He was alarmed, aimless, and restive, he hated this enemy he couldn’t fight, and he was missing Kim.

That was ridiculous after a single day, although perhaps natural after months of regular companionship. He’d seen Kim most days and many of the nights since March, and when he hadn’t, he’d known when the bugger would turn up again. Now he didn’t know what was going on in Kim’s perverse mind, or why. And if Chingford hanged and Kim became heir to a fortune and title, when Will had just demonstrated his utter incapacity to blend into that world...

Bad enough he didn’t know when he’d see Kim again. He was starting to wonder if.

Will sat in his bookshop as the evening darkened around him, listening to the faint sounds from Charing Cross, and tried to think about Kim not coming back. About risks that were too great, and threats nobody wanted to live under, and obligations to things he didn’t know how to weigh in the balance, like name and land and family. About the impossibility of it, because it had always been impossible, really. Kim was starlight and privilege; Will had his feet firmly fixed in the mud. They didn’t belong together.

Except they did. Kim belonged in this bookshop, leaving everything behind in the smell of paper. Maybe parts of him belonged in a mansion flat too, or a gentleman’s club, or some bloody great estate in East Anglia, but he damn well ought to be in this shop and the bed upstairs, and Will was not going to sit here and watch everything turn to dust around him without making an effort.

He jumped to his feet, took two steps toward the telephone to make one last call before he went round to Gerrard Mansions and kicked the door in, and heard a noise from the back room. His heart gave a single giddy thump that for just a second made him feel dizzily like the sixteen-year-old boy who had been permitted to walk Mary Alice Goodman home. And then the lock clicked, and the door opened, and Kim was there.

His eyes were very dark and very weary. He stared at Will without speaking, and Will stared back, aware of the undrawn blinds, the plate glass windows, the oppressive weight of being seen.

Kim’s lips parted. Will said, “Come up.”