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still shone. The bell tower of the church across the square rose into the night sky, the clock face silver in the moonlight, and beyond was a landscape of rooftops and chimneypots, light blazing from every window as the minutes counted down to midnight.
    “Oh, bless them,” Evie breathed.
    “Bless whom?”
    “All of them,” she said, throwing her arms wide as if to embrace the whole city. “They don’t care there’s a war on. They mean to welcome 1915 and show the kaiser they won’t be beat. I love them for it.” She turned to him, her eyes anxious. “What about you? Will you go?”
    “Not yet,” he told her, edging as close to the truth as he dared. “I am hoping to head an expedition to China soon. I’m attempting the Karakorum range again.”
    “But surely—” she stopped, feeling heat rise in her cheeks.
    “Surely I mean to enlist as there’s a war on?” he asked. He quirked his brow as he put the question to her and Evie felt a little thrust of admiration.
    “Oh, how do you do that? I’ve always wanted to cock one brow like that. I used to practise in the mirror until one of my aunts caught me at it and asked if I was mentally feeble.”
    “Rather unkind,” Gabriel said. He didn’t like the notion of anyone not appreciating every particle of her charming originality. She was his; she had all but agreed to it, and he felt a keen proprietorial interest in everything about her.
    “She didn’t mean to be unkind. She simply wasn’t accustomed to young people. Poor lamb—it was rather a shock when I turned up to live with her. But she did take it well enough in the end. She clothed and fed me and made certain I learnt maths and prepositions. Do I mean prepositions? Maybe it was adverbs I learnt from her.”
    Gabriel followed the willow-the-wisp darting of her conversation as if he were chasing a butterfly. He was grateful to her for leaving off the subject of the war. It pierced him to know there were things he could not tell her, could never tell her. If there was a moment, could ever have been a moment, it passed swiftly before the stream of words. With a rush of tenderness, he realised she was nervous. He put a hand over hers, calming and stilling the flood of words.
    “It’s going to be all right, Evie.”
    Her eyes were wide. “Do you think so?”
    “I promise. I will do everything in my power to make you happy. I can make you happy. If I didn’t believe it, I wouldn’t be up here with you, saying these things I can’t seem to stop myself from saying.”
    “I’m not worried about being happy,” she told him. “Because you’re talking nonsense and I know you are. None of this is real. I’m only worried about fairies.”
    Her expression was so serious; he smothered the urge to laugh. “Fairies?”
    “Not real fairies, of course. I mean, they might flit about in Peter Pan’s adventures, but I have grown up a little more than that,” she said, her voice ever so slightly indignant that he might think her a trifle young for her nineteen years. “Do you know what the word fey means?”
    He shrugged. “It’s a Scots word, isn’t it? Something to do with fairies?”
    “It means a sort of grand happiness, a joy so indescribable that it must be followed by a terrible calamity.”
    He began to understand, and he enfolded her in his arms. “I see, pet. You’re worried it’s all too wonderful, is that it? That we should have found each other like this, on this night?”
    She tipped back her head to look from his silvered face to the moon. “It’s like something in a romantic novel. There’s a war on and it’s New Year’s Eve, and I’m wearing my first Worth gown in the moonlight. And there’s you. I shouldn’t tell you because it isn’t modest or proper, but I think you’re marvelous. You’re handsome and debonair and you’ve the most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen on a man. Actually, you’ve the most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen anywhere. And for you to...” she