Scandalous Desires (Maiden Lane #3)(35)
Author: Elizabeth Hoyt

“Then that presents an additional problem,” Asa said.

Winter arched an eyebrow in inquiry.

“Besides the difficulty of getting into the palace and rescuing her,” Asa said, “we will also need to have a place where we can safely bring both her and the child. A place that neither Mickey nor his enemies can find.”

Winter nodded slowly. “I believe your assessment is correct. She will never leave willingly unless she knows we can keep the child safe.”

Concord leaned forward placing his massive forearms on the table. “In that case it’s obvious who we should bring into this.”

SILENCE WAS TEARING her heart out over the child.

Two mornings later Mick stood over Silence’s bed and watched her sleep. There were smudges of exhaustion and fear under her eyes, her brown hair was coming down from a plait, and she clutched the sheet in one fragile fist like a little girl afraid of night terrors.

She slept as if dead—she’d not moved as he’d entered her room. He brushed a stray lock of hair away from her eyes. Her breath didn’t even hitch.

Mick sighed and straightened. It was not yet dawn—still dark out. She’d spent the last two nights and the day in between nursing the child. He’d stayed away, but he’d had Fionnula report the happenings in the sickroom three or four times a day.

The child was growing thinner, her little body lit from within by a fire that would not die. If the fire consumed her—

Mick clenched his jaw and turned away from the bed. He left without glancing in the direction of the child’s cot, crossing through his own room and out into the hallway.

Harry looked up as Mick closed the door quietly behind him. Mick nodded at the guard and turned to stride down the hall. If the babe died, Silence’s heart would be torn from her chest as surely as if a wild animal had savaged her. He had no heart himself, but he’d heard they were delicate things and easily broken. Mick growled low under his breath as he made his way to the front of the house. He knew how to protect Silence from knives and fists, from poverty and want, but he had no idea how—or even if—he could protect her from her own soft heart.

Mick passed the half-dozen guards he’d stationed at the front door and went out into the new morning. He glanced up at the grayish-pink sky and then studied his palace. It was a peacock cleverly disguised as a crow. There was no indication of what lay behind the deceptively simple plain wood door. One would never know from looking at it that the door was reinforced from behind with iron.

There was one other entry to the palace—a door leading to the small courtyard behind—and that was guarded, as well. From the outside, his palace appeared to be a dozen or more narrow row houses, built right next to each other. In reality, it was all one building inside and the doors to the house façades had been boarded up from inside long ago.

Mick grunted and turned to walk up the street. He might seem overprotected against attack, but then he had an unrelenting enemy.

A shadow moved in a narrow alley as he passed it and Mick whirled, a knife held ready in his hand. Lad emerged into the weak light, his ears laid back, his head down in submission.

“Jaysus,” Mickey breathed in disgust and shoved the knife back in the sheath strapped to his forearm.

He started down the street again and the dog trotted out happily and fell into step behind him.

The daylight people of St. Giles were already on the streets. The ones he passed now did honest work—more or less—porters, hawkers, chair men, night soil men, and beggars. They gave him a wide berth, careful not to meet his eyes. They knew him of course. He was their king and they were properly respectful. The river and the boats he lived on were to the east and he’d be nearer his work if he lived in Wapping or some other place in the East End of London. But Mick had been born and grown up in St. Giles. Had run the streets like a feral young wolf cub as a boy, had fucked his first woman here. Killed his first man. This was his home and when he’d made his fortune he’d built his palace in St. Giles.

And now there was one more thing that held him here.

He crossed a street and looked up. The spire of the new St. Giles-in-the-Fields loomed ahead. Mildew had destroyed the old church. Rumor had it that the mildew had fed upon the damp from the rotting plague corpses buried beneath the church flagstones. Certainly the air in the old church had held an evil stink. But no more. The modern church was clean and elegant, a far cry from the old building. Mick grunted. The new church had been built by nobles living outside of London City proper. He wondered what the locals—the ones who actually lived by the church—thought of the new building.

Mick skirted the church, coming upon the graveyard wall. A little way farther and the gate came into sight. He pushed it open. The graveyard was old, of course, the monuments moss-covered, some leaning as if the underground inhabitants had tried to push their way free from the earth. Mick made his way through the crooked rows, Lad padding silently behind him, and even though St. Giles lay just beyond a small wall, the clatter and hustle without was muffled. The graveyard held its own insulated atmosphere.

Mick watched carefully as he neared the grave he’d come to see, for he wasn’t alone in the graveyard.

The Vicar of Whitechapel stood looking down at her headstone and the freshly mounded earth. For a man who had terrorized the East End of London for the better part of a decade he didn’t look that intimidating. He was of average height, wiry rather than heavily muscled, his shoulder-length hair graying, and his features pleasant.

“She called your name,” Charlie said as Mick halted on the far side of the new grave. “As she was dying. Pity you didn’t see fit to visit her on her deathbed.”

Mick smiled widely, easily, as if the news that she’d called for him wasn’t a white-hot poker thrust through his chest. “Busy, wasn’t I?”

Charlie turned then, looking at Mickey full on, and revealing the horror that was the left side of his face. His skin had melted or burned off his face. The eye socket was merely a hardened gouge, his nostril destroyed, his lips pulled down into his chin. The ear was a melted rim and the hair on the left side of his head was in tufts as if most of it had been pulled out by the very roots.

Mick’s smile widened. “Yer gettin’ handsomer by the hour, Charlie.”

The Vicar’s expression didn’t change—but then many of his facial muscles had been destroyed. His remaining brown eye glittered with mad hatred, though. A wise man would step away from such vicious anger.