Thief of Shadows
“Thank you, Butterman,” Isabel said as she tucked the sword under her arm and pulled off her gloves and hat, handing them to the butler. “I need a bedroom readied immediately.”
Butterman, like all her servants, was impeccably trained. He didn’t even blink an eye at the abrupt order—or the sword she carelessly held. “Yes, my lady. Will the blue room do?”
“Quite.”
Butterman snapped his fingers and a maid went hurrying up the stairs.
Isabel turned and watched as Harold and Will came in, carrying the Ghost between them. The Ghost’s floppy hat lay on his chest.
Butterman raised his eyebrow a fraction of an inch at the sight of the unconscious man, but merely said, “The blue room, Harold, if you please.”
“Yes, sir,” Harold panted.
“If you don’t mind, my lady,” Butterman murmured, “I believe Mrs. Butterman may be of assistance.”
“Yes, thank you, Butterman. Please send Mrs. Butterman up as quickly as possible.” Isabel followed the footmen up the stairs.
The maids were still turning back the sheets on the bed in the blue room when the footmen arrived with their burden, but the fire on the grate was lit.
Harold hesitated, probably because the Ghost was quite dirty and bloody, but Isabel gestured to the bed. The Ghost groaned as the footmen laid him on the spotless counterpane.
Isabel propped his sword in a corner of the room and hurried to his side. They were out of danger, but her pulse hadn’t slowed. She realized she was a bit excited by this odd turn of events. She’d rescued the Ghost of St. Giles. What had started as an ordinary, almost dull day had become a curious adventure.
The Ghost’s eyes were closed. He still wore his mask, though it was askew on his face. Carefully she lifted the thing over his head and was surprised to find underneath a thin black silk scarf covering the upper part of his face, from the bridge of his strong nose to his forehead. Two eyeholes had been cut into the material to make a second, thinner mask. She examined the harlequin’s mask in her hand. It was leather and stained black. High arching eyebrows and the curving grotesque nose gave the mask a satyr-like leer. She set it on a table by the bed and looked back at the Ghost. He lay limp and heavy on the bed. Blood stained his motley leggings above his black jackboots. She bit her lip. Some of the blood looked quite fresh.
“Butterman said ’twas a man injured,” Mrs. Butterman said as she bustled into the room. She went to the bed and stared at the Ghost a moment, hands on hips, before nodding decisively. “Well, nothing for it. We’ll need to undress him, my lady, and find out where the blood’s coming from.”
“Oh, of course,” Isabel said. She reached for the buttons of the Ghost’s fall as Mrs. Butterman began on the doublet.
Behind her, Isabel heard a gasp. “Oh, my lady!”
“What is it, Pinkney?” Isabel asked as she worked at a stubborn button. Blood had dried on the material, making it stiff.
“ ’Tisn’t proper for you to be doing such work.” Pinkney sounded as scandalized as if Isabel had proposed walking naked in Westminster Cathedral. “He’s a man.”
“I assure you I have seen a nude man before,” Isabel said mildly as she peeled back the man’s leggings. Underneath, his smallclothes were soaked in blood. Good God. Could a man lose so much blood and survive? She frowned in worry as she began working at the ties to his smallclothes.
Isabel glanced up for a moment and froze. His chest was delineated with lean muscles, his nipples brown against his pale skin, with black, curling hair spreading between. His belly was hard and ridged, his navel entirely obscured by that same black, curling hair. Isabel blinked. She had seen a man—men, actually—naked, true, but Edmund had been in his sixth decade when he’d died and had certainly never looked like this. And the few, discreet lovers that she’d taken since Edmund’s death had been aristocrats—men of leisure. They’d hardly had more muscles than she. Her eye caught on the line of hair trailing down from his navel. It disappeared into his smallclothes.
Where her hands were.
Isabel swallowed and untied the garment, a little surprised by the tremble of her fingers, and drew them down his legs. His genitals were revealed, his cock thick and long, even at rest, his bollocks heavy.
“Well,” Mrs. Butterman said, “he certainly seems healthy enough there.”
“Oh my, yes,” Pinkney breathed.
Isabel looked around irritably. She’d not realized the maid had come close enough to see the Ghost. Isabel drew a corner of the counterpane over the Ghost’s loins, feeling protective of the unconscious man.
“Help me take off his boots so we can bare his legs completely,” Isabel told Mrs. Butterman. “If we can’t find the wound there, we’ll have to turn him over.”
But as they stripped his breeches farther down his legs, a long gash was revealed on the man’s muscled right thigh. Fresh blood oozed and trickled over his leg as the sodden material was pulled away.
“There ’tis,” Mrs. Butterman said. “We can send for the doctor, my lady, but I’ve a fair hand with the needle and thread.”
Isabel nodded. She glanced again at the wound, relieved it was not nearly as bad as she’d feared. “Fetch what you’ll need, please, Mrs. Butterman, and take Pinkney with you to help. I have a feeling he won’t be much pleased by a doctor.”
