And he darted from the room.
Charlotte stared up at her husband, all thoughts of the news she had wished to tell him driven from her mind. “Was that Will?” she said finally.
Henry arched one ginger eyebrow. “Perhaps he’s been kidnapped and replaced by an automaton,” he suggested. “It seems possible . . .”
For once Charlotte could only find herself in agreement.
Glumly Tessa finished the sandwiches and the rest of the tea, cursing her inability to keep her nose out of other people’s business. Once she was done, she put on her blue dress, finding the task difficult without Sophie’s assistance. Look at yourself, she thought, spoiled after just a few weeks of having a lady’s maid. Can’t dress yourself, can’t stop nosing about where you’re not wanted. Soon you’ll be needing someone to spoon gruel into your mouth or you’ll starve. She made a horrible face at herself in the mirror and sat down at her vanity table, picking up the silver-backed hairbrush and pulling the bristles through her long brown hair.
A knock came at the door. Sophie, Tessa thought hopefully, back for an apology. Well, she would get one. Tessa dropped the hairbrush and rushed to throw the door open.
Just as once before she had expected Jem and been disappointed to find Sophie on her threshold, now, in expecting Sophie, she was surprised to find Jem at her door. He wore a gray wool jacket and trousers, against which his silvery hair looked nearly white.
“Jem,” she said, startled. “Is everything all right?”
His gray eyes searched her face, her long, loose hair. “You look as if you were waiting for someone else.”
“Sophie.” Tessa sighed, and tucked a stray curl behind her ear. “I fear I have offended her. My habit of speaking before I think has caught me out again.”
“Oh,” said Jem, with an uncharacteristic lack of interest. Usually he would have asked Tessa what she had said to Sophie, and either reassured her or helped her plot a course of action to win Sophie’s forgiveness. His customary vivid interest in everything seemed oddly missing, Tessa thought with alarm; he was quite pale as well, and seemed to be glancing behind her as if checking to see whether she was quite alone. “Is now—that is, I would like to speak to you in private, Tessa. Are you feeling well enough?”
“That depends on what you have to tell me,” she said with a laugh, but when her laugh brought no answering smile, apprehension rose inside her. “Jem—you promise everything’s all right? Will—”
“This is not about Will,” he said. “Will is out wandering and no doubt perfectly all right. This is about—Well, I suppose you might say it’s about me.” He glanced up and down the corridor. “Might I come in?”
Tessa briefly thought about what Aunt Harriet would say about a girl who allowed a boy she was not related to into her bedroom when there was no one else there. But then Aunt Harriet herself had been in love once, Tessa thought. Enough in love to let her fiancé do—well, whatever it was exactly that left one with child. Aunt Harriet, had she been alive, would have been in no position to talk. And besides, etiquette was different for Shadowhunters.
She opened the door wide. “Yes, come in.”
Jem came into the room, and shut the door firmly behind him. He walked over to the grate and leaned an arm against the mantel; then, seeming to decide that this position was unsatisfactory, he came over to where Tessa was, in the middle of the room, and stood in front of her.
“Tessa,” he said.
“Jem,” she replied, mimicking his serious tone, but again he did not smile. “Jem,” she said again, more quietly. “If this is about your health, your—illness, please tell me. I will do whatever I can to help you.”
“It is not,” he said, “about my illness.” He took a deep breath. “You know we have not found Mortmain,” he said. “In a few days, the Institute may be given to Benedict Lightwood. He would doubtless allow Will and me to remain here, but not you, and I have no desire to live in a house that he runs. And Will and Gabriel would kill each other inside a minute. It would be the end of our little group; Charlotte and Henry would find a house, I have no doubt, and Will and I perhaps would go to Idris until we were eighteen, and Jessie—I suppose it depends what sentence the Clave passes on her. But we could not bring you to Idris with us. You are not a Shadowhunter.”
Tessa’s heart had begun to beat very fast. She sat down, rather suddenly, on the edge of her bed. She felt faintly sick. She remembered Gabriel’s sneering jibe about the Lightwoods’ finding “employment” for her; having been to the ball at their house, she could imagine little worse. “I see,” she said. “But where should I go—No, do not answer that. You hold no responsibility toward me. Thank you for telling me, at least.”
“Tessa—”
“You all have already been as kind as propriety has allowed,” she said, “given that allowing me to live here has done none of you any good in the eyes of the Clave. I shall find a place—”
“Your place is with me,” Jem said. “It always will be.”
“What do you mean?”
He flushed, the color dark against his pale skin. “I mean,” he said, “Tessa Gray, will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?”
Tessa sat bolt upright. “Jem!”
They stared at each other for a moment. At last he said, trying for lightness, though his voice cracked, “That was not a no, I suppose, though neither was it a yes.”
“You can’t mean it.”
“I do mean it.”
“You can’t—I’m not a Shadowhunter. They’ll expel you from the Clave—”
He took a step closer to her, his eyes eager. “You may not be precisely a Shadowhunter. But you are not a mundane either, nor provably a Downworlder. Your situation is unique, so I do not know what the Clave will do. But they cannot forbid something that is not forbidden by the Law. They will have to take your—our—individual case into consideration, and that could take months. In the meantime they cannot prevent our engagement.”
“You are serious.” Her mouth was dry. “Jem, such a kindness on your part is indeed incredible. It does you credit. But I cannot let you sacrifice yourself in that way for me.”
“Sacrifice? Tessa, I love you. I want to marry you.”
“I . . . Jem, it is just that you are kind, so selfless. How can I trust that you are not doing this simply for my sake?”
He reached into the pocket of his waistcoat and drew out something smooth and circular. It was a pendant of whitish-green jade, with Chinese characters carved into it that she could not read. He held it out to her with a hand that trembled ever so slightly.
“I could give you my family ring,” he said. “But that is meant to be given back when the engagement is over, exchanged for runes. I want to give you something that will be yours forever.”
She shook her head. “I cannot possibly—”
He interrupted her. “This was given to my mother by my father, when they married. The writing is from the I Ching, the Book of Changes. It says, When two people are at one in their inmost hearts, they shatter even the strength of iron or bronze.”