She was wearing one of Jessamine’s old dresses. It was not out of fashion yet, but Jessamine was one of those girls who dubbed any dress she had worn more than three times “historical” and either cast it off or had it made over. It was a striped watered silk in green and white, and there were waxy white flowers and green leaves on her hat. All together, she thought, she could pass for a girl of good breeding—if she were not out on her own, that was—especially with her work-roughened hands covered in a pair of white kid gloves.
She saw Gideon before he saw her. He was leaning against a lamppost outside the great pale-green porte cochere of Fortnum & Mason. Her heart skipped a little beat as she looked at him, so handsome in his dark clothes, checking the time on a gold watch affixed to his waistcoat pocket by a thin chain. She paused for a moment, watching the people stream around him, the busy life of London roaring around him, and Gideon as calm as a rock in the middle of a churning river. All Shadowhunters had something of that to them, she thought, that stillness, that dark aura of separateness that set them apart from the current of mundane life.
He looked up then, and saw her, and smiled that smile that changed his whole face. “Miss Collins,” he said, coming forward, and she moved forward to meet him as well, feeling as she did so as if she were stepping into the circle of his separateness. The steady noise of city traffic, pedestrian and otherwise, seemed to dim, and it was just her and Gideon, facing each other on the street.
“Mr. Lightwood,” she said.
His face changed, only a little, but she saw it. She saw too that he was holding something in his left hand, a woven picnic basket. She looked at it, and then at him.
“One of Fortnum & Mason’s famous hampers,” he said with a sideways smile. “Stilton cheese, quails’ eggs, rose petal jam—”
“Mr. Lightwood,” she said again, interrupting him, to her own amazement. A servant never interrupted a gentleman. “I have been most distressed—most distressed in my own mind, you understand, as to whether I should come here at all. I finally decided that I should, if only to tell you to your own face that I cannot see you. I thought you deserved that much, though I am not sure of it.”
He looked at her, stunned, and in that moment she saw not a Shadowhunter but an ordinary boy, like Thomas or Cyril, clutching a picnic basket and unable to hide the surprise and hurt on his face. “Miss Collins, if there is something I have done to offend—”
“I cannot see you. That is all,” Sophie said, and turned away, meaning to hurry back the way she had come. If she was quick, she could catch the next omnibus back to the City—
“Miss Collins. Please.” It was Gideon, at her elbow. He did not touch her, but he was walking alongside her, his expression distraught. “Tell me what I’ve done.”
She shook her head mutely. The look on his face—perhaps it had been a mistake to come. They were passing Hatchards bookshop, and she considered ducking inside; surely he would not follow her, not into a place where they’d likely be overheard. But then again, perhaps he would.
“I know what it is,” he said abruptly. “Will. He told you, didn’t he?”
“The fact that you say that informs me that there was something to tell.”
“Miss Collins, I can explain. Just come with me—this way.” He turned, and she found herself following him, warily. They were in front of St. James’s Church; he led her around the side and down a narrow street that bridged the gap between Piccadilly and Jermyn Street. It was quieter here, though not deserted; several passing pedestrians gave them curious looks—the scarred girl and the handsome boy with the pale face, carefully setting his hamper down at his feet.
“This is about last night,” he said. “The ball at my father’s house in Chiswick. I thought I saw Will. I had wondered if he would tell the rest of you.”
“You confess it, then? That you were there, at that depraved—that unsuitable—”
“Unsuitable? It was a sight more than unsuitable,” said Gideon, with more force than she had ever heard him use. Behind them the bell of the church tolled the hour; he seemed not to hear it. “Miss Collins, all I can do is swear to you that until last night I had no idea with what low company, what destructive habits, my father had engaged himself. I have been in Spain this past half-year—”
“And he was not like this before that?” Sophie asked, disbelieving.
“Not quite. It is difficult to explain.” His eyes strayed past her, their gray-green stormier than ever. “My father has always been one to flout convention. To bend the Law, if not to break it. He has always taught us that this is the way that everyone goes along, that all Shadowhunters do it. And we—Gabriel and I—having lost our mother so young, had no better example to follow. It was not until I arrived in Madrid that I began to understand the full extent of my father’s . . . incorrectness. Everyone does not flout the Law and bend the rules, and I was treated as if I were some monstrous creature for believing it to be so, until I changed my ways. Research and observation led me to believe I had been given poor principles to follow, and that it had been done with deliberation. I could think only of Gabriel and how I might save him from the same realization, or at least from having it delivered so shockingly.”
“And your sister—Miss Lightwood?”
Gideon shook his head. “She has been sheltered from it all. My father thinks that women have no business with the darker aspects of Downworld. No, it is I who he believes must know of his involvements, for I am the heir to the Lightwood estate. It was with an eye to that that my father brought me with him to the event last night, at which, I assume, Will saw me.”
“You knew he was there?”
“I was so disgusted by what I saw inside that room that I eventually fought my way free and went out into the gardens for some fresh air. The stench of demons had made me nauseated. Out there, I saw someone familiar chasing a blue demon across the parkland with an air of determination.”
“Mr. Herondale?”
Gideon shrugged. “I had no idea what he was doing there; I knew he could not have been invited, but could not fathom how he had found out about it, or if his pursuit of the demon was unrelated. I wasn’t sure until I saw the look on your face when you beheld me, just now . . .”
Sophie’s voice rose and sharpened. “But did you tell your father, or Gabriel? Do they know? About Master Will?”
Gideon shook his head slowly. “I told them nothing. I do not think they expected Will there in any capacity. The Shadowhunters of the Institute are meant to be in pursuit of Mortmain.”
“They are,” said Sophie slowly, and when his only look was one of incomprehension, she said: “Those clockwork creatures at your father’s party—where did you think they came from?”
“I didn’t—I assumed they were demon playthings of some sort—”
“They can only have come from Mortmain,” said Sophie. “You haven’t seen his automatons before, but Mr. Herondale and Miss Gray, they have, and they were sure.”
“But why would my father have anything of Mortmain’s?”
Sophie shook her head. “It may be that you should not ask me questions you don’t want the answer to, Mr. Lightwood.”