She nodded, her eyes fixed on him, willing him to believe her. “Don’t ask me when it happened,” she said. “Maybe when you fed the runaway wife at Krekt Station. Maybe when you said you had not taken a private car on the train because you didn’t want me to be afraid of you. Maybe before that—maybe in the city, when you made me take the pills. You seem so concerned about everyone. Willing to care for everyone. That’s a trait I haven’t seen in anyone before, man or woman, blueskin or gold. It’s not in me, certainly.”

He shook his head. “I don’t. I don’t care for everyone. Sometimes I wonder if I love anyone as much as I should. I want to be a good son—a good husband—a good father, if the time ever comes. I try to be a good friend. But most of the time that just consists of being agreeable on the surface and keeping my thoughts to myself. That does not make me a kind man. It just means I manage to stay pleasant to most people most of the time.”

“Oh, Nolan,” she said, and she could not stop herself. She lifted one hand to trace the wide curve of his cheekbone. The color of his skin was so intense that she could almost feel its sultry heat, distinct from the pulse and fever of his body. The nubbed texture of his whiskers felt like spiky linen under her fingertips; his lips were an inset panel of satin. “I hope Leesa deserves to marry a man as wonderful as you.”

He had not moved since she touched him; he had transmogrified to granite. His eyelids had half-closed, as if the spell that had changed him to stone had caught him mid-blink, mid-swoon. When he spoke, his lips brushed against the palm of her hand, still laid across his mouth. Not another muscle in his body changed position. “I will not be marrying Leesa,” he said.

She pressed her fingers harder against his mouth as if to push the words back in. “Don’t say such things,” she said. “Of course you will. She will never learn of your visit here—and if she did, she would love you anyway.”

“No matter what happens here—no matter what she learns, or does not learn—I cannot marry her. This trip has changed me too much.”

Kit dropped her hand. “If it has made you a better man, that is no reason not to marry.”

“It has made me an inconstant man. And I cannot marry her if I do not love her.”

He had not moved; but now Kit took a step backward. “What makes you think you have stopped loving her?”

“Because I have started loving you.”