Chapter 8: Burn Him

Lucian didn't speak for a full minute.

He sat on a sack of flour with the shipping label in the light, and his thumb moved once across the edge of his cane.

"Driscoll Meridian," he said at last. "I have heard the name."

"Where?"

"Somewhere I'll tell you about when I'm sure." He looked up. "Did your husband ever say the word Ruggiero at your table?"

"Never. Conway doesn't say the names of men who frighten him. He says 'the gentlemen we do business with.'"

"Then he knew who was in this house, and he never told his wife."

"He didn't tell his wife anything," I said.

I realized I was holding the box flap hard enough to bend it.

A staple on the cardboard had opened a cut across the heel of my palm. A thin line of blood ran down toward my wrist.

Lucian saw it before I did.

"Upstairs," he said.

"It's nothing."

"You say that to your patients?"

"No," I said. "I tell them it's nothing and then I sew it."

"Then you won't mind if someone else does."

I minded, but I went.

His sitting room was warm and the fire was low.

He sat me in the chair under the lamp.

He knelt stiffly on one knee in front of me, with the leather case open on the floor.

"You don't have to do this," I said.

"Hold still."

His hands were large and entirely careful.

He cleaned the cut. His thumb pressed the heel of my palm, and I forgot the sting.

I had not been touched like that in years. I had been handled, and moved aside, and patted on the head.

I looked at the top of his bent head, at the silver in the black, and I did not look at his hands.

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