“You must know they’re trying to matchmake,” I said. “Obviously, it’s absurd—I keep telling Dad that you and I are only friends, but…” I stopped with a wince as I realized that my gloved fingers were frantically twisting around and around each other…and his gaze had dropped to follow that tell-tale movement.

“Do you tell him that, Mia?” His eyelids were half-lowered, his voice perfectly idle—so I had no idea why the air suddenly seemed to hum around us with a new tension. If he had been a snake, he would have been coiling in preparation to strike…

And that was quite enough of a flight of fancy for one evening! I let out my breath in an irritable whoosh. “Of course. You needn’t worry that I’m trying to trap you into anything.”

“I don’t feel trapped,” he said softly.

Well, of course he would claim that. I rolled my eyes in disgust. Necromancers always had to act like the most powerful people in any room. They could never bring themselves to admit fear of anything.

Before I could force him into any confessions, though, he said, “Are you quite sure that matchmaking for us was the only thing on your father’s mind?”

“Who else would he matchmake for?” I blinked. “He doesn’t even know anyone else in our area.”

“Mmm.” His lean shoulders lifted in a liquid shrug. “He was dressed rather more finely than usual tonight, wasn’t he?”

My brows drew into a scowl. “What are you implying?”

Leander looked at me for a long moment as the carriage swept us through the darkness. Then he gave a half-smile and shook his head. “It has always been just you and your father, I take it? No mother or any other assorted relatives in the house?”

My eyes narrowed even tighter. “My mother died when I was born,” I said shortly. “After that…no one.”

Dad had lost his family when he was young, and apparently, my mother had kept her own past an inviolable secret. With no relatives to help him on either side, he must have been kept too busy for company during my first few years, raising an infant on his own while keeping his business afloat.

After that…well, after that, my own powers had begun to show themselves—and the one time he had tried to share the truth of them with a friend, the results had been disastrous. It was no wonder that he’d never invited anyone else into our home. He’d kept the social life he loved limited to his cheerful, chatty salesmanship in our public shopfront and—once I was fully grown—occasional Friday nights at the pub down the street, where he could listen to music and laugh with old friends without worrying that he was endangering me.