Thief of Shadows (Maiden Lane #4)(25)
Author: Elizabeth Hoyt

Sadly, this was a common tale in St. Giles—and the reason for the home’s existence. Winter could not count the times that he had sent a servant or gone himself to find an orphaned or abandoned child and bring him or her back to the home. What was different in this case was the fact that someone had beaten the home’s emissary to the child the last two times they had been sent out.

Winter very much feared that someone—someone organized—was stealing orphaned children off the streets of St. Giles.

Winter ran along the peak of a house and jumped down to its lower neighbor. The buildings of St. Giles had not been properly planned. Tenements, shops, warehouses, and workshops had all been built, higgledy-piggledy, cheek by jowl, sometimes literally one on top of another. It made for a confusing warren of buildings to the outsider, but Winter could traverse St. Giles with his eyes closed.

And by rooftop at that.

Naturally, he’d sent Tommy out to fetch the child back to the home, but Winter hoped to reach the child before Tommy. He’d excused himself from the supper table, saying his leg was bothering him again, hurriedly donned the costume of the Ghost, and set out from his bedroom window under the eves.

Now he glanced down and saw that he was over Chapel Alley. The chandler shop owner who’d reported the orphan had said that the child’s mother had lived in a room just off Phoenix Street, only a stone’s throw away. Winter leaped to a balcony below, ran along the rail, and used the corner of the brick building for fingerholds as he climbed down to the alley.

By the alley wall, a girl of about ten had watched his descent with wide eyes, clutching a basket to her bosom. A few wilted posies at the bottom of the basket were obviously leftover from her day of hawking flowers.

“Where does Nelly Broom live?” Winter asked the girl, giving the name of the dead whore.

The girl pointed to a crooked house at the end of the alley. “Second floor, back o’ th’ ’ouse, but she died this morn.”

“I know.” Winter nodded his thanks. “I’ve come for the child.”

“Best pick up your feet, then,” the flower girl said.

Winter paused to look back at her. “Why’s that?”

She shrugged. “The lassie snatchers ’ave gone in already.”

Winter turned and ran. Lassie snatchers? Was that the organized group of kidnappers working in St. Giles—and were they so well known then that a little girl had a name for them?

He shoved open the outer door to the house the girl had pointed to. Inside, a narrow staircase directly faced the outer door. Winter ran up it on the balls of his feet, careful not to alert his quarry.

The stairs let out into a tiny landing with a single door. Winter opened it, surprising a family at their evening meal. Three children crowded their mother’s skirts, mealy bread crusts clutched in their hands. The father, a gaunt fellow with a full head of red hair, pointed a thumb over his shoulder to where Winter could see another door. Winter nodded silently at the man and swept past. The door led into a smaller room that had obviously been divided off from the main room. Two bedraggled women cowered together in a corner. Across from them, the window stood open.

Winter didn’t have to ask. He strode to the window and leaned out. The drop to the street was at least twenty feet, but a narrow ledge ran directly below the window. Winter swung his leg over and, gripping the top of the window, stood on the ledge. About a yard above him, he could see a man’s legs disappearing over the eves. Winter grasped the crumbling edge of the eves and hauled himself up. On the roof stood a man and a youth, and in the youth’s arms, a child, so frightened it wasn’t even crying.

The man gave a yell at the sight of Winter coming over the eves. “Th’ Ghost! ’Tis th’ Ghost come to drag us to ’ell!”

“Leg it!” cried the youth, and they turned.

But Winter was on them already, the blood pumping in his veins, righteous rage nearly blinding him. He grasped the man’s coat, pulling him backward. The man threw a frantic punch that Winter absorbed on his shoulder before laying the man flat with a blow to the jaw.

The youth hadn’t stopped. He was near the roof edge, debating whether he could make a six-foot leap across to the next building. He backed a step in preparation, the child still in his arms.

And then Winter caught hold of him.

The youth whipped around, as lethal as a snake, and sank his teeth into Winter’s wrist.

Winter grit his teeth and grabbed the boy by his hair, shaking him like a rat. The youth let go of his wrist at the same time as he let go of the child. The child tumbled down, narrowly missing the roof edge, and lay as if stunned, small eyes staring up at Winter unblinking.

With his free hand, Winter took hold of the child’s foot and dragged him away from the roof edge. The child had been wrapped in a blanket, which caught on the roof tiles as he was dragged, leaving him entirely nude.

Winter bent and flung the edge of the blanket over the child. “Stay there,” he whispered.

The little boy nodded mutely.

Then Winter turned to the youth he still held by the hair. He shook him again. “You might’ve dropped that babe over the edge.”

The youth shrugged. “Plenty more where ’e came from, innit there? ’Sides, it’s a boy.”

Winter’s eyes narrowed. “The whoremonger you work for doesn’t take male children?”

“Don’t ’ave a lassie’s nimble fingers, do they?” The youth bared his teeth like a feral dog. “ ’Sides, I don’t work for no stinkin’ whoremonger. You’d best be afeared of the man who pays me—’e’s a toff, ’e is.”

“What toff?”

The youth’s eyes flicked over Winter’s shoulder.

Winter ducked to the side, just avoiding the blow meant for his head. The older man skipped back. But the youth was free now, racing after the older man as they fled away over the rooftops.

Winter instinctively started in their direction but drew himself up abruptly when he remembered the little boy. He turned back to the child.

The boy lay where Winter had left him, still unmoving. His eyes widened as Winter approached and picked him up, bundled in the ragged blanket. He felt too light. No doubt he was undernourished as so many children were in St. Giles. If the child had had clothes before his mother’s death, the other inhabitants in the house where he lived had obviously stolen them.

A black weight seemed to settle on Winter’s shoulders. He might’ve saved this little boy, but no doubt the “lassie snatchers” were running somewhere else in St. Giles, still plying their evil trade tonight even as he stood here.