Tarnished Knight - By Bec McMaster Page 0,47

you another present to replace the one you lost. Figured this time I’d put it somewhere safer. Per’aps your finger, aye? This one?” Taking her left hand he drew it to his lips and sucked her ring finger into his mouth, watching her with those amused eyes.

Esme’s breath caught. “Are you asking me to marry you?”

“Aye.” His voice roughened in a growl. “I’m an old fashioned sort o’ man. Ain’t one of the Echelon with their consort contracts. I were born on the streets and ‘ere on the streets, when a lad fancies a girl ‘e asks ‘er to be ‘is alone.”

Esme glanced toward the side of the bed. Her curiosity was rampant to see the ring and he knew it. “All yours then?”

“Mine,” he agreed promptly. “If you’ll ‘ave me?”

She answered him with a kiss.

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READ ON FOR AN EXCLUSIVE SNEAK PEAK OF THE EVENTS LEADING UP TO HEART OF IRON:

LENA’S DECISION

1

Slipping through the skylight onto the roof above, Lena Todd let out a sigh as she realised it was empty. Part of her – a part she was growing uncomfortable even admitting to – had hoped to find Will up here.

The hulking verwulfen bodyguard often used the rooftops as a vantage point from which to observe the rookery of Whitechapel. People forgot to look up, and so he and the rest of Blade’s men could keep an eye on them without being observed.

The aloofness suited Will and his nature. Despite the fact that she now lived under the same roof as he did, she saw him only rarely. If Lena was as foolish as she sometimes pretended to be, she’d almost think he was avoiding her.

Unlikely, she thought, sitting down with a frown and gathering her pretty yellow skirts around her ankles. Will barely even noticed her. The idea of him going out of his way to avoid her seemed like the sort of frothy drivel she read in the French novels that Esme, Blade’s housekeeper, bought.

“…hold still… And stop flexing your arm…”

Lena flinched at the suddenness of the words, glancing around. She knew the voice instantly. Honoria. If her older sister found her on the roof, she’d have words to say about how dangerous it could be. Never mind that the rooftop was the only place in the Warren that Lena could truly be alone to think.

“I’m not flexing,” someone else snapped, in an aristocratic tone that took Lena back years to the time when she and her family had lived on the edge of the Echelon. “You’re coming toward me with a hypodermic syringe. Considering you’ve only just begun to forgive me, I may be tensing a little.”

“What makes you think I’ve forgiven you at all?” Honoria snapped back and silence fell.

It seemed to be coming from the other skylight, which was cracked open an inch. Lena leaned closer in curiosity. The room below belonged to Honoria’s laboratory, where she spent most of her afternoons.

“You did agree to offer me a consultation,” the man replied in a quieter tone. It wasn’t quite a question.

Who the devil was it? Blade was notoriously protective of his wife. It seemed completely unlike him to allow Honoria to entertain men in her laboratory alone.

Lying down on her stomach, Lena slid closer and tried to peer through the window.

All she could see was a band of her sister’s red skirts and a gentlemen’s dangling legs. Whoever he was, he was sitting on her sister’s examination table. And he was wearing Hoby’s boots. The cut of his pants were tailored exquisitely. Definitely an aristocrat or someone who had money.

A little flutter of excitement started in Lena’s chest.

Life on the edge of the Echelon had been a heady thing. Her father had been a gentleman scientist who’d won patronage from two of the great houses of the Echelon. Though the Todd’s were never quite accepted into the aristocratic ranks, she’d been expected to attend lessons in etiquette by Vickers, the duke who had held her father’s patronage license. Lena might never have made her debut, but by joining other young women at their lessons, she had been introduced to several of their family members. Eventually she might have caught the eye of a young cousin or brother. Or at least that was her understanding of the situation.

Everything had changed the night her father was murdered and Honoria had taken Lena and her brother, Charlie, into hiding. Suddenly she’d been swept away from the bright, glittering world she’d stood on the edge of. Instead she’d