The Purple Gentian shook his hooded head. “Don’t, Amy.”

Under her fingers, the Gentian’s chest was rigid, unmoving, as though he wasn’t even breathing. Amy tilted her head back, back to the point of dizziness, to peer through the slits of his mask. “Are you worried that the praise will go to your head?” she teased. “And that it will puff up until you can’t fit into your disguises anymore?”

The Purple Gentian redirected his gaze somewhere to the left of Amy’s shoulder. Amy had to resist the impulse to turn around to see what could possibly be so engrossing.

“I’m serious, Amy,” he said flatly.

“So am I,” said Amy cheerfully. “I do think you’re wonderful. How would you like me to prove it to you? I could follow you into Hades, like Orpheus after Eurydice. I could—”

“Amy, we can’t see each other anymore.”

The exuberant words Amy had been about to utter withered and died unspoken. She pulled back and stared at the Gentian. “What do you mean?”

Surely, there must be some other meaning to his words. Perhaps what he meant was that they couldn’t go on meeting at night like this. She could agree with that. It would be much nicer to meet by daylight, to see his face when he spoke to her. Or maybe he meant his words literally; in the gloom, she really couldn’t see him anymore either, Amy rationalized madly.

“I meant just what I said.”

His words might have been uninformative, but the tone of his voice, as stony as his motionless body, brooked no misinterpretation. Amy’s spirits plummeted from the stars to the grimy cobblestones at her feet.

“You don’t want to see me anymore?” Amy hated the little quaver she heard in her own voice.

The Purple Gentian nodded slowly.

It didn’t make sense. It didn’t make sense at all. It might as well have been a series of grunts, rather than words, for all the sense it made. Amy bit her lip on the anguished “why?” that was trying to burst out of her mouth and lowered her eyes to stare at the Gentian’s scuffed boots. He liked her. She knew he liked her. Didn’t he? After all, he had rescued her and kissed her and—oh goodness, there had been the necklace of stars. Surely, if he didn’t love her, he wouldn’t have done any of that. Would he?

Amy’s hands curled into fists as she marshaled her panicked thoughts. There must be another reason.

“Are you worried about my reputation?” she blurted out. “Because as long as we meet discreetly there’s really no cause to worry.”

“That’s not it.” A wintry undertone of regret ran through the Purple Gentian’s words, as chill and dead as a garden in December. Taking Amy’s hand, which still rested forgotten against his heart, he gently returned it to her side.

Amy, who had been desperately searching for any signs of emotion, found herself wishing he would go back to his statue impersonation. Inscrutability was infinitely preferable to rue. And pity.

“I’m sorry, Amy,” the Gentian was saying, with that same killing gentleness. “I wish it could be some other way.”

The empty platitude scraped along Amy’s heightened nerves, like a stone in her shoe that had to be flung out. “What other way?” she demanded. “You’re talking in riddles! Why can’t you see me again? I don’t understand.”

The Purple Gentian’s jaw tightened, and he gazed out into the air over Amy’s shoulder as though the answer might be lurking somewhere in those selfsame stars he had promised to her earlier.

Amy watched his averted face anxiously.

“It’s the mission, you see,” he said finally, awkwardly.

“Oh!” said Amy, then, “No, I don’t see. My information was a help to the mission, wasn’t it?” she probed.

“Yes.”

“Then what? Are you worried about my being in danger? I promise, I’ll be more cautious. I’ll even—”

Lowering his hooded head to look at Amy, the Gentian pronounced with chilling finality, “I can’t let infatuation get in the way of the mission.”

“Infatuation,” Amy repeated, her eyes begging him, willing him to take the word back. “Is that what you feel for me? Infatuation?”

A dreadful, frozen silence followed. The nightingales stopped chirping. The wind stopped blowing. The stars didn’t dare twinkle. The moon looked as stiff and brittle as Amy felt.

And then the Purple Gentian shrugged.

“That’s one way of describing it.”

The moon crumbled into a thousand shards. Infatuation. Not even a poor cousin of love. All of her carefully hoarded memories rushed back at her in a new, unpleasant aspect. Instead of the Purple Gentian’s kiss in the study, she saw his eagerness to leap out the window. Away from her. She was a liability. An impediment to the mission.

Had everything they had shared been no more than a distraction to him?

