1 Chapter 1

Late Spring, Fairleigh Hall, Yorkshire, 1802

“Hullo! Are you lost, or are you honestly looking for Fairleigh Hall? Which you might be, we are expecting someone, and we hardly ever expect anyone, so it’d be a rather impressive coincidence if you decided to drop by at the same time as someone else, wouldn’t it?”

Kit Thompson, knee-deep in snow and cranky about it, regarded this improbable enthusiasm from the front steps of the sprawling ancestral manor in question. The enthusiasm, in the form of a young man with distressingly broad shoulders and hair made of wayward sunshine, waved at him from the white-heaped lane and then hopped over a gate and ran his way.

Kit gazed at all that sunshine as it bounced through the snow. Thought, well, he doesn’t looklike a cold-hearted magical murderer.

Of course most murderers looked exactly like anyone else, right up until the moment, as it were. Years of London streets had taught him that; more than half a decade as a constable in Bow Street’s Preternatural Division had reinforced the lesson. His empathy fluttered and stirred, unhappy and tired, searching for a connection. It, like the rest of him, did not enjoy the ice and the isolation.

The world had gotten colder and colder as he’d traveled north from London. Unseasonably so. Ominous. Bad enough that the coach had had trouble getting through, and according to the driver this had been a good day.

He ran a hand through his own hair, batting at mist that hadn’t yet learned how to be either snow or rain. The young man who had waved did not call out to comment on the informality, the weather, or the tailoring of Kit’s clothing, which happened to be fashionable, but only barely. Kit had needed to be able to move in Society circles, and outward portrayals did matter. But he’d been grumpy about the necessity.

He’d never been part of Society. He’d never be a gentleman, not in the way of birth or breeding. Arguably not in appearance, either; not unattractive, or he thought not, but generally unnerving. Intense. Overly blunt. Black hair that held enough of a wave to hint at a symbolic lack of taming. Eyes the kind of dark brown that was also nearly black, which had made more than one person nervous on more than one occasion: all that unreadable scrutiny brought to bear directly on them. He wasn’t particularly tall—around average, in comparison to most men—and in the sort of good shape that came from running around back alleys and climbing drainpipes and generally being good at both concealment and flexibility. He’d never bothered with any false heels or colorful corseted waistcoats; he did not give a damn about pretenses.

His sister tended to shake her head sorrowfully and then laugh at him for this stance, but then Anne had to keep up with the latest trends; her shop welcomed flurries of ladies in and out in whirls of muslin and lace and ribbons and fur trimmings. She was doing well, these days. They both were. To a certain extent.

That extent relied in large part—or it had initially—on Kit’s usefulness. His magical gifts, his skill at detection and intuition, his profession.

He’d hauled them up from their murky family past and into respectability. He lived comfortably. He ensured that Anne and her daughter did, too.

He rented a townhouse in the sort of neighborhood that suggested the right impression: professional without pretension. That had been partly practical and partly because he couldn’t afford more; the Preternatural Division constables were paid decently, in large part thanks to Sam Rookwood’s ceaseless advocacy as Chief Magistrate, but nowhere near the income of the titled upper class. Kit might take a few private commissions, might be rewarded; he might eventually even be wealthy, given the size of the recent royal bonus.

But he would not ever be a gentleman.

The air bit down like magic. Like fangs on a bone. Scraping along his senses.

Everyone knew, and would not forget, about their background. About their mother and the plushness of that courtesan’s bed—not a common whore, no, but only a different name for the profession, sniffed the gossips. They murmured direly about Kit’s family tree, and his dressmaker sister and her daughter and her lack of any visible husband.

That family tree had a lot of tangles. Most of them unofficial and illegitimate. Equally undiscussed, at least in polite company.

Technically Kit probably only half-counted as polite. Working for hire, even if he did that work in ballrooms and at country house parties. And even that had been a step up from the general Thompson state of existence.

That was at least in part a lie. At least these days. At least given certain marks of favor, and his own reputation.