Sparkling blue eyes, bright and glinting as a flawlessly cut sapphire turned toward the spectacular full moon overhead, just past the dark roofs of the buildings rising up all around the couple as they walked leisurely along the cobbled byways. That leisurely pace was, by no means, the gentleman’s preferred tempo in the least, though he found himself strangely unable to make the fullness of his displeasure known to his lady companion, entranced as he felt in her presence.

His lady companion who was, in turn, enchanted by the only sunlight she would ever know again – and hence paid as little attention to her escort’s displeasure as she might a small child tugging at her skirts, complaining he was bored and she must come away to play with him [i]this very moment.[/i] 

Lord Charles Wright took the moment to sigh resignedly, running a hand through his thick, dark hair as if that act alone might clear his head. He would have far rather taken a carriage this night from the drawing room of the Duchess of Manchester, as exhausted as he was by the evening’s dancing, intoxicated with the good wine of Her Grace’s incomparable cellars, and positively inebriated by the mere presence of his companion. But Lady Wilde, with only a few sweet words and a tiny upward tilt of her full, rose petal-soft lips, had melted every objection he tried to conjure, like flame to candle wax.

For her part, Lady Jerusha Wilde simply could not stomach the thought of confinement in some stifling carriage. She had spent the better part of the night in the sweltering heat of the drawing room at Charles’ behest, enduring the press of bodies and conversations that – for no reason she could name – she simply did not care for and could not be bothered to attend this evening. And so, whether he would or no, this night Lord Wright would heed the precocious, sometimes maddening whims of Jerusha that were always part of the price of her company.

And so the sumptuously dressed pair strolled the filthy streets of London, through the eternal cobweb of fog, its tendrils slinking past every building’s corner, every stinking alleyway and byway of this city. She loved this ancient metropolis, her heart’s home on the Thames, and she breathed deeply of the cool, vaguely fetid air, spiced as it was by the musk of its denizens, sweat and spittle and, most delicious of all, the heady, coppery hints of blood. To her heightened senses, it was very much like a hungry man’s appreciation of a scrumptious holiday buffet.

Jerusha did not often [i]partake[/i] of the everyday man of London, unless he were fool enough to try to molest her, or visit harm to her person or to anyone who accompanied her. In truth, she tried to partake as little as possible and always so carefully, in private and in her chamber, a carefully crafted tale of a night of drunken and carnal excess to weave into his memories like a favorite and well-tailored shirt.

She had partaken of Charles scrupulously the entirety of this past year, the dear man none the wiser of course, and she would again this night as well. He was a generous man at heart, and kind, and Jerusha did not believe this small fraud hurt him in the least. Lord Wright had all his memories of the much sought after Lady Jerusha Wilde well intact after all, as well as the privilege and the boast that he had the incomparable company of the most desirable courtesan in England.

Fair enough trade, in truth.

But this night, Jerusha’s eyes could not help but travel from the lovely moon up above, clothed provocatively as she was with a gauzy haze of London fog, back to its cobbled streets and…

Lady Wilde stopped still, her eyes traveling about her escort’s body to a dark figure across the thoroughfare. To her eyes, the aura about him seemed strangely… Dazzling, in truth. He was human, yes, but more – and colder, and warmer, than any man she had ever seen. Some small part of her noted the sword at his hip, but her curiosity and sudden concern caused her to pay precious little heed to such a petty concern. He smelled of despair, and drink, and… And perhaps most amazingly of all, the infernal, where Hell was an eternal and endless lake of black ice.

Jerusha paid precious little attention to Charles’ protests that the man was drunk, armed – perhaps even deranged and dangerous - as his lady companion left his side. With one quick flick of her delicate-seeming wrist, she impatiently waved him to stay where he was with a swift wave of her hand – an order he obeyed docilely as a well-trained dog. In unlife, just as in life, Lady Wilde’s [no longer beating] heart lay always with the desperate, the downtrodden and the forgotten – only now, she was a shepherd of a new, strange people where she could.

She gathered the lengths of her pale pink and rose skirts in both hands, delicately stepping over the worst of the slimy London street detritus.