Thief of Shadows (Maiden Lane #4)(72)
Author: Elizabeth Hoyt

“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.”

She opened her eyes, glancing up, and caught a look upon Lady Beckinhall’s face that she’d never seen on anyone before. She literally went gray, her eyes wide with horror.

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?”

He gave her an ironic look but remained silent.

She poured herself a cup of tea, adding a dollop of milk and a spoonful of sugar before sipping. “What were they making in this workshop anyway? You never said.”