A Golden Fury

the arched diamond window that looked over the grassy quadrangle below. What a lovely view my father had from his comfortable study. What a lovely life. Naturally, he didn’t want me here, complicating it. Ruining it.
“I’ll go,” I said. “If you give me my papers, I’ll go now.”
“Ah,” he said. “Yes. Well…”
I stared him down. He had no decent response to this. He simply would not do it. And I would not leave without them.
“But—” Dominic broke in, casting a wary glance at my father. “But where would you go?”
It was a good question. I knew only one person who might have me in England, and going to him would be a shameful impropriety. But he would at least be glad to see me. I pictured his face breaking into a smile of surprise and delight. My heart seized with homesickness for him at the thought. I would get the papers back, somehow, and then I would go.
“London,” I said with decision.
I would bear the unseemliness. I needed Will more than I needed an intact reputation. He would help me. If he did not have a laboratory of his own, then he would know someone who could help me set one up. I needed a patron, someone to provide the funds and equipment. I did not need a father. And even if I did, I would not find one here.
“London?” repeated Vellacott hopefully. “You—you have family there?”
“You know I don’t,” I snapped.
“Then … perhaps … friends?”
I settled back into my chair and glared at him. Friends? No. I did not have more than one friend in London. If I had more than one friend in the world, I did not know who he was. He certainly wasn’t Edward Vellacott.
“Sir…” said Dominic. “Maybe … maybe Miss Hope would be willing to stay at my mother’s house. With my mother and me. Just until something else can be arranged.”
Dominic stared at the floor, glancing at my father and then back down, like he was ashamed. Not of himself, I realized. Or of me, either.
“That’s a fine idea, Dominic, yes,” said my father, seizing gratefully on it. “Why don’t you take her there at once. Miss Hope, you need rest. We will talk about … other matters … later.”
I considered making an undignified scramble for my papers, but he had shut them in his desk. It was pointless. I stood.
“Give me back the letter, at least,” I said, blushing. “It is personal. And nothing to do with alchemy.”
My father had the decency to blush as well. He cleared his throat.
“Yes,” he said, opening the drawer. “Yes, of course.”
He took out the letter and handed it over. I had no doubt at all, from the way he avoided my gaze, that he had read the whole thing. It was not in its envelope. I took the letter and returned it to the pocket of my skirts. I went to the door.
“Thea…” said my father. “I’m … I am sorry about all this.”
And he did sound sorry. Wretched, even. But he wasn’t sorry enough to give me my papers back. Not sorry enough to offer me a place to stay. His wretchedness was of no use to me. I kept walking, and Dominic shut the door behind us.
We retraced our steps in silence, through the beautiful library, down the paneled staircase. Through the stone archway and down the stone steps that led into the green quadrangle, past the questioning, hostile stares. Back out the imposing gate, into the street where we belonged.
The sun was already setting. A gloomy mist had fallen, thick enough to obscure the turrets of the college gate before we had gone a block. It wasn’t until we were halfway back to his mother’s flat that Dominic noticed I was lagging behind him and offered me his arm. A well-bred young man would have offered it at once. Will, for instance, would never have allowed the opportunity to pay me a kind attention pass by unfulfilled.
No, Dominic wasn’t well-bred. I didn’t like to think of myself as a snob. In this respect at least I fancied myself as good a republican as Will, as skeptical of aristocracy as he was and always ready to listen to his eloquence on the subject of the common man. And yet I had been very aware of Dominic’s lower-class status, and close to dismissing him for it. His barely erased slum accent, his unrefined table manners, hourly wage, and underground, street-facing flat—they had all counted against him in my mind, even if I wouldn’t have admitted it.
And yet now he was taking me in when my own well-bred father had turned me out. He’d protected me from Bentivoglio when Vellacott wished to pretend nothing had happened. He walked with his head bent toward the ground, and his arm was stiff and uncomfortable under mine, but when I slowed he glanced down at me with real concern, and a rush of fondness toward him flowed through me along with an unwelcome urge to weep.
“Just about there, Miss Hope,” he said.
I nodded. The narrow, dim street we turned down looked familiar. Dominic pointed down the street, and in a few dozen more yards we stepped off the street and went down into his mother’s flat. Dominic produced a basin of water, and I washed the blood from my hands.
“You might want to rest. Best to lie down a bit, for your head,” said Dominic. “There’s, ah, there’s only two bedrooms. You can have mine. Just give me a minute—it’s a bit of a mess.”
Dominic vanished into a very low door off the tiny kitchen and the sounds of hasty tidying emerged: a chair being pulled along the floor, things being tossed. Dominic returned a few moments later looking rueful.
“It’s still a bit of a mess,” he said. “I wish I had somewhere better to offer you.”
“It will be fine,” I said. “Please don’t worry about that. It’s terribly kind of you.”
“It’s nothing,” said Dominic, and shifted his weight. He hovered on the edge of