Pulling up his suspender straps, Jack hurried his way across the room, stubbing his toe on his rickety end table. "Coming!" he shouted, wincing, and limped the rest of the way to the door. Throwing it open, Jack froze, blinking several times.

"Cordelia." She had never, ever come to see him before, not in his home. He just stood there, staring slack-jawed at the woman with blazing eyes that did not match the shadow of a smile that played faintly on her lips.

Jack's stomach knotted.

"Hello, Jack." She said smoothly, almost amused. "Aren't you going to invite me in?"

He blinked a number of times more before making his tongue work. "Wha..of course, yes, come in make yourself" Turning, he felt spots of color rise in his cheeks. It rarely occurred to him to be embarrassed by his lifestyle, but he noticed there was no place to sit save his desk, not even on the mouse-nibbled couch. "Ah, let me just move a few things. I think I have something to drink, if you like."

Hearing the door close and the faint whisk of silks, he knew Cordelia had entered his bachelor's sanctum. Her voice traveled to his ears. "Yes, thank you. That would be nice."

Nodding, Jack headed toward the kitchen in a haze, going through perfunctory proprieties in this most improper situation. With a sudden clarity, he swung back to face her. "Thank God you're all right. What are you doing here? Is something wrong?" Fighting the urge to charge over to her, he stuffed his hands in his pockets and leaned in the kitchen doorway.

Cordelia had found a place by the window, looking out on the rather limited vista. She paused, silent for a long moment. "I have names," she said softly, but with that hard edge she developed whenever she spoke of her quest for justice.

Feeling like someone had punched him, Jack slowly straightened. "I'll get the brandy."

"That might be best."

Cordelia stared after Jack as he disappeared into what she assumed was a kitchen. To take her mind off the conversation ahead and her jumbled up insides, she studied the room. She knew Jack lived on the graces of the Order, but she thought they would put him in better. At least the place was laced for gaslight. Her eyes found the odd things in the room as crashing and clanking sounds wafted through the apartment. A glass globe sat squat on the mantle near an old clock. One or two daguerreotypes of people she knew, others she didn't. A journal on the desk, closed, with a plain JEA stamped in the leather of the cover. She ran her fingers along the stained cover, resisting the urge to open it. The last time she opened a man's journal, she learned things she'd rather not have. Sighing sadly, shoving down an ill feeling, she traced the letters on the cover, slowly becoming aware of the silence, that she was being watched. "J. E.?" Cordelia turned, forcing herself to meet his green eyed intensity.

With a snifter dangling in each hand, Jack gifted her with the faintest of smiles. "Jonathan Edward. Jonathan Edward Anniston." He launched himself from his spot and held out one of the snifters to her. "Be blessed, fair lady. You are now one of five living people who know that."

She held the brandy in both gloved hands to hide her trembling. Briefly, she marveled how a human being could feel so many conflicting emotions at once. Torn between blurting out her news and continuing in this gentle fashion with Jack, she chose the latter, summoning up a smile and a light voice. "Such a secret, then?" She took a bigger drink than she should have.

Jack shrugged, looking off. "I've just never thought of myself as a Jonathan, and few have ever called me that." He nearly downed his glass in a single gulp. Turning his gaze back to her, he followed with, "You have news?"

Clearing her throat to try to ease the burning of the brandy, she sighed, nodding. The fire of her need for justice boiled up. "Names. The first is the one who actually killed him. A man named Childress." She swallowed a bit more brandy.

Kicking some books off his couch with a bare foot, Jack flopped down. "Bloody hell. I should have known that bastard had something to do with it."

"It's worse, Jack." Cordelia forced herself to continue. "Robert was set up, according to Crowley. Someone told Childress where he would be."

"Who? Someone in the Order?" Jack's voice had taken the same edge she heard in her own.

Cordelia nodded. "Charles Wentworth Blake. Apparently a known infernalist. There was no investigation by the Quaesitor." Everything came tumbling out. "Tytalus..my own house! Stopped it so they could have time to trap Blake's cult."

"Do you know what you're saying?" Jack set his now empty glass down and leaned forward. Cordelia nodded grimly.

The color and intensity of the curses that flew from Jack's mouth might have shocked Cordelia if she hadn't thought the same herself. "What will we do about it?" Jack asked, finally.

Shaking her head, Cordelia answered, "I don't know yet. It will take some time."

Running his hands through his hair, Jack sat silent for a while. Cordelia felt lost, set adrift in the moment. She wanted very much to go to him, to hold him, let him hold her, but she stood firm, not knowing if she should. Even the fire of her rage could not beat the feeling down, and it grew worse as Jack spoke. "Robert was coming to meet me that night. I had no idea what he was doing. He told me less and less in that last year or so. I think now it was for my safety." The edge in his voice had changed into something Cordelia could only place as grief. "And now we know."

