Chapter 6
The challenge hung between us, suspended by a thread.
For five years, I had told myself that what had lingered between us across the ink-stained desks was nothing more than academic spite. But looking into his wide, dark pupils, feeling the irresistible magnetic gravity pulling two bodies together across a chasm of pride, the lie dissolved into ash.
He wasn't forcing me. He was offering me the knife.
I held his gaze, feeling the heavy, thunderous hammer of my heart against my ribs. I didn't step back. I didn't reach for my tools.
Instead, I tilted my chin up a fraction of an inch, holding his eyes with steady, deliberate intent.
“And if I don't?” I murmured.
A ragged, shuddering breath escaped his lips.
With that quiet permission given, Vance didn't hesitate. Slowly, reverently, his hand crossed the final inch. His long, cold fingertips brushed the linen of my collar before settling lightly against the side of my throat.
His skin was chilled, contrasting sharply with the searing heat that rushed to the surface of mine. He didn't press down, and he didn't restrict my breath; his thumb simply rested over the fluttering hollow above my collarbone, feeling the rapid, frantic beat of my pulse.
A bolt of sweet, dizzying warmth shot down my spine. My hands curled against my thighs, my breath hitching as his thumb stroked the line of my tendon with an aching, desperate tenderness.
“Then admit why you took the commission,” Vance whispered, leaning in until our foreheads nearly touched, his eyes searching my face with unfocused intensity. “Admit you wanted to see me just as much as I needed to find you.”
My fingers rose, brushing the lapel of his waistcoat, feeling the erratic, heavy pound of his heart matching mine. “You don't get to rewrite history, Vance. You left. You walked out of the institute without looking back.”
“And I came back,” he rasped, his thumb trembling against my jawline. “The moment I had something worthy of your hands, I came straight to your door.”
The confession was intoxicating, heavy with five years of buried hunger. For a fleeting second, the space between our lips felt impossibly small, a distance that could be bridged with a single breath.
Then, from the hearth behind him, a dried birch log snapped with the violent, explosive crack of a pistol shot.
Vance didn't just flinch.
It was a catastrophic neurological shock. The sudden acoustic blast ripped his balance completely away from the earth. His eyes rolled upward in an involuntary, sickening spasm, and his frame listed sharply to the left.
His hand whipped away from my throat, his fingers scrambling blindly through the empty air as his knees buckled beneath him.
He was falling—heading straight toward the sharp iron rim of the coal brazier and the stone floor.
“Vance!”
I lunged forward, throwing my conservation tools aside, and caught him before he hit the iron.
I drove my shoulder under his arm, wrapping both arms securely around his waist, locking my boots into the floorboards to take the full, crushing brunt of his falling weight. The impact drove the air from my lungs, but I held fast, anchoring my hips against the edge of the refectory table.
Vance didn't push me away. He couldn't.
His heavy hands clawed frantically at the linen of my apron, twisting the fabric into white-knuckled fists as if he were falling down a bottomless well. He dragged himself flush against my chest, burying his face into the crook of my neck, his entire frame shuddering with violent, nauseating tremors.
“Don't,” he choked out against my collarbone, his voice reduced to a raw, breathless whimper of pure terror. “Don't let go... Julian, please... don't let me fall.”
“I have you,” I said, tightening my grip around his ribs, pressing him firmly against the solid oak table. “You're not falling. Plant your boots, Vance. The floor is solid. I’m holding you.”
He was trembling so violently that my own teeth clicked together. His heart battered against my chest like an engine tearing itself to pieces, his breath hot, ragged, and damp against my neck.
For nearly twenty seconds, we stood locked together in the amber light of the coals, my arms bearing his weight, his forehead pressed into my shoulder, his fingers knotted into my apron with bruising force. I didn't let go. I kept my hands flat and unyielding against the broad expanse of his back, offering him the only immovable axis in a room that was clearly spinning out of control inside his skull.
Slowly, agonizingly, the violent tremors in his thighs began to subside. His breathing hitched, slowing from a ragged pant to deep, shuddering pulls of air.
Then, the realization of what had just happened crashed down upon him.
His spine stiffened. With a sudden, jerky movement, he shoved himself back off my chest.
He didn't make it cleanly; he stumbled two clumsy paces backward, his boots tangling in the Persian rug before he caught the back of a heavy oak chair. He gripped the carved finial with white knuckles, using the furniture to drag himself upright.
He smoothed the crumpled lapels of his charcoal waistcoat with aggressive, trembling sweeps of his hands, his jaw jutting forward in desperate defiance.
“Your apron is filthy,” he sneered, though his voice was brittle, vibrating with hysteria, and cold sweat glistened along his hairline. “You’re getting starch all over my wool.”
I stood by the refectory table, my chest still aching from the impact, my hands resting flat on the green felt. Anger, sharp and protective, flared hot behind my ribs.
“You bruised my arm on the staircase,” I said, my voice cutting through his theatrical defense like a scalpel, “and you just nearly dragged both of us into a basket of red coals.”
Vance froze, his hand arrested over his buttons.
“That wasn't a loose floorboard, Vance,” I continued, refusing to let him hide behind his venom. “And I am not your walking stick. If you’re having fits, if you’re sick, say it. But do not use me as a crash barrier and then insult my clothes to cover your shame.”
A dark, furious flush crept up his neck, mottling his pale cheeks. His dark eyes blazed with wounded pride, wide and feverish.
“I don't have fits!” he snarled, slamming his fist onto the back of the oak chair with a dull, hollow *thud*. “I am perfectly whole! The floorboards are rotted, the rug is warped, and this entire house is a structural abomination!”
“Vance—”
“Get to work, Julian!” The roar ripped from his throat, echoing off the high stone rafters, loud enough to rattle the glass in the casements. “I didn't bring you here to play physician! Appraise the vellum, write the condition reports, and earn your ten thousand pounds!”
He didn't wait for me to speak. He spun away from the chair, catching the edge of the adjacent refectory table to steady his pivot, and began marching toward the double doors of the solar.
His gait was heavy, exaggerated, his hand trailing continuously along the paneled wainscoting as if the wood were a guide rail through a pitch-black labyrinth.
“Where are you going?” I called after him, stepping around the table.