Mrs. Butterman hurried out with Pinkney following behind.
Isabel waited, alone in the room save for the Ghost of St. Giles. Why had she rescued him? It’d been an action taken almost without thought—to leave a defenseless man to be ravaged by a mob was an idea that instinctively repulsed her. But now that he was in her house, she found herself more curious about the man himself. What sort of man risked his life in the disguise of a harlequin? Was he a footpad or a sword for hire? Or was he merely a madman? Isabel looked at him. He was unconscious, but he was still a commanding presence, his big body sprawled upon the dainty bed. He was a man in the prime of his life, strong and athletic, nearly bare to her gaze.
All except his face.
Her hand moved almost without thought, stretching toward the black silk mask still covering the upper part of his face. Was he handsome? Ugly? Merely ordinary-looking?
Her hand began to descend toward the mask.
His flashed up and caught her wrist.
His eyes opened, assessing and quite clearly brown. “Don’t.”
THIS DAY WAS not going as planned.
“Don’t,” he whispered again. Her wrist was warm and delicate, but he could feel the feminine strength beneath his fingers, and his own muscles were damnably weak at the moment.
“Very well,” she murmured. “How long have you been awake?”
She made no move to pull her wrist from his grasp.
“I woke when you took off my leggings.” That had certainly been an interesting way to regain consciousness.
“Then you’re not as badly off as we thought,” she drawled in her husky voice.
He grunted and turned his head to look about the room. A wave of nausea and dizziness nearly made him pass out again. “Where am I?”
He kept his voice to a low, barely audible rasp. Perhaps if he whispered, she wouldn’t recognize him.
“My home.” She cocked her head. “I won’t touch your mask if you don’t want me to.”
He watched her, calculating. He was naked, in a strange house, and wounded. The odds were not in his favor.
She raised one elegant eyebrow. “If you’d let go of my wrist?”
He opened his hand. “Your pardon.”
She rubbed her wrist, her eyes lowered demurely. “I saved your life earlier, and you’re quite at my mercy now”—her eyes flicked over his nude body—“yet I don’t think you truly ask my pardon.”
She raised her gaze to his, intelligent, humorous, and utterly seductive.
The danger was palpable.
Winter’s lips twitched. “Perhaps I’m just a rude fellow.”
“Rude, undoubtedly.” She flicked a finger over the small bit of material covering his pelvis, and his base flesh stirred in mindless response. “But ungrateful as well?” She shook her head sadly.
He raised his eyebrows. “I trust you do not blame me, madam, for my present state of undress. I do vow, I woke thus and know not who to blame but you.”
Her eyes widened just a fraction and she bit her lip as if to quell a tremor of laughter. “I assure you my, uh, curiosity was prompted merely by a desire to find out where you were wounded, sir.”
Perhaps it was the mask and the intimacy of the quiet room.
Or perhaps it was the knock on the head he’d received earlier. “Did you discover that which you sought?”
Her lips, wide and delicate, curved into a secret smile. “Oh, yes, I found all that I could wish for.”
He inhaled, his pulse too fast, his head too light, and his cock too unruly, but the door to the room opened at that moment. Instantly, Winter closed his eyes. He instinctively knew it was best that the others not know he was awake and aware. He couldn’t logically explain this impulse, but since this type of instinct had saved his life countless times in the past, he no longer bothered to question the urge.
Carefully he peered from beneath his eyelashes.
His field of vision was limited, but at least two females entered the room.
“How is he?” one of the women—a servant, judging by her accent—asked.
“He hasn’t moved,” Lady Beckinhall replied.
She didn’t mention that she’d been talking to him only seconds before, he noticed. But then he’d always known Lady Beckinhall was quick-witted.
“Shouldn’t we take off his mask?” a different, younger, female voice asked eagerly.
“Do you think that wise?” Lady Beckinhall inquired. “He might decide he must kill us if we learn his identity.”
Winter almost cocked an eyebrow at this outrageous suggestion. The younger servant girl gave a muted scream. Obviously she hadn’t noticed how very solemn Lady Beckinhall’s voice was—the lady was hiding her amusement.
The first servant sighed. “I’ll sew his leg up quick and then we’ll get him comfortable.”
Which was when Winter realized that the next several minutes of his life were to be quite unpleasant.
His entire body ached, so he hadn’t really noticed until that moment that his right thigh throbbed in particular. Apparently that was the wound Lady Beckinhall had been searching for.
He closed his eyes fully then and waited, breathing in and out slowly, letting his arms and legs lie as if weighted on the bed.
It’s the shock that makes pain hard to bear, his mentor had said long ago. Expect it, welcome it, and pain becomes simply another sensation, easy enough to brush aside.
He thought of the home and the logistics of moving eight and twenty children into a new building. Fingers touched his wound, pinching the edges together with a sharp bite of agony as fresh, warm blood trickled over his leg. Winter was aware of the pain, but he set it aside, letting it flow through him and out again as he considered each child at the home and how he or she would react to the move.