Chapter 16. Author's note - sorry for the delay, I've been massively busy. Just a little bit of a question for any readers: what song do you think would go along with this story? I always like to be inspired by music, and so I'd love to hear it if you know of any appropriate songs....

When David arrived home, he immediately shooed Robin away from Nightingale.

"Away from her, Robin, before you fall too much in love with her," he instructed.

"As if I'm not already so far gone in my affection that her presence would make it worse," sighed Robin dramatically.

Nightingale laughed as David's eyes flashed with annoyance.

"Well, I should go," said Robin, and he stood in one smooth motion. Nightingale immediately followed him, attaching herself around his neck, just to spite David, whose eyes narrowed the moment Nightingale so much as touched Robin's elbow.

Also, she was terrified of Robin leaving. She'd been reduced to an emotional, needy wreck in the past few days, so different from the cold, bitter Inamorata she'd been before.

"Don't," she pleaded. "Stay for a little longer."

"I'm afraid I have to go, lovely Nightingale," sighed Robin. "If I stay any longer, I'm afraid David will tear my head off in jealousy."

David shot him a sarcastic, acid smile.

"But will I ever see you again?" asked Nightingale, anxiousness making her stomach twist.

"Of course, darling," he said, and brushed his hand across her cheek. "When you're freed, I'll see you again. Or if David signs you out for another weekend."

"But what if I'm never freed?" whispered Nightingale.

Robin smiled. Leaning close to her, he murmured in her ear:

"I'm very rich, Nightingale. If things fall through and you can't be freed legally, I'm sure I can pay a few  willing criminals to spirit you away from the bordello," he said, his warm breath tickling her neck the way Bobby's did when he whispered to her. But Robin's actions were sweet and Bobby's awful.

"I could never leave my sisters," confessed Nightingale, her eyes pricking with tears. "Not even to be free. It wouldn't be just to fly away like that while they suffered."

"And I could never leave you to suffer in the bordello, not when I could save you," replied Robin, and for the first time, Nightingale saw passion, not just gentle sweetness, flare in his eyes. Perhaps she'd gotten closer to seducing him than she'd initially thought.

Now Nightingale began to cry in earnest, a few tears rolling down her cheeks.

"What are you two whispering about?" snapped David, approaching them.

When Nightingale turned to him, she saw his expression morph from one of cool detachment to gentility. It was only momentary, but it was very sweet.

"Nothing," said Robin airily.

"Evidently it's something, if you've made the stoic Nightingale cry," retorted David, anger evident in his voice. Before Nightingale's astounded eyes, he reached into the breast pocket of his jacket and drew out a handkerchief. He proceeded to lift her face to his, one hand under chin, and tenderly sponge a tear from Nightingale's cheek. Their eyes met and then checking himself, he simply handed her the handkerchief, all his coldness back in his face but not his eyes. They remained confusingly warm, aflame and glowing with some emotion Nightingale did not understand.

When Nightingale turned back to Robin, she caught him eyeing them suspiciously. He muttered something that sounded like:

"I see that you weren't lying when you told me that she is-"

However, he didn't get out the full sentence as David sprang forward, twisted one of Robin's arms behind his back, whirled him around, and slammed him against the wall.

"Don't you fucking dare complete that sentence," snarled David. He was terrifying in his fury, but somehow also amazing. His agility and his strength were somewhat incongruous with his trim frame, but only added to his mystique and appeal.

"See what a child he is, Nightingale?" cried Robin. He was laughing, but the sound was muffled as he cheek was crushed up against the wall.

Nightingale tried to contain a smile but couldn't. "David, is that any way to treat your friends?" she teased, extending her hand and touching his arm.

Immediately, he released Robin.

Robin shook himself, straightened his jacket, and attempted to flatten the wild mess his hair had become as he smiled lopsidedly at Nightingale.

"It's quite all right, Nightingale," he said. "David would never hurt me. He learned to do that on the bullies that picked on me in school."

"You were at school together?" enquired Nightingale, feeling her eyebrows rise with curiosity.

Robin laughed mischievously. "I'll leave you to answer that question, David. Goodbye, Nightingale. We'll be in touch." And then, with a sly kiss to the cheek and nothing more, he waltzed out.

Nightingale stared after him, already feeling gloomy in his absence.

"We were," said David quickly.

"Sorry?" she asked, snapping out of reverie.

"At school together," said David. As he said it, he removed his jacket and undid the buttons on his cuffs before rolling up his sleeves.

