Thief of Shadows
His beast had escaped tonight. He’d broken his vow to stay away from Isabel simply because he’d found it impossible to continue to do so. And when he’d come to her, he’d made love to her like an animal made mad by lust. She’d been wet, though, beautifully, wonderfully wet, so perhaps she hadn’t been as appalled as he by the primitiveness of his possession of her. She hadn’t been scared and that was good, for the darkness within himself certainly scared him. It was as if she’d unlocked a cage that once opened could never again be shut. The beast was out now, free and untamed, and it adored her. Her snapping wit, the vulnerable place inside her, even the hurt that her barrenness had caused her. And especially the look that came into her blue, blue eyes when he touched her at her center. Oh, the beast liked that especially.
He growled under his breath as he leaped between buildings. The space was too great, the jump too dangerous, yet he landed on the other side easily.
Perhaps love unfulfilled had made him a demigod.
Blasphemous thought. He stood on the roof, the moon casting her light against his back and the angled rooftop door in front of him. He shook his head, trying to clear it of emotion entirely before he drew both his swords and kicked in the door.
It swung inward on broken hinges, crashing against an unseen wall. The room revealed was without light. Several dark forms began to rise, clumsy with sleep and confusion. Winter’s eyes were already accustomed to the dark. He had the advantage of surprise and higher ground.
Always attack from above if you are able.
The ghostly voice of his mentor whispered in his ear even as Winter leaped to the room below. He landed on the largest form—a man with huge shoulders, reeking of sweat. The man had gotten only as far as his knees, but Winter’s weight knocked him face-first to the ground. He wasn’t moving, so Winter swung to the next man, slapping him on the side of the head.
BANG! A gun went off, the flash blinding everyone in the darkness.
Winter closed his eyes and continued fighting. Years ago, Sir Stanley had made him practice his sword craft with a bag over his head for just this reason. He felt a body stumble against his, and Winter elbowed the man high in the belly. There was a thump as the man fell and then he heard the scurry of fleeing feet.
Winter opened his eyes.
The man he’d just knocked down was struggling at his feet. A half-dozen strange machines in the shape of overlarge chairs sat against the walls of the low attic room. Otherwise the room was empty besides the body of the first man, still insensible from Winter landing on him.
Disappointment slashed through Winter, making his grip rougher than usual when he hauled the man to his feet.
“Where are they?” he asked, because there wasn’t anything else to do. “Where are the children?”
To his astonishment, his victim waved to the far end of the room. “There.”
Winter’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. Either the man was trying to get rid of him or it was a trap, but in any case he had to investigate.
He took the man by the coat collar and dragged him to the far end of the room. As Winter got closer, he could see that there was a small door in the wall. Hope began to bloom in his chest and he fought it back savagely. He’d found hidey-holes before. They’d all been empty or occupied by adults.
There was a stout wooden bar across the door and Winter lifted it before cautiously opening the door. It was even darker than the outer room, a hellish little pit without light or hope. The air fairly reeked of despair. At first he thought the ghastly little room empty. Then a small shape moved. And another. And another.
A little girl’s face emerged from the pit, thin and starving. “Please,” was all she could say.
He’d found them. He’d finally found them.
“YOU HAVE A visitor, my lady.”
Megs looked up vaguely from the open book on her lap the next morning. She couldn’t remember how long she’d been sitting here in the library with the book as disguise, but there was an empty cup of tea by her elbow, so it evidently had been quite some time.
“I’m not receiving visitors,” she said dully.
“Oh, surely that doesn’t apply to me.” Lady Beckinhall sauntered into the library behind the butler, nodding a dismissal at the man.
He looked relieved as he left the room.
“I’ve come to take you out,” Lady Beckinhall announced, peering at a huge Bible on a stand.
“I’ve got a headache.”
“All the better, then,” Lady Beckinhall said briskly. “Fresh air will do your head good.”
“Usually doctors prescribe bed rest for a headache,” Megs pointed out.
“They prescribe bed rest for everything,” Lady Beckinhall said somewhat obscurely. She turned from the Bible, her expression softening. “Please? It’s been almost a sennight since Mr. Makepeace left the home. I estimate Lady Penelope has about run it into the ground by now. I thought we should at least go see.”
“Mr. Makepeace left?” For a moment Megs felt a stirring of interest.
“Yes. Two days after—” Lady Beckinhall winced and stopped, looking at Megs helplessly.
Two days after Roger died.
Megs looked back at the book in her lap, the words blurring. “I can’t. I’m sorry.”
She felt Lady Beckinhall coming nearer. “Why? Why can’t you leave?”
“I just can’t.”
“What is it?” Lady Beckinhall laid a cool hand against her forehead. “Are you really ill? Have you seen a physician?”
“No!” Megs moved her head aside. “It isn’t that.”
“Then what?”
The words were out of her mouth before she could catch them. “I’m with child.”