It could have been worse, she supposed. He could have left her with the illusion that he cared for her, kissed her good-bye, walked away, and never returned. At least he had been honest. At least he had shown her that much regard. She supposed she should be grateful for that. Her gratitude sat like ashes in her mouth.

“Thank you,” Amy said tightly, “for not lying to me.”

“It’s not—I don’t want you to think—Damn!” the Gentian cursed explosively.

Why wouldn’t he just leave? The sight of him, looming there in his blasted black cloak, so dashing and handsome and—oh, anxiously boyish, stung like salt on a pricked finger.

“Good night.” Amy nodded stiffly in what she hoped was the right direction. It was hard to tell with her eyes averted. But if she looked again, the tears might start, and that, above all things, was not to be borne. “Thank you for seeing me home. You can leave now,” she added.

Only he didn’t.

The Gentian took a step towards her, his entire body taut with tension that made his cloak rustle. He leaned forward on the balls of his feet, and the muscles in his throat worked as though he were mustering himself to speak. Despite herself, Amy felt herself leaning forward to listen, wanting to hear his explanation, his excuses, his apologies. It’s not infatuation, he would say. I misspoke. I’m sorry.

“Amy, I—” he began, and paused.

Yes? Amy willed him on, trying to keep her eagerness out of her eyes.

Something like bitterness fluttered across the Gentian’s face. His weight shifted back to his heels, and his body and face stilled again into inscrutability.

“I’ll help you up over the window,” he said.

Somehow, Amy managed to keep her face from crumpling. She had thought that nothing could hurt more than that dreadful word, infatuation. She had thought she had already reached whatever threshold there was for romantic agony. I’ll help you over the window. How could a simple statement be the vehicle for so much pain? Of course, it wasn’t really those words, so much as the ones he hadn’t said. She should have known better than to hope for them.

The Purple Gentian was standing there, waiting, one hand held out to her. Amy recoiled from it as though it were an asp.

Amy planted her elbows on the windowsill. “I’ll be quite all right on my own, thank you.”

“No, you won’t.” Was there a hint of amusement in the Gentian’s voice? “I saw you trying to make your way back in last night.”

Horror coursed through Amy. He had seen that? Numb with embarrassment and despair, she remembered her fumblings of the night before, all the times her elbows had slipped, all the times she had painstakingly gotten a leg up on the sill only to tumble down again. Oh goodness. The man probably thought she was a joke. Worse than a joke. No wonder he didn’t want anything more to do with her! What use was she when she couldn’t even climb through the window of her own bloody house without making a ridiculous spectacle of herself?

“Up you go.” The Purple Gentian placed a hand under her bottom and boosted her over the windowsill, as unceremoniously as though he were heaving a sack of grain into a wagon. One rough push, and his hand withdrew. He didn’t even want to touch her. Amy remembered the myriad touches she had gloried in less than an hour past, an embarrassment of touches, enjoyed profligately, and quickly gone.

Without looking back, she slid her legs under her, into the dining room. Behind her, fabric rustled. The Gentian’s cape, shifting in the breeze. Amy tried not to picture it, but she couldn’t help herself.

“Good night, Amy,” the Gentian said softly, from the other side of the window.

Amy didn’t turn. She put one foot in front of the other, then another, moving stiffly towards the dining room door. She was concentrating so hard on movement, simple movement, that she couldn’t even be sure whether she imagined that one, last whisper.

“I’ll make it up to you soon. Trust me.”


As he slunk around the side of the house, Richard reminded himself that it would be pure lunacy to sprint back and apologize. This was for the best. And if he kept telling himself that over and over maybe he would be able to wipe out the distressing image of Amy’s frozen face. Far better that Amy be unhappy than good men die, Richard rationalized loftily. Only, this time, the noble sentiment fell rather flat. Richard writhed with an uncomfortable combination of guilt and unfulfilled desire.

Damn it, they’d better get their hands on that gold quickly, because he didn’t think he could take much more of this. Unless, he mused hopefully, Amy’s disenchantment with the Purple Gentian would make her more receptive to the winning qualities of Lord Richard Selwick.

Before he made his way to the nearest cold bath, Richard had one last errand. He counted windows until he found the one he wanted. No light gleamed from behind the heavy draperies. Smiling silently to himself, the sleek smile of the panther on the prowl, Richard hauled himself over the edge of the window and into the empty room. Déjà vu, he thought, as he jumped lightly down from the velvet upholstered window seat. Only this time there was no Amy waiting for him beneath the desk.