I was almost certain that they would be safe to eat.

…Probably.

Leander, who would have faced his own impending execution with the apparent indifference of a basking snake, was of course sprawled bonelessly across his own cushioned seat, looking—by the dim glow of the carriage-lamp—as if the concept of nerves had never even occurred to him. He raised a single black eyebrow at my question. “I don’t know about you,” he drawled, “but I owed Carmilla a favor—and I’ve found that it’s easier not to try to stand against her scheming.”

Ha. Three weeks ago, I might have fallen for that nonsense. By now, I knew better. Limp though he might like to make himself appear, Leander Fabian never allowed his elegant self to be nudged anywhere he didn’t already want to go. So why had he allowed himself to be persuaded into this awkward expedition?

I regarded him broodingly, my eyes narrowed, as the carriage rocked on its springs beneath us and the night air rang with the hooting of hollow bone bells from the coachman’s reins. Leander’s long legs were stretched casually across the gap between our seats, resting just by mine, and every rock of those springs brushed his close-fitting black trousers against the edge of my most respectable brown skirt, again and again.

I was trying not to notice.

In fact, I’d been trying with all of my might not to notice anything like that at all over the last few weeks, ever since I had recklessly let down my guard at the necromancers’ ball and agreed to attempt a friendship—the first real friendship I’d ever had in my life. Trusting someone outside of my family with my secret thoughts and feelings was more terrifying than almost anything I had ever experienced. It drove me halfway to panic every time I let myself face the magnitude of everything that could go wrong. I couldn’t let myself risk any more than I already had—especially not when it came to the most fascinating, beautiful man I’d ever met.

So I had to keep my eyes and my mind off his long, long legs and his black-satin-clad shoulders and the inviting hollow of his pale throat beneath his silky, long black hair…and the lurking sparks that danced in his dark gaze every time he looked at me, like lights drawing a hapless moth towards a flame.

I could actually feel the lazy warmth of his regard resting on me now, turning my breath shallow in my chest and my cheeks pricklingly hot. For the first time in weeks, we were entirely alone, without my father or any of Leander’s undead minions in sight.

It made my legs shift restlessly beneath my skirts and dangerous, impossible thoughts swirl in my head.

I knew exactly who’d been trying to put them there.