It was the most informal Nightingale had ever seen him. Even when he was naked, he maintained a stuffy, haughty air. It made her gape a little.

"So that's where you met?" she asked, using her most wheedling tone, watching as he poured himself a tumbler full of some blue liquid from a canister on a nearby table.

"Yes. He was always being punched around by the bigger, stronger boys. I quickly put a stop to that," said David, smiling grimly. He leaned against the sofa, one hand on its arm and the other on his drink, looking positively dashing. "We went to an all boys' school, you see."

"And you've been friends ever since?" asked Nightingale.

"Yes - except when I was in-" began David, but suddenly smiled a touch bashfully. He was suddenly not the cool detective she knew so well, but just a man. "Well, there's no need to talk about that, is there?"

"No, go on," said Nightingale. "I'd love to hear it."

"No," he said, and the cool detective was back, staring down into his tumbler as though it were speaking to him. "It's not something I ought to share."

Nightingale scowled. "That's utterly selfish of you," she snapped.

David gave her a flat glare, his eyebrows raised scornfully. "Oh?"

"You know everything about me, from my entire life story to the very chemical makeup of my body. And yet all I know about you is that you're a detective with a rather charming friend named Robin," she said.

"I can't tell you anything else, Nightingale, nor would I even like to," he informed her coolly.

Nightingale bit her lip and tried to prevent herself from throttling David. As much as she liked him - though she was loath to admit she liked any man - in that moment, she wanted to strangle him for his frostiness.

"Fine," she snapped, and turned away.

"No," she heard David interject, his voice sounding not quite angry but not very gentle, either.

She turned back to see him staring after her, looking intensely unhappy. "No, I'll tell you. I'm sorry, Nightingale, I didn't say what I meant."

She motioned to him, and the pair of them sat down at opposite ends of the sofa. There was a certain vulnerability in his face as she eyed him.

"Then what did you mean?"

"What I meant is that I don't want to tell you because it's too awful. I'm a government agent, not just a detective, and as an agent, I spent a lot of time undercover," he said.

Nightingale listened, eyes wide. Something told her David was never going to repeat what he was saying now, that he was speaking out of some strange compulsion that affected him very rarely.

"And?"

"It was horrific. I saw things, did things, all of which have changed me," said David. "When you woke me up by accident, that first time I met you, and I nearly killed you, that was a...side effect of what I've seen."

"And when you..." Nightingale began, meaning to ask him about when, on the same night, he'd let her hold him in her arms and comfort him. However, based on the fact that he looked up at her words with such a frank, open expression, she surmised that such a question would not be appropriate.

"I see," was all she said. She leaned forward and put her hand on his. "Thank you for telling me."

"Not at all," he said. Their eyes met only for a split second before David leaped up and away from her with all the flightiness of a frightened pigeon. But he was too graceful for a pigeon, Nightingale realized, and so the comparison fell short.

"Clarence took quite a liking to you, Nightingale," he pointed out, taking a sip of the strange, blue-coloured liquid.

Nightingale snorted in the least attractive, most masculine way she was capable of. "Everyone takes a liking to me," she said, throwing back her head and spreading herself over the sofa in a ridiculously seductive position. "It's only natural."

David just raised his eyebrows. As usual, he was not fazed in the slightest by her charm. "Caroline would beg to disagree," he said.

"That's different. I can't charm Caroline because she's not interested in women," said Nightingale. Lazily, she kicked off her shoes and threw her legs up onto the sofa, stretching out over nearly all of it. "Now, if she were, she'd be utterly in my power."

David gave her a disgusted look, his lip curling in contempt. "Are you incapable of interacting with a human being any way other than flirting?" he sneered.

"Excuse me?" she returned, feeling her face heat up with fury.

"For someone who despises her status as a whore so much, you certainly don't try to be anything else," he snapped.

Nightingale hissed in outrage and pain. In one swift movement, she was on her feet, standing on tiptoe, ready to spring at David at any second. The only thing that was stopping her from attacking him was that nagging sensation deep down that it would be wrong to attack a client, even a client like David. That notion was so deeply ingrained in her, had been trained in with so many shockings, so many beatings, so many rapes by her clients, that she could not even attack David.

"How dare you," she spat, her hands balling up into fists. Even her attempts to calm herself, to calm her anger as she always did in the bordello with a passage from one of her books failed then.

"You won't even deny it," he snarled, looking, for some reason, just as a filled with ire as Nightingale felt.

