The Mech Who Loved Me (London Steampunk: The Blue Blood Conspiracy #2)(4)

"A physically fine specimen, however."

Heat filled Ava's cheeks. "While I cannot deny that, there is one crucial flaw with your thinking. Kincaid despises blue bloods." She gestured to herself. "I am a blue blood. He also has a distinct dislike for virgins and no interest in marriage. Indeed, a significant aversion to such a state. This morning he told Byrnes if the groom wanted to flee across the Channel, there was still time and he'd stall the wedding party."

Perry crossed her arms over her bosom. "You don't have to marry him."

"What?" She wasn't certain she'd heard Perry correctly.

"And if he is opposed to your state of virginity, then he could rectify that quite swiftly."

Please, garden, swallow me whole....

"If you cannot find someone who fits your ideal as a husband, and you feel like you're missing out, then why not explore your options? Consider it an experiment. Do you really want a husband? Are you simply lonely? Curious? Or is it something else?"

Ava stared at her. The very idea... was not as outlandish as it first seemed.

"Ah, I thought I heard your voice out here." With that, Perry's husband Garrett appeared. He slid a hand over the small of her back, and the two of them looked into each other's eyes. "Were you looking for me? I heard you mention a 'physically fine specimen.'"

Perry rolled her eyes. "This is none of your business. Go back inside."

"Who do I have to kill?" he asked promptly.

"No one. I was referring to a gentleman for Ava. Not one I had my eye upon."

Garrett's blue eyes twinkled teasingly as he glanced at Ava. "Good. It's bad taste to shed blood at a wedding. Who are we hunting?"

Oh, God. Ava groaned. "We are not hunting anyone. I am not hunting anyone. Perry has this mad scheme."

"You always have the best schemes," he told his wife. "What's the scheme?"

Perry fiddled with the buttons on his coat, setting him to rights again. "You're not going to like it."

"You don't know that," he protested.

"I told Ava she didn't need a husband. What she needs is... to experience passion."

Garrett looked blank. Then his cheeks reddened. "No. That's enough." He held his hands in the air. "I positively don't need to know anything more about this scheme. Do not listen to Perry. You're a young, unmarried woman—"

"A state that doesn't seem to have any prospect of changing anytime soon," Ava argued. "And I'm six-and-twenty, Garrett. Hardly a debutante."

"You also didn't seem to have those compunctions when you were chasing me." Perry crossed her arms over her chest.

"That was different."

"Oh?" One perfect blonde brow arched.

"It was different because it was me, and I knew what my intentions toward you were," he countered. "What you're encouraging is—"

"An experiment," Ava said, warming up to the idea. Not a husband, but a lover.

"Possible future heartbreak." Garrett hesitated before patting her shoulder. "I don't want to see you hurt, Ava. You know...."

What you've been through, remained unsaid.

It flavored every encounter she had with the Nighthawks. They all knew. They'd all been there, and seen her slow recovery. Physically she'd been fine, but emotionally.... That was a different story.

It was one of the reasons she'd accepted the Duke of Malloryn's offer to become the Company of Rogues’ crime scene investigator. She'd desperately needed to get out of the Nighthawks guild, even for a little while.

Ava's shoulder wilted under his touch. Garrett was like an older brother; the one she'd never had. But sometimes his presence seemed stifling.

"And what you're suggesting," Perry added quietly, "is Ava never gets a chance to spread her wings. Sometimes concern can seem like a cage, Garrett. I've been there. It's a horrible thing to feel lonely, even when you have a dozen people watching over you. Especially then."

Garrett opened his mouth to say something, and then shut it. "A wise man realizes when the odds are against him."

"I haven't said I'm going to do such a thing." Ava hurried to fill the sudden awkwardness. "I'm just... contemplating options. At this moment I cannot see marriage in my future, and as Perry says, it's a lonely feeling."

"Fine," he growled. "It's your choice, Ava. It always is. Just be careful. I should hate to have to murder someone because they broke your heart. It's not very becoming for the master of London's law enforcement to have blood all over his hands."

"I'll be fine." A sudden kerfuffle drew her attention inside, to the appearance of a liveried footman wearing dark red and silver. Whose House colors were those? She wasn't familiar with the aristocratic Echelon who'd once ruled the city, beyond a peripheral awareness.

But Perry stiffened. As the Earl of Langford's daughter, she had been raised within the Echelon and trained to recognize such things. "Sir Gideon Scott's footman, by the look of it. But why would he be interrupting the wedding of two people he barely knows?"

Sir Gideon was an official representative of the Council of Dukes who ruled the city, and it was rumored he had the queen's ear. A powerful man.