How the Marquess Was Won

Jules could watch her forever. He greedily drank in the sight of her, her eyes closed, her entire face luminous with joy and relief. At the moment he could think of no finer accomplishment, nothing else he aspired to. I did that. I made her this happy. He would consent to be clawed over and over again to put that expression on her face.

“Thank you,” she murmured. Her voice was muffled by fur. She hadn’t yet quite looked at him. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

He found he couldn’t speak.

Slowly, slowly, painstakingly slowly, he extended a hand and—how could he resist?—he succumbed to temptation: he sank his hand gently into that soft fur.

“There, wee Charbydis. Why don’t we—”

The cat’s limbs snapped closed over his arm like a bear trap and it sunk its teeth into his hand, ears flattened evilly.

Jules screamed like a woman.

The cat seemed to like this. It clung harder. It kicked him like a rabbit with its hind legs.

Jules shot to his feet. Charybdis continued to cling with all four limbs and all twenty claws. The pain was ridiculous. The cat blinked his beautiful eyes at Jules and readjusted its hold on him with jaw, gripping harder with teeth and claw, apparently intending to settle in for a while.

His ears were so flat they looked like bat wings. He met the marquess’s eyes with something like equanimity.

This was when he became aware that his scream had brought a crowd of worthy good Samaritans, workmen in caps and heavy boots and aprons, dashing to cluster about him, proving that not all hope was lost for the souls of Londoners.

She considered that one of them ought to say something, but she could think of nothing appropriate, and couldn’t imagine what he might say that would be at all the right thing. The language she knew—the King ’s English, and all the precious facts she’d acquired over the years that could be used to explain or sum up or keep the world at bay—were useless here. This was another language entirely.