The Burning Page

‘It feels like normal skin and scarring,’ he said. It was the blandest of possible remarks. It didn’t match the way his fingers trailed across her back. Maybe Kai had actually had a point when he suggested she should approach Vale. She’d always thought that any attraction on her side had been one-sided. She might have been wrong about that. Which meant . . .

Irene took a deep breath. Now or never. She swivelled round, her left hand holding her dress up in place. Vale was only a few inches behind her, his hand still raised. His cheeks were flushed, and no, she wasn’t imagining it – there was the heat of desire in his eyes, in the way his lips were parted to speak.

She didn’t give him the chance to ask her to turn back round. She slid her free arm around his neck, pulling him to her, and flung herself into a kiss. Part of her tried to compare this to Zayanna’s earlier tactics, but she shot that thought down before it could get in the way. She was semi-undressed in Vale’s bedroom. In this place and time, it was not an innocent situation, and both of them knew it.

And Vale responded. His lips parted against hers, and his arms came round to hold her as firmly as she was holding him. He made a small sound deep in his throat, sliding deeper into the kiss with the assurance of a man who has had his share of experience, as hungry for her as she was for him, as tired, as desperate . . .

Slowly the kiss eased. His hands shifted to cup her face. ‘Winters,’ he said. ‘Irene, I—’

‘Don’t say anything,’ Irene urged. ‘Please. I want this, too.’

‘You can’t know what you’re saying.’ Was it just the reaction of a man who would always think that women were less competent, less able to know their own desires? Irene had thought better of him. ‘I shouldn’t have . . .’

‘I kissed you.’ She tried to put genuine feeling into her voice, rather than retreating to her usual calm surface of sarcasm and distance. ‘Vale – should I call you Peregrine?’

‘Dear God, no!’ he said. ‘Irene, I can’t let you make this decision like this. Your pity for me shouldn’t sway you into degrading yourself—’

‘I would not be degrading myself,’ Irene said through gritted teeth. The heat of that kiss was wearing off under this sudden bath of cold indecision and self-loathing. ‘I have respected and admired you for months. I find you a very handsome man. If I choose to pursue you, then by all means tell me no, but please don’t imply that I am somehow donating myself to you out of charity. It is nothing like that.’

‘You are far too attractive and deserving a woman to throw herself away on a man like myself.’ Vale was starting to sound terse. Perhaps it signalled a growing annoyance that she wouldn’t simply withdraw and leave him to his self-indulgent bitterness.

‘I’m an unprincipled adventuress working as a book thief,’ Irene snapped back.

‘You’re barely twenty-five.’

‘I’m in my late thirties.’

Vale dropped his hands to her shoulders, seizing her as if he would like to shake her. ‘Have you no sense, Irene? I’m going insane. I’m no fit bedmate for any woman.’

‘And I have just said I do not intend to let that happen!’ Irene hissed, keeping her voice down, so as not to bring Kai in on them both. Though it would have been a pleasure to shout. ‘If you consider my judgement to be worth so little, then by all means throw me out of your bedroom, but allow me to point out that I would very much have liked to stay! What do I have to do, to convince you that I’m an adult and I know my own mind?’

Vale took a deep, shuddering breath and then pushed her away from him, releasing her shoulders. ‘Get out of here, Winters. I don’t blame you. I couldn’t possibly blame you. This is my own fault for playing the fool, for leading you on . . .’

Irene didn’t quite trust herself to speak at once. She pulled away and turned her back to him, doing her dress up again in quick, angry movements. ‘I am certainly not going to try to force you,’ she said. ‘We are both mature adults, after all. And if you want to wallow in your self-pity, far be it from me to stop you.’

Vale didn’t answer. The bed creaked as he lay back down on it.

Irene rose to her feet. ‘Get some sleep,’ she said coldly. She still wanted him. Even losing her temper didn’t stop that. And for that moment, she knew that Vale had wanted her, too. Her eyes pricked with furious tears. The stupid, irritating, self-pitying, overly noble idiot . . . ‘We can talk later. When you aren’t so tired.’

‘My decision won’t change, Winters,’ Vale said coldly. He rolled over, turning away from her and dragging the bedspread up over his curled body.

Irene closed the door behind her, leaving him alone in his bedroom, and was quite pleased with herself that she didn’t slam it.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The fog had gone the next morning, and the day was as clear as it ever became in this London and this alternate world. Passing zeppelins above drew thin trails across the morning sky, which faded into feathery patterns of cloud, and newspaper-sellers shouted their wares on the street corners. They formed small islands of temporary stillness in the hurrying crowds. Even in this pleasant weather, all of London had somewhere to go and some place to be, and nobody had the time to dawdle.

Irene herself was hurrying. She needed to find out if there was any reply to her report on the malfunctioning Traverse. She also wanted to add supplementary material, possibly in capital letters, on the subject of spiders and further murder attempts. If she and Kai needed to shelter in the Library, she wanted to do it sooner rather than later. She refused to risk both their lives.