Oh, lovely. Apparently she’d shocked the unshockable Lady Beckinhall. “I’m sorry,” Megs muttered inanely. “I don’t know what I was thinking to tell you. Forget I ever—”
“You were thinking that you needed help.” The look was gone from Lady Beckinhall’s face as swiftly as it had appeared, color beginning to seep back into her cheeks. “And fortunately, you’ve told the right person.”
Chapter Seventeen
When the Harlequin slew the last man, the Harlequin’s True Love ran toward him, but as she did so, he turned and sprinted away, as fleet as a stag. For many hours, the True Love pursued the Harlequin, never losing sight of him, until he came to bay against a dead end. Quick as a wink, the True Love darted forward and threw the cord braided from her own hair over his upper body, drawing it tight so that his arms were trapped against his sides. In this way, she bound him with her love…
—from The Legend of the Harlequin Ghost of St. Giles
Isabel entered her pretty little dining room and paused. She and Lady Margaret had never made their trip to the orphanage. Instead, she’d just written and posted a letter on Lady Margaret’s behalf and was ready for luncheon. But Winter was sitting at the rosewood table, a single cup of tea before him. That was odd. Winter usually ate a scandalously early breakfast and then left for the nursery or for a study she’d let him use. Yet he was still here hours after lessons with Christopher should have started.
“What is it?” she asked without preamble.
His gaze didn’t rise from his teacup. “I found them.”
She darted a quick glance at the footman standing in the corner pretending not to listen. “Tell Cook there’ll be two for luncheon.” She waited until the footman had left before asking Winter, “Found who?”
“The children.” His voice was dead.
She frowned. “But that’s good news, surely?”
His gaze finally rose to hers, and she saw that his eyes were red-rimmed and sunken. She revised her earlier thought: It wasn’t that he’d gotten up late this morning. He hadn’t gone to bed at all.
She pulled out a chair and eased into it. “Tell me.”
He spread his hands before him and looked at his palms as if trying to understand his past or future. “They were in an attic of a house divided and then divided again into a warren of rooms. Fifteen girls all crammed into a room with no windows, no ventilation, and a ceiling that was no more than my shoulder’s height at its tallest. Not a one smiled in happiness or even relief when I opened their barred door and rescued them. I think they had given up hope.”
She closed her eyes, mourning those children hidden away and used. Mourning Winter’s pain. “But you did find them. They’ll learn to smile again.”
“Will they?” he asked, and she opened her eyes to see him shaking his head. “I don’t know.”
“Where are they now?”
“I brought them to the home. Knocked on the door and stood in the shadows until the door was opened and they were let in, safe and sound. They didn’t move, didn’t try to flee while they waited.”
The footman returned followed by two of his compatriots bearing platters of cold meats, cheeses, bread, and fruit.
“Just set it here,” Isabel said, waving to the table. “We’ll serve ourselves.”
She waited until they’d trooped out of the dining room again before filling Winter’s plate with a selection of everything on the table. “Here, eat this.”
He stared down at the food as if it were something he’d never seen before. “There were adults in the outer room when I first got there, but most ran away. I did restrain one man, but he seems odd in the head. He couldn’t tell me who was behind the workshop. Who the aristocrat was who made money off the backs of little children. Perhaps he never saw d’Arque.”
She was pouring him a fresh cup of tea, but she paused in the act. “Lord d’Arque?”
“Yes.” He ran his hand impatiently over his hair. “I told you: I found that scrap of paper with his seal in the hand of a child I rescued from these people.”
She arched an eyebrow and said gently, “You told me that you’d found the scrap of paper in a little boy’s hand in St. Giles. You never said the little boy was connected with the workshop people you were looking for.”
“Didn’t I?” He frowned, looking terribly weary. “Well, he was. People in St. Giles call them the ‘lassie snatchers,’ for apparently they like girls for their work. Little girls have smaller fingers and are more nimble for fine work.”
She knit her brows. “But I can’t see Viscount d’Arque being involved in this.”
Winter gave her a jaundiced look. “And I recognized d’Arque’s coachman as one of the lassie snatchers.”
That made her pause for a second. “Did you talk to the coachman?”
“Yes.” Winter grimaced. “He said it wasn’t d’Arque.”
“Well, then—”
“And then the coachman ran away before I could get anything else from him. For all I know, he was simply covering for his master.”
“Or perhaps he was speaking the truth,” Isabel said. “I know you don’t like the viscount, and I admit he can be quite annoying, but that doesn’t make him criminal. That doesn’t make him the sort of person who would let a little girl be hurt for money.”
He shook his head. “I think you’re biased.”
She remembered the look on his face when Lord d’Arque had flirted with her at the Duchess of Arlington’s ball. “I think you may be biased as well.”
He shrugged moodily, not speaking.
She took the opportunity to serve herself some cheese and fruit. “Why don’t you show Lord d’Arque the scrap of paper? Ask him who he wrote it to?”