I peered up at him, but it was too dark to see if he meant it. He pulled me tighter to his chest, and I was floating again, lighter than oxygen. His hands grazed the curve of my spine.
“Come with me,” he said, then pressed his mouth to mine.
We stayed that way for a while, his lips taking hostage of my cheeks and throat. Eventually my nightdress was swarmed above my hips and the ribbon at my bust had come undone, and I was pieces of airborne dust, not really of any substance at all.
In the first year of unrest, I’d hocked Theo’s emerald necklace to a boatman in Baymouth. It had bought me canal passage on a tightly packed long rig. Sometimes I wondered where that emerald necklace had ended up.
On the highest floor of Colson & Sons, Theo followed me inside room fifteen and closed the doo