Those few little words shattered any resolve Nightingale left to restrain herself. With a shriek, she flew at David, ready to claw his face. The very ferocity of her fury astounded her. Even in all her five years in the bordello, she'd never attacked the men who'd abused her. And yet there she was, going after David, who'd, despite his awful words, been much kinder to her than they had.

David's eyes flashed as he took in Nightingale's charge. With a movement that seemed almost careless, he sidestepped her and grabbed her about the waist. As she writhed and tried to escape, he grabbed her hair in one hand and yanked her head back. With the other arm, he pressed her tightly to his body, his chest pressed so close to her that it felt like nothing was separating them.

Nightingale continued to thrash. "Let go of me," she growled.

"I told you the first time we met not to manhandle me," he growled back. "But you didn't listen."

Nightingale hissed wordlessly. Then she went limp, feigning defeat. Just as David loosened his grip, she brought her elbow down into his gut very hard, though not hard enough to hurt him too badly. He let go of her for a split second and then she moved, twisting out of his grasp and kicking the back of his knees. He crumbled for a moment and then she knocked him to the floor, tangled his arms behind his back, and pinned him there.

He went very still. "Nightingale, let me up this instant," he said, and his voice was deadly quiet.

"Or what?" she spat. "You called me a whore, David, and don't you dare do that again. I am, and it's all I know. But don't accuse me of acting like one in front of natural-borns who aren't my clients. I'm charming, I'm pretty, and I use those talents. Do you know why? It's not because I get off on being beautiful - as a matter of fact, I wish I weren't. It's because I'm not like you, David, I'm not powerful or authoritative. I have nothing else to give me power. I use what I can."

Giving him a little shake, she released him and backed away.

When he rose, she expected to see fury in his face. But there was none there. Instead, his face contorted with what looked like sadness and he said:

"I'm sorry, Nightingale. Forgive me."

Nightingale's jaw dropped at the apology. Maybe Robin had been wrong. Maybe this Mr. Darcy did unbend his pride more often than Robin thought.

"Fine," she responded, attempting to maintain her composure.

After a moment, David smiled the tiniest little bit. "You beat me, Nightingale, you fierce little songbird."

"Yes," she asked. "Why does that shock you?"

"It does." Then he did something positively magical. David chuckled softly, smiling more than a little bit. The brilliance of just such a little smile lit up his face for a moment like the purest ray of sunshine, lending a sparkle to his eyes and a glow to his features.

"You're so very miraculous, Nightingale," he said.

Nightingale smiled and had to sniff haughtily in order to disguise a little sob. "Would it be too whorish of me to kiss your cheek in thanks for that?" she asked.

"You needn't kiss me to thank me," he said quickly, the smile slipping off his face. "I'm not like Robin, I'm not scrounging for your kisses."

Nightingale sighed and massaged her temples. "How else am I to thank you, then?"

"I've no idea," he said flatly.

"Then until I find something better," she said. And before he could protest, she bounded over and pecked his cheek. When she drew back, she saw that his eyes were closed and his chest was heaving but she did not know why. "Thank you, David."

He smiled robotically, without warmth or feeling.

"Now, I really ought to be going to bed," he said brusquely.

"The sun hasn't even set yet, David," said Nightingale, eyes narrowing in suspicion.

"No, but I've got work to do," he said. He took his tumbler and set off for what Nightingale assumed was his bedroom.

"Wait!" she called, not wanting to be left alone. "Wait, can't I come help you?"

"No, you most certainly cannot. You're a non-educated Inamorata, what help would you be?" he snorted derisively. Then, because he must have been able to see Nightingale's eyes narrow further with anger, he added, to soften the blow: "Besides, you've got Pride and Prejudice to read. So, until tomorrow, Miss Larkin."

And without another word, he vanished into the other room.

Nightingale sighed and sat back down on the sofa. With another sigh, she laid her head down on the arm of it and stared out over the city. She felt morose. Would she ever get to see the city again?

Gradually, her thoughts drifted backwards, past David and his mental scars from undercover work, past the smitten Robin who'd refused her advances, past the jealous Caroline who must have mistakenly thought that David's brooding silences in Nightingale's presence meant he was in love with her, and finally came to rest on Clarence.

With a grim little smile she doted on the thought of him. Did he know what he'd started, when he'd accidentally touched her in the lab?

"Probably not," she muttered. With that, she got up and retrieved her book from where she'd placed it when she'd arrived back. Then, ambling back over to the sofa and sat down. After a soft little sigh, she began to read.