Clockwork Princess

quirked slightly.
    “Mrs. Branwell?” Sophie bristled, as she always did when she thought her mistress was being criticized. “But she is the gentlest of people!”
    “Yes—that is
why
I think she terrified him. She embraced him and told him that if he remained here, the incident with my father would be put into the past. I am not sure
which
incident with my father she was referring to,” Gideon added dryly. “Most likely the one where Gabriel supported his bid to take over the Institute.”
    “You don’t think she meant the most recent?” Sophie pushed a lock of hair that had come free back under her cap. “With the …”
    “Enormous worm? No, oddly, I don’t. It is not in my brother’s nature, though, to expect to be forgiven. For anything. He understands only the strictest discipline. He may think Charlotte is trying to play a trick on him, or that she is mad. She showed him to a room he could have, but I think the entire business frightened him. He came to speak to me about it, and fell asleep.” Gideon sighed, looking at his brother with a mixture of fondness, exasperation, and sorrow that made Sophie’s heart beat in sympathy.
    “Your sister …,” she began.
    “Oh, Tatiana wouldn’t even consider staying here for a moment,” Gideon said. “She has fled to the Blackthorns’, her in-laws, and good riddance. She is not a stupid girl—in fact, she considers her intelligence to be quite superior—but she is a self-important and vain one, and there is no love lost between her and my brother. And he had been awake for days, mind you. Waiting in that great blasted house, locked out of the library, pounding on the door when no answer came from my father …”
    “You feel protective of him,” Sophie observed.
    “Of course I do; he is my little brother.” He moved toward the bed and brushed a hand over Gabriel’s tousled brown hair; the other boy moved and made a restless sound but did not wake.
    “I thought he would not forgive you for going against your father,” Sophie said. “You had said—that you were frightened of it. That he would consider your actions a betrayal of the Lightwood name.”
    “I think he has begun to question the Lightwood name. Just as I did, in Madrid.” Gideon stepped away from the bed.
    Sophie ducked her head. “I am sorry,” she said. “Sorry about your father. Whatever anyone said about him, or whatever he might have done, he was your father.”
    He turned toward her. “But, Sophie—”
    She did not correct him for the use of her Christian name. “I know that he did deplorable things,” she said. “But you should be allowed to mourn him nonetheless. No one can take your grief from you; it belongs to you, and you alone.”
    He touched her cheek lightly with the tips of his fingers. “Did you know your name means ‘wisdom’? It was very well-given.”
    Sophie swallowed. “Mr. Lightwood—”
    But his fingers had spread out to cup her cheek, and he was bending to kiss her.
“Sophie,”
he breathed, and then their lips found each other, a light touch giving way to a greater pressure as he leaned in. Lightly and delicately she curved her hands—
so rough, worn down with washing and carrying, with scraping the grates and dusting and polishing
, she fretted, but he didn’t seem to be bothered or notice—around his shoulders.
    Then she moved closer to him, and the heel of her shoe caught on the carpet, and she was slipping to the floor, Gideon catching at her. They tumbled to the ground together, Sophie’s face flaming in embarrassment—dear God, he would think she had pulled him down on purpose, that she was some sort of wanton madwoman intent on passion. Her cap had fallen off, and her dark curls fell over her face. The rug was soft beneath her, and Gideon, above her, was whispering her name with concern. She turned her head aside, her cheeks still burning, and found herself gazing beneath his four-poster bed.
    “Mr. Lightwood,” she said, raising herself up on her elbows. “Are those
scones
under your bed?”
    Gideon froze, blinking, a rabbit cornered by hounds. “What?”
    “There.” She pointed to the mounded dark shapes piled beneath the four-poster. “There is a veritable
mountain
of scones beneath your bed. What on earth?”
    Gideon sat up, raking his hands through his tumbled hair as Sophie scrambled back away from him, her skirts rustling around her. “I …”
    “You called for those scones. Nearly every day. You
asked
for