"And now we know." Cordelia echoed sadly. "And the more I know, the less I want to. Robert was not the man we thought he was, Jack." Her stomach churned and she threw back the rest of her brandy.

"Few men are." Jack looked at her and sighed. "But you must believe he loved you, no matter what else. Ask anyone he ever talked to, they'll tell you."

Cordelia found it in herself to smile. "I know, but I think I've run out of grief. I will seek justice, but," She couldn't find the words to explain, or tell Jack the other reason she came here, the reason that was making itself known to her. Her tried to bore a hole through the man she loved now, tried to discern what he was thinking without cheating. She could easily read his mind if she chose, but he would not appreciate it.

A cough and a question brought Cordelia out of her thoughts. "Did you find out anything about the staff?" It took every bit of Tytalus training not to throw the glass at him. Instead, she set it carefully on the desk.

"I told you what I think." She started, irritated. "It's probably where Robert left it. But yes, I asked, and no, Crowley didn't know anything."

A long silence followed. Jack rose, staring at her. "Yes, something to look into." He made a big show of looking at the clock. "It's, ah, late. Perhaps I should see you home."

Not this time, Cordelia thought. "Your feelings for Jack are pure." The creatures voice echoed in her brain.

Jack went over to his desk toward Cordelia to get his boots. He watched her move away, but not toward the door. Instead, she stood by the fireplace, staring at the globe on the mantle as if she expected to find answers there. He snatched his shaking hand back. He'd need the rest of that brandy tonight.

"What will it take to banish the ghosts between us, Jack?" She asked it almost nonchalantly, to his ears. He felt like someone had reached out of the shadows and slapped him. Bells clanged in his head like fire warnings.

He had to stop this.

"I don't know what you mean. " He stood back up, looking out the window. She could see her reflection turn to him, see her eyes full of emotion staring at him in the glass.

<flash>

She looked so beautiful that night, right before he knew she would shatter into a thousand shards of glass, his own grief a knife wound in his chest. He took her hands as she watched him, pleading with him not to say the words that would make it all real, but he had to.

"There's been an accident"

"No, don't"

Frantic, pleading, her face beseeched him not to tell her what she already knew.his tears, the bloodstain on his sleeve telling the story. His heart broke again and again, with each word, knowing he wounded this woman, his angel, with them. He saw over and over the broken man in the street..his friend his brother, and heard the scream of horses in his brain.

"Cordelia" He called her by her name for the first time, and he didn't even notice. "Robert's dead."

<flash>

He woke from a world of fire and pain to the face of an angel, sleepiness and gaslight mingling to give her a red-tinged halo,.and he would forever live with the guilt of loving his best friend's wife

Jack closed his eyes to block out the image in the window, to stop the memories that flooded his brain. Her voice, sharp and thick, still managed to break through. "You still think of me as Robert's widow? Strange, I don't. I am Cordelia, my self, my own person. You have nothing to feel guilty for."

Too late to go back, Jack resigned himself to barreling on, wincing as she read him so well. He turned away from the window to face her. "I know, you're right, but that's not all. We don't belong together, do we?" Forgetting manners, he snatched his cigarette case off the desk, opened it up, and lit one, inhaling deeply. "You are not only my best friend's wife..widow but come from a world of sitting rooms. You rub elbows with blue bloods and have status."

Rolling her eyes, Cordelia turned away. "I don't care about all that. And if you're going to lecture me on how much of a killer you are again, save it."

He watched her run a gloved finger over the mantle as he leaned more casually than he felt against the window frame. "What did Robert tell you of my upbringing?" He had to tell her the rest. She had to know, else he would be like Robert, hiding things. Jack's heart tried to climb to his throat.

Cordelia dropped her hand, but she did not turn around. Instead, her eyes found a point on the ceiling. "After you told me you'd come to the Order by picking the wrong pocket, Robert admitted that you had run with a gang of boys as a pickpocket and a thief, that you had run away from the aunt and uncle that had raised you."

Jack deliberately picked the harshest words and language. "Yes, they never let me forget where I came from, my cousins neither. I was born in Whitechapel, the bastard son of a whore."

His whole body clenched as she slowly turned. Desperate, he sought reaction in her smooth, cool face. She didn't even blink once before she replied, "I don't care. I love you."

For an instant he stood, staring at this angel in silks with her gloved hands folded in front of her. When he moved, Jack crossed the room in two strides, took her chin in his hands and kissed her. And he didn't stop kissing her.

He didn't stop when she clung to him, or when his roving, deft pickpocket's fingers found buttons and stays. And she wouldn't let him stop when he scooped her small frame up off the floor and carried her to the small, cramped bedroom and the bed with a sagging mattress, or when his fingers pulled the pins from her hair.

And they lay there, later, clothed only with her hair, on top of the sheets against the July heat. Her head was tucked under his chin, and he nuzzled her and kissed the top of that brilliant auburn. "I love you, Cordelia." He said it ,and the guilt was gone