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lifted her into the seat and then jumped up beside her. The narrow seat pressed them together, thigh against thigh, and when she shot him a nervous look, he stretched his arm out casually and rested it behind her on the seat back.
    “I’ve never ridden in one of these before,” she said as the rickshaw gave a jerk and ducked out into the lane. It wove its way between market stalls and people with an ease he’d never gotten used to.
    “They come out o’ Limey when the Chinese moved in. Good way to get ’round the East End. Ain’t no steam cabs or omnibuses ’ere, luv.”
    The young driver hurled them into the corner onto Whitechapel High. Honoria sucked in a breath, tumbling into Blade. He caught her close, tucking her protectively under an arm. Her palm was on his thigh. She realized it the same moment he did and jerked it away.
    Blade’s hand tightened on her shoulder, reluctant to let go. But then he felt her body tense and forced himself to release her. No point scaring her off. He’d have to move slowly, let her get used to him. For he intended to have her. It was just a matter of when.
    Honoria cleared her throat and righted herself, patting an errant curl back into place. “Your accent. It isn’t entirely cockney.”
    “Ain’t it?”
    Honoria gave him a sidelong glance. Whatever goodwill he’d won with the pie was gone with the enforced intimacy of the rickshaw. Her shoulders were squared like a woman facing the gallows. “You sound horrendous most of the time, but sometimes I find a trace of…of…proper speech in your words.”
    “You mean of inside the city walls.”
    Her head rested close to his arm. He could almost reach out and touch one of those errant brown curls that trailed from her rumpled chignon.
    “The upper class,” she corrected. “The Echelon.”
    His fingers brushed the soft silk of one curl. She didn’t notice. “You think I sound like one o’ those fancy lords?”
    A pained expression crossed her face. “Not at the moment. Mostly when you forget yourself.”
    “Are you askin’ where I come from?” He wrapped the curl around his finger, staring into her eyes. Her hair was very soft, like spun silk. And thick. What would it look like tumbled over her shoulders?
    His mind took a swift detour. He wanted to taste that milky-white skin, to run his tongue over the naked curve of her breasts and the rosy, puckered nipples. His cock stirred. With her head bowed in thought, he could see the fine tracery of veins that traversed her throat. Saliva pooled in his mouth, and his vision narrowed to the pulsing, heady throb of her carotid artery, casting the world into a chiaroscuro landscape.
    “I’ve heard several theories,” she replied, her voice sounding as though it came from a great distance. “I heard you escaped from the Inquisition in the New Catalonian prisons, where you were infected with the craving virus. Or that you led the resistance in France when the revolution guillotined the entire blue blood aristocracy there.” She was breathing rapidly, not quite as unaffected as her cool, crisp tone presumed. Blood pulsed through her veins, beating in time to the throb of her heart.
    Want it… “What do you think?” he whispered, leaning closer.
    “You don’t have any trace of French or the Catalan dialects. You sound like you were born in the gutters and somehow learned to mimic the sounds of the aristocracy.” Honoria chose that moment to look up, and he tugged the curl that he’d wrapped around his finger. She clapped a hand to the back of her head, her fingers sliding over his. Her eyes widened.
    Take it , Blade thought. The knife against her throat, nicking her just enough to bleed her; his mouth on her skin, the sudden hot flood of blood against his lips as she struggled in his arms at first, then slowly, slowly succumbed…
    He shut his eyes. I ain’t an animal .
    And then Vickers’s voice, whispering in his ear. Yes, you are. Remember the guards? Remember that