along the banister. He looked striking in an expensively tailored suit, the cut of the green brocade waistcoat accentuating his strong shoulders and narrow waist. She stared, trying to reconcile his careless poise with what she had just learned. He returned her gaze evenly, an eyebrow lifted as though in challenge.
When he reached the bottom, Silas went to him at once. With the silent efficiency of a professional valet, he went about making minute adjustments to Nathaniel’s clothes: fixing his cuffs, straightening his collar, tweaking the fall of his jacket. Then, with a slight frown, he undid Nathaniel’s cravat and whisked it from his neck.
“Does it need to be so tight?” Nathaniel objected as Silas retied the cravat in a complicated series of knots, his gloved fingers moving with nimble certainty over the fabric.
Silas could easily throttle him with that, Elisabeth thought, astonished. Yet Nathaniel appeared completely relaxed, trusting of his servant’s ministrations, as if he had a murderous demon’s hands at his throat every day.
“I’m afraid so, if you wish to remain fashionable,” Silas replied. “And we wouldn’t want a repeat of the incident with Lady Gwendolyn.”
Nathaniel scoffed. “How was I supposed to know tying it that way meant that I intended to proposition her? I have better things to do than learn secret signals with handkerchiefs and neckcloths.”
“Had you listened to me, I would have told you, and spared you from getting champagne thrown in your face—though I heard several people say afterward that that was their favorite part of the dinner. There.” He stood back, admiring his work.
Nathaniel automatically reached up to touch the cravat, then dropped his hand when Silas narrowed his yellow eyes in warning. With a lopsided grin, he strode across the hall toward Elisabeth, his boots rapping on the marble floor.
“Are you ready, Miss Scrivener?” he asked, offering her his arm.
Elisabeth’s heart skipped a beat. She might have misjudged Nathaniel, but she had been right about one thing. A sorcerer did want her dead. And somewhere out there, he was waiting.
Chilled to the bone, she nodded and took his arm.
ELEVEN
THE COACH PASSED tall, grand houses of gray stone, stacked tightly alongside each other like books on a bookshelf. Bright blooms of foxglove and deadly nightshade spilled from their window boxes, and wrought iron fences bordered them in front, guarded by statues and gargoyles that turned their heads as the coach passed. Heraldic devices were carved upon the pediments above the front doors. Many of the houses were clearly centuries old, their elegant facades wrapped in a sense of untouchable wealth.
She watched a woman exit a carriage, jewels glittering on her ears. A small child opened the door for her, and Elisabeth assumed he was the woman’s son until she dismissively handed him her shopping parcels. She saw the boy’s eyes flash orange in the light before the door swung shut. Not a boy—a demon.
“Does this entire neighborhood belong to sorcerers?” she asked Nathaniel. Her stomach writhed like a nest of snakes. The saboteur could live in any one of these houses. He could be watching her even now.
“Almost exclusively,” he replied. He was looking out the opposite window. “It’s called Hemlock Park. Sorcerers like their privacy—our demons are a bit like dirty laundry, not a secret, but an aspect of our lives that commoners rarely see, and one that we prefer they don’t think about too much. A lot of old blood around here, as you can probably tell. Sorcerous lineages that go back hundreds of years, like mine.”
Curiosity snuck through her guard. “I thought all sorcerers belonged to old families. Aren’t you born into it?”
“I suppose that’s true in the sense that magic is an inheritance.” Nathaniel spared her a glance. “Or rather, demons are. A highborn demon can only be summoned by someone who knows its Enochian name, and families pass those names down through the generations like heirlooms. But occasionally a dabbler with no magical heritage digs up the name of a notable demon in some obscure text and manages to summon it. They have to keep the demon in the family for a few decades before the old houses begin to consider them respectable.”
Dabblers and criminals. That was how the Lexicon had referred to people who summoned lesser demons, like fiends. True sorcerers didn’t stoop to that level.
Not unless they wanted to eliminate a witness, and blame the murder on someone else.
Disturbed, Elisabeth mulled this over as they passed a park full of ancient oaks and winding gravel paths,