she told Charles,” he said. “Please tell me you were not worried about me, Grace.”
“You came to the house to see me,” she said. “Did you know that Cordelia was there?”
He hesitated. How could he say that he hadn’t come to the house to see her? That there had been a moment—a terrible moment—when Cordelia had mentioned that Grace was in the house, and he’d realized he had not thought of her? How was it possible to feel such agony when someone’s name was mentioned, yet forget them in duress? He recalled Jem having told him that stress could do terrible things to one’s mind. Surely that was all it was.
“I didn’t know until I arrived and saw her and Lucie,” he said. “I gather they wanted to see that you were all right. When I came, I heard the noises in the greenhouse, and—” He broke off with a shrug. He hated lying to Grace. “I saw the demon.”
“You were being brave, I know, but Mama does not see it that way. She thinks you came only to humiliate her and remind the world of her father’s misdeeds.”
James badly wanted to kick a lamppost. “Let me talk to her. We could sit down, all of us, my father and you and your mother—”
“James!” Grace looked almost furious for a moment. “What my mother would do to me if I even suggested such a thing—” She shook her head. “No. She watches everything I do. I was barely able to get out tonight. I had thought that coming to London might soften her toward you, but she has become harder than ever. She says the last time Herondales were at Chiswick House, her father and husband died. She says she will not let you destroy us.”
Tatiana is utterly mad, James thought helplessly. He had not realized it had gone so much beyond spite. “Grace, what are you saying?”
“She says she will bring me back to Idris. That she was wrong to let me attend parties and events that you and your sister would be at, and the Lightwoods—she says that I will be corrupted and ruined. She will lock me away, James, for the next two years. I will not see you, not be able to write to you—”
“That is the danger you meant,” he said softly. He understood. Such loneliness would seem like danger to Grace. It would seem like death. “Then come to us at the Institute,” he said. “The Institute is there to provide sanctuary to Nephilim in distress. My parents are kind people. We would protect you from her—”
Grace shook her head hard enough to dislodge her small, flower-trimmed hat. “My mother would only petition to have the Clave return me to her, and they would do it as I am not eighteen yet.”
“You don’t know that. My parents have influence within the Clave—”
“If you truly love me,” she said, her gray eyes flaring, “then you will marry me. Now. We must elope. If we were mundanes, we could run to Gretna Green and marry, and nothing could tear us apart. I would belong to you, and not to her.”
James was stunned. “But we are not mundanes. Their marriage ceremony would not be considered valid by the Clave. Marry me in a Shadowhunter ceremony, Grace. You don’t need her permission—”
“We cannot do that,” Grace protested. “We cannot remain in the Shadowhunter world where my mother can reach us. We must escape her influence, her ability to punish us. We must be married in Gretna and if needs be, we will let our Marks be stripped.”
“Let our Marks be stripped?” James went cold all over. Having your Marks stripped was the most severe punishment a Shadowhunter could endure. It meant exile and becoming a mundane.
He tried to imagine never seeing his parents again, or Lucie, or Christopher or Thomas. Having the bond that tied him to Matthew severed, like having his right hand sliced off. Becoming a mundane and losing everything that made him a Shadowhunter. “Grace, no. That isn’t the answer.”
“It isn’t the answer for you,” she said coolly, “for you have always been a Shadowhunter. I have never been trained, never borne but a few Marks.