It threw him off guard. He’d come here to win back her trust because she was his best lead. But he found himself … faltering. Unsure of himself. The silence between them rose like a crescendo.
He glanced down at the angry gash on her forearm. How did a girl who spent her days planning parties and spreading gossip come by such a deep wound?
“Did you hurt yourself?”
Rune startled. “Oh! Yes, I … took a tumble while riding yesterday. Sliced my arm on a rock. I can be so clumsy.” She smiled up at him, tucking the arm under her shawl and changing the subject. “Have you given more thought to my invitation?”
“To the Luminaries Dinner? I thought my answer was obvious.”
She glanced at him, her lips parting.
Apparently, it was not.
He almost laughed. “Rune. Of course I’ll accompany you. You expected me to turn you down?”
Her eyes held his. “I don’t know what to expect with you.”
The words hung in the air between them.
Was that Rune Winters talking? Or the Crimson Moth?
Gideon had no proof that she and the Moth were the same. Rune had a solid alibi the night before last, and yet she was freshly injured—much like the Moth might be after Laila shot at her. He couldn’t arrest her, but neither was he convinced of her innocence.
It was why he was here. If Rune was the Moth, no way would she trust him after the stunt he’d pulled at the Seldom mine. He needed to patch the hole he’d made, because the only way to unmask her was to get closer to her. And the only way to do that was to convince her to trust him again. If that was even possible.
What would I do if this were a real courtship?
Gideon recoiled at the thought. He didn’t know how to fall for someone as superficial as Rune Winters.
Maybe that was the wrong way to think about it.
How would he fall for a girl pretending to be superficial—in order to outwit him?
That was easier.
Gideon cleared his throat. “Your gardens are beautiful.”
He winced, imagining Harrow rolling her eyes. Is that the best you can do, lover boy?
“Are they?” Rune murmured, taking in her surroundings. “I try to keep them well tended, but I lack my grandmother’s … devotion. She loved these flowers like they were her children.”
At the mention of Kestrel, Rune’s face softened. She continued, unprompted, as her gaze roamed the hedges.
“Sometimes, if I squint, I can almost see her still trimming her roses. Or sipping tea in the greenhouse, with her box of seed packets beside her, planning out next season’s garden …”
She quickly glanced at Gideon, her face blanching. As if she’d said more than she meant to. “I—”
“We never had a garden,” he said, to put her at ease. “But my mother grew herbs in a box on the windowsill.”
He immediately wished he’d thought of something else to say. His family’s lack of land was an obvious reminder of the gap between them: their stations, their upbringings, their lives. It was a gap that had narrowed since the revolution, but it would never close.
Proving him exactly right, she said: “You could have a garden now, if you wanted. You could live somewhere far grander than even Wintersea House, with gardens more well kept, as a reward for everything you did for the Republic. I’m sure the Good Commander would grant it all to you, if you asked.”
“I’m happy in Old Town.”
“Are you?”
Gideon flinched at her question, remembering the day he took her measurements in his parents’ shop. He wondered what she’d been thinking as she walked the sooty streets of his neighborhood. Breathing in the smoggy air. Listening to the rattle and hiss of the factories nearby.
“Old Town didn’t impress you, I take it.”
She stiffened beside him. “I only meant—”
“Was that your first time there?”
She didn’t need to answer; he could easily guess.
In all the years Rune and Alex had been friends, she’d never set foot in their tenement. Alex had always gone to Wintersea House. Either his brother had been too ashamed to invite her into their home, or he’d invited her, and Rune had declined to come.
“When my parents died, the shop and apartment passed to me,” he explained.
“But why choose to live there? Why not sell it and ask the Commander for an estate of your own? Thornwood Hall, for example, could have been yours.”
Thornwood Hall.
Gideon shivered.
A dark shadow hung over that house. He could still feel Cressida there. Still smell the stench of her magic in the air. The few times he’d gone back, he’d been plagued by living nightmares.
“I would rather sleep beneath a bridge than sleep in Thornwood Hall,” he said, more to himself than to her. “If you found Old Town beneath you, I certainly won’t admit to the neighborhood we lived in before that.”
“I never said Old Town was beneath me.”
Her voice came from several paces behind him, making him realize she’d stopped walking. Turning to face her, he found her edges lit up by the red-gold light of the setting sun and her white sundress whipping around her knees in the wind. They were at the edge of the gardens here. The hedges were lower and less manicured. Wild, like her.
“Your neighborhood is … quaint.”
“Quaint is a word polite people use when they don’t want to be insulting.”
Her cheeks reddened and her hair blew across her face. “Are you so determined to misunderstand me?”
Gideon paused, studying her. If he and Rune Winters were truly courting—which would never happen—this is exactly the argument he would have with her.
“Is it quaint that the residents of Old Town scrape their pennies together to keep the lights on? Quaint that parents spend half the year starving, so their children don’t have to? When Penitent children beg in Old Town streets? Or the old and infirm freeze to death in their beds because they can’t afford to heat their apartments?”
These things were regular occurrences in Old Town.
Rune stared in horror at Gideon. Of course she didn’t know about these things. She lived in a different world. One that was only an hour’s ride on horseback but might as well be as far as the moon.
Gideon turned and kept walking, annoyed with himself for bringing it up. Annoyed at her for being … well, her.
“I’m not sure why you’re angry at me,” she said to his back. “If Penitent children are begging in the street, it’s the Republic you should blame. The Good Commander made their families outcasts for aiding witches.”
Gideon stopped.
“Or don’t you remember that the Commander promised us a better world?” she continued before he could respond. “One where no one lives in squalor.”
Despite his anger, she was right. Gideon remembered the rallies. The speeches. The pamphlets hidden in pockets and shoes or between the pages of books passed under the noses of the aristocracy. Nicolas Creed had promised to usher in a better world. But that world had yet to fully arrive.
“If people live in poverty,” she said, “you should direct your anger at him.”
He whirled on her.
“You think we weren’t impoverished before? You have no idea what the real world is like, Rune. You live a pampered, privileged existence and always have. I’m not saying that’s your fault. I’m simply stating facts. If you don’t want to look at ugly things, you don’t have to. You can pretend they don’t exist.”