“You’re speaking of water divination.”
“Call it what you will,” Ahmad said. “Crystal gazing is no different. The longer one stares, the more chance there is that one’s own thoughts and feelings will manifest. Images of long-lost loved ones and the like.”
“But it isn’t only the dead who manifest.”
“No. People are as likely to see their deepest desires. The dark and the light. An enemy on whom they wish ill. Or a person for whom they cherish a regard.”
“In other words, the visions are all in their head.”
He shrugged. “People see what they wish to see. Staring into something like a crystal or a candle flame merely helps to reveal what it is they truly want.”
She was noticeably quiet.
He wondered if he’d offended her. “I don’t discount the presence of other forces. If you believe in spirits—”
“I don’t believe in them. What you’ve said makes perfect sense.” She tugged at the thumb of her glove, her expression preoccupied. “I wonder why Zadkiel would tell my uncle that I had a powerful energy.”
Ahmad didn’t have to guess. “These charlatans make their fortunes on being at the forefront of fashionable society.”
“But I’m not at the forefront.”
“Not yet. But you’re beautiful and fascinating. And you’re dressed like no other lady in London. He’d have to be blind not to see it. Your star is ascending.”
She turned in her seat, bumping against his outstretched arm. He set his hand on her shoulder to steady her. An instinctive movement. He meant nothing untoward by it.
It nevertheless ratcheted the intimacy of the moment up by several degrees.
Good lord.
His arm was around her. It was practically an embrace. And . . . it didn’t feel wrong.
Quite the reverse. It felt profoundly, unsettlingly, gloriously right.
His throat spasmed on a swallow.
This was getting ridiculous. This ungodly connection between them, taut as a wire stretched to its breaking point.
“Do you really believe all of that?” she asked.
He managed a wry smile. “Obviously. I’ve latched onto you myself, haven’t I?”
A frown shadowed her brow. “It’s not the same at all.”
His smiled faded. He couldn’t maintain a pretense of humor. Not about this. Not about her. “No,” he said. “I don’t suppose it is.”
The brougham slowed. Noise rose from outside its curtained windows—the swell of coarse voices, inebriated revelry, and a hornpipe playing a raucous tune. It was the music of the docks. An all-too-familiar sound.
Ahmad’s muscles tensed. He removed his arm from the back of the seat. “Draw up your hood. We’re nearly there.”
* * *
Evelyn pulled the hood of her cloak over her head, shrouding her face and hair, as the brougham came to a clattering halt.
Beside her, Ahmad attended to his own clothing, drawing up the collar of his coat and settling his hat low over his brow. He was dressed in unrelieved black—tall, commanding, and capable of vanishing into the shadows at a moment’s notice. A fallen angel, indeed.
She felt a frisson of nervous excitement as he opened the door of the brougham. She wasn’t afraid. Not when he was with her.
His large gloved hand held tight to hers as he helped her down.
She was at once assailed by the unmistakable stench of the Thames. It was an unpleasant fragrance at the best of times, but here—so close to the water—it was positively overpowering.
And it didn’t exist in isolation.
It was accompanied by the perfume of tobacco and rum, mingled with the pungent black smoke emitted from the neighborhood’s tall chimneys.
The docks were at once both awake and asleep. Warehouses stood silent, while the streets teemed with life, filled with swaggering men of every stripe. She felt them looking at her with varying levels of interest. They were sailors, most of them.
At least, Evelyn thought they must be.
Among the ruddy-faced Englishmen were figures of every ethnicity and description.
A group of fair-haired men chattered loudly together in German. A Chinese gentleman leaned against the wall of a storage building, smoking a long pipe. And a black sailor, with a brightly colored handkerchief knotted at his neck, walked arm in arm with a woman in a cheap satin dress.
The woman gave Ahmad a lewd wink as they passed.
Evelyn stiffened. “Do you know that person?”
“No.”
“She seemed to know you.”
“It’s her business to know men.”
“Oh!” Evelyn glanced back over her shoulder. The only courtesans she’d ever seen were the Pretty Horsebreakers. This female was of another class entirely, heavily rouged and powdered, with false hair arranged in a disordered pile.
A working woman, isn’t that the phrase Ahmad had used once? There had been no judgment in it.
He tucked Evelyn’s hand in his arm as he led her across the busy street to the entrance of the inn. It was a weather-beaten building, the wooden slats buckled and faded from salt and wind. A battered sign hung over the door, proclaiming the establishment’s name: The Jolly Tar.
Evelyn concealed a wince.
Oh, Fenny. How far you’ve fallen.
“Keep your head down,” Ahmad said. “And let me do the talking.”
She didn’t argue. He’d already explained that she must do nothing to make herself memorable. It was why she’d slipped her spectacles into her pocket.
On entering the inn, they were greeted by a blaze of oil lamps. Every table in the smoke-filled dining room appeared to be full. Loud conversation was punctuated by cackles of laughter and the clink of heavy glasses and tankards of ale.
A grizzled man stood behind the wooden counter, filling a row of dirty glasses from an equally dirty bottle. He flicked a glance from Ahmad to Evelyn and back again as they approached. His thick mouth curled into a leer. “Looking for a room?”
“For a guest staying here.” Ahmad withdrew a half crown from his pocket. He set it down on the bar. “A lady and a gentleman of quality.”
The barman took the coin without hesitation. He resumed pouring his drinks. “Upstairs. Third room on the right.”
Evelyn exhaled a breath. “That was easier than I anticipated,” she murmured as she accompanied Ahmad up the narrow staircase at the back of the bar.