there were mornings when it would be far too easy to walk into the sun.
She burned.
"Whose was she?" he asked, because he had been avoiding asking.
"Jayne Fortescue," Jack answered, quickly. He'd been prepared with
the name.
Sebastien sighed—a human habit he had never quite lost. He'd never heard of her. "An American?"
"I don't know." Jack licked his lips. "There aren't supposed to be any of the blood in America. It wasn't Evie, Sebastien."
"Of course not." Evie Péletier was the name she had burned under, but he had met her as Eudeline la Noire.
Names changed; the woman never.
Sebastien continued, "Evie burned years ago."
Almost five years, and Sebastien had only just learned of it, hadn't he? Five years of silence, not so much as a letter, and he'd thought nothing of it. They'd encounter one other by chance sooner or later, he reasoned, in Paris or in Bonn. Europe was small, and unlife was long.
And there would always be time.
Burned, this Jayne Fortescue. As his Evie had burned, all alone in tiny, crowded Europe with its clubs and lineages and complicated alliances and agreements and rules. All alone, and empty with it.
"Lillian's scars are old," Jack said. "The casually visible ones, anyway. You might have thought—"
He had thought, though he silently thanked Jack for permitting his dignity the lie. It would have explained too easily how she knew his name, and on some level, he had wanted to believe.
He shrugged and said, "That must be very hard for Lillian."
It didn't fool Jack. He caught Sebastien's sleeve and forced him to turn, to look Jack in the eye. "Promise me you won't."
"Jack—"
"Promise, Sebastien."
"You didn't know Evie." What shall I tell you, Jack Priest? That it's very odd realizing that you are the oldest person that you are ever likely to know? That it is also very lonely?
At least in America, I shall be able to pretend I have a reason to feel so alone.
"No," Jack said. "But I know how I feel about you. Don't think I don't know what this sudden emigration is about. You've left everything. Sold your house, lied to your court. You're never going back to Spain."
"And what of it?"
"Nothing." Jack turned and pressed a warm hand to Sebastien's cheek. "But you're not going to shake me that easily. That emancipation means you don't get to tell me to go away any more than you get to tell me to stay."
Mulishly, Sebastien plowed ahead. "I can't give you a life. Life is for the living, not the undead."
Jack dropped his hand and stared at Sebastien, chin tilted up. "Don't be an idiot."
"Jack?"
Shaking his head, Jack lifted himself up on tiptoe and kissed Sebastien quickly on the mouth. Sebastien closed his eyes for a moment, to savor the passing warmth, and so happened not to see when Jack turned on the balls of his feet and strode away. He'd gone three steps by the time Sebastien stirred himself to movement and caught up. Without looking at him, Jack coughed and ran one frail-seeming hand through his hair. "I don't need you to give me a life, you old fool. Or haven't you noticed that I've got my own?"
Sebastien blinked. Slowed his steps, so that Jack slowed to stay alongside him. "There's no such thing as forever."
"That's all right. I haven't got forever. So if you leave me like Lillian got left, I shall be quite cross. Promise."
It was harder than it should have been, so he knew he wasn't lying.
Sebastien touched Jack's arm, and said, "I promise."
Wax
(April, 1901)
No one slept well that night.
A little after three a.m., as a cold whispering rain fell over steep-gabled slate, husbands silently pulled wives close in the clammy darkness. Nursemaids rose from narrow beds to check bundled babes; massive-headed mastiffs whined by banked hearthfires as household cats insinuated between dream-running paws; and in their warm, summer-smelling loose boxes, arch-necked carriage horses stamped and rolled white-rimmed eyes, leaning against the barred partitions to press flank to flank. The City of New Amsterdam tossed restlessly.
Detective Crown Investigator Abigail Irene Garrett had no one to turn to for comfort on a dismal night in April. When the chill slipped like an unwelcome guest between sheet and featherbed and her faded blue eyes came open, Garrett's hand crept automatically to the pistol under her pillow. Her half-awakened intellect checked her wards and guards. Intact. Despite the muffled impact of her heart against her ribcage, she was as alone as she should have been.