These Vicious Masks: A Swoon Novel(21)
I wasn’t. I wasn’t hurt.
Somehow, I managed to stand, and he scanned me for injuries until his eyes reached my torn neckline and his blinking grew excessive. He stared at the ground as I groaned, my hands flying up reflexively, doing little to cover the damage. Looking pointedly away from my bare skin, he slipped off his jacket and handed it to me without a word. The wool itched, and the sleeves awkwardly hung too long past my arms, but it sufficed. Something earthy and spicily familiar drifted from the fabric. Much better than the stink of smoke and alcohol, at least. I stopped myself before I took another long inhalation, realizing what I was doing.
“Miss Wyndham, are you all right?” His words came condescendingly slow and overly enunciated, as if he thought I no longer understood English.
I blinked. Anger, fear, astonishment, helplessness—a maelstrom of emotions still coursed through me. I grasped at one of the many questions flashing through my head. “How did you find me?”
“I was on my way to call on you at the Kents’ when I saw you leave the Egyptian, clearly lost and frightened.”
“I was chilled,” I snapped. Strange, my hands continued to shake, no matter how I told them not to. “And so you followed me but decided to wait until my life was in danger, so you could jump in heroically, yes? No normal ‘Hello, Miss Wyndham, perhaps I might escort you home?’ A marvelous plan, Mr. Braddock. You’re quite ‘mad, bad, and dangerous to know,’ congratulations.”
Mr. Braddock prowled around me in half circles as if a trap lay hidden in the space between us. Then he stopped and gestured down the street. “Fine. Perhaps I might escort you home now. If you can stop the rudely unsubtle Lord Byron comments.”
“As long as you don’t walk with his limp.”
“Do you do this to every man who helps you?”
“I—well—do you behave like this for every woman you help?” was my intelligent reply.
“No, you alone seem to inspire it,” he said, leading the way. “I thought you might still be in shock, but this sounds like your usual incivility.”
“Well, I thought I was abundantly clear in our last conversation that it would be our last conversation. But here you are.”
He opened his mouth but stopped after an angry “You,” clenching furiously at air, arms stuck at his sides. He looked like he was mentally counting to ten. I think I even heard a soft “Nine.”
“I apologize for the other morning,” he finally said, guiding us around a corner. “You caught me by surprise, and I went about everything the wrong way. It was not my intention to cause the distress I did.”
The apology caught me off guard. It took me a few moments to break the habit of thinking up retorts. “And, and I . . . well, thank you, for coming to my aid. I was—I was overwhelmed . . . and not quite expecting you here. Why did you follow me?”
Broken shadows crept across his profile, bending around his Greek nose. “To tell you what I was trying to say when you ran off before. I should have been clearer, but . . . I thought you were already aware. Have you been able to accept it yet?”
“Accept what?”
“Your gift. The powerful healing ability.”
“You are confused. That would be Rose. She studies for hours every day—”
“As knowledgeable as your sister may be about medicine, her success comes from the extraordinary power she was born with. When we first met, I had assumed it was her power alone and that she understood it. But until our meeting yesterday, I had not considered the possibility that both of you had the power and both of you were completely unaware of it.”
He took a deep breath, pulling in my gaze with his own. “It is your touch that heals people, Miss Wyndham.”
“Ha! Half of Bramhurst insists that Rose has some miraculous gift of God, no matter how much I try to explain that it’s science, but I must admit, it’s amusing you would fall for such an idea, too.”
“What I’m telling you is science. There is a process called saltation that some scientists argue is a more precise theory of evolution. It finds that speciation occurs when select members of a particular species undergo sudden drastic changes in their development that suit them better for survival. This jump randomly occurs from one generation to another, and the new, advanced species are the ones to live on, while their predecessors gradually go extinct. That is how you and your sister acquired such rare gifts of healing. You are part of that jump. As am I. I have my own power. . . . I have lived with it for three years now—”
“Mr. Braddock,” I interrupted, finally prodded into speaking. “I told you to stop this dark act. I’ll admit, this is far more inventive than those moody men who knock over trays of appetizers to attract attention or loudly mumble bits of their poetry, but do you really think I haven’t the faintest idea of how evolution works and that I’m willing to believe myself in some fantastic gothic novel?”
“No, of course not—”
“Good. Then thank you very much for your assistance, and please, let me go home in peace.”
He stepped in front of me, crowding me back in an alley. “I cannot let you do that. I know this is unbelievable—it took me time to come to terms with it, as well—but do not simply ignore me.”
His intensity and vehemence sent a chill down my spine, and my amusement vanished entirely. He really believed this. Was he completely unaware of what he was doing? If this was not an act, how crazy did that make him?