by Mia Marlowe
“Thank you. Let’s go.” She took Samuel’s arm and led him to the door.
Once the door closed behind them Samuel said, “I could have gotten more from him.”
“We don’t need more. We’ve discovered the name His Grace’s son is known by—Willie Craythorpe.”
Samuel set his mouth in a hard line. The name was all she required. She intended to go Finding again. And there wasn’t a thing he could do about it.
They say a man isn’t truly a man until he stands at the grave of his father. Since mine will not have the grace to die, I cannot look forward to that moment of emancipation. But if Grigori harms a hair on Meg’s head, I’ll make him wish he could die. By all that’s holy, I so swear.
~ from the journal of Samuel Templeton, Lord Badewyn
Chapter Twenty-one
Hovering overhead, Meg peered down at the boy in the chicken coop. It wasn’t far from the bakery where she and Samuel had lodged, but it was on a much dingier street with slatternly outbuildings lining the alley behind the row of terrace houses. There were no birds at roost in the coop, but she remembered well the stench of a hen house and was thankful she couldn’t sense smells when she was Finding. She recognized Mercedes’ dark coloring in the lad, but his square jaw and the defiant tilt of his chin was all the duke.
“I’m not afraid.” The lad’s voice quavered only slightly.
“You better be!” The door slammed shut, releasing a choking cloud of dust. The boy blinked in the dimness.
“No, wait. Don’t lock me in here!”
“Listen to me, Wilfred Craythorpe,” the man’s voice hissed through the crack in the door. A heavy brace slide into its iron brackets with the finality of coffin nails. “You tell me where you hid that thing, or you’ll rot in there. It’s all the same to me. One less mouth to feed.”
“But, it’s mine,” Will said. “Mother gave it to me before she died.”
“She never shoulda give it to you and she weren’t your mother. And in any case, she’s gone now. We need money.”
“You mean you need more to drink.” Even in the dimness, Meg saw that one of the boy’s eyes was swollen almost shut and blood dripped from his nose. He swiped it on his dirty shirt sleeve. On the other side of the door, the man made a sound like a kettle, near to boiling.
“Give it to me, Will!”
“Not in a hundred years.”
Silence. At first, Meg thought the man had left, but then his voice sliced through the crack, oily and mean.
“Fine,” he said. “If that’s the way you want it, you can just spend the night in there thinking about it. But I got to warn you, there’s rats a plenty. ’Spect they’ll eat a fellow’s nose off before morning. Sleep tight.”
Will covered his mouth to swallow the sob the man was waiting to hear. When Meg heard footsteps retreating toward the shabby house, the boy pounded the door once with his closed fist. A tear scalded down his grubby cheek, but he wiped it away angrily.
“That’s right. Don’t cry,” Meg said, even though the boy couldn’t hear her. “It’s just what he wants, Will.”
No, not Will. His name is Henry, she reminded herself. Her chest ached for the duke’s son in such a horrible circumstance. Nothing would give her greater pleasure than to rescue this poor boy. She felt the tug back to her body, waiting in the rooms above Mrs. Waddle’s bakery. Samuel would be beside himself the whole time her spirit was wandering, but she had to be absolutely certain this was His Grace’s son.
Will sniffed and knuckled his eyes, wincing slightly. Then he picked up the stick leaning against one wall. He poked at each of the four corners, looking for evidence of rats. Satisfied he was alone in the chicken coop, he squared his shoulders, put his back to the door, and marched off five paces. Pocket knife in hand, he dropped to his knees and began digging in the dirt floor. When he didn’t find anything right away, his digging became more frantic. Finally, about six inches down, his blade ripped into oilcloth.
He wiped the blade clean on his trousers and slid it back into his pocket. Gently, he brushed away the remaining dirt and lifted the cloth from its hiding place. Will unwound the cloth carefully.
In the slivers of moonlight that filtered through the chinks in the coop, an ornate silver locket sparkled in his hand. He fumbled with the latch and opened it to study the pair of miniatures inside.
The woman’s portrait had a sweetness around her slightly upturned mouth, as if she were hugging a delicious secret to herself. Meg recognized the duchess. The other miniature had probably been of His Grace, but it had been badly scratched so that the face was destroyed. The complicated knot of the cravat beneath the subject’s chin was one she’d seen on the duke. It could be no one else.
No doubt the boy’s abductors knew the mother was dead so there was no harm in leaving her image undamaged. The father, however, was another story.
“Before she died, she told me you’re my real mother. She kept this locket for me so I could prove it someday,” he said, reciting the tale to himself more than speaking to the woman in the locket. Meg sensed he needed to cement it in his mind. It wasn’t everyday a boy learned he wasn’t who he thought he was. “But if that’s so, why did you…”
He’d been so strong not to cry when the man locked him in there. Now his shoulders shook and he sobbed as if his heart would break.
Meg guessed what he was thinking. What was wrong with him? What had he done to make his real mother give him up? She’d wondered the same thing about herself. Of course, Uncle Rowney always claimed her parents had died, but she felt the sting of abandonment all the same.
It was past time when she should have flown back to her body, but she couldn’t bear to leave the boy in this state. Then Meg heard a faint scratching sound coming from the other side of the hen house wall. It was accompanied by a muffled whine.
“Dermot?” Will said. “Is that you, lad?”
The scratching became more frantic and the dog whined again. Will hastily re-wrapped the locket and stowed it in his pocket. He fished his jack-knife out again and stabbed at the hard dirt by the wall.
Meg turned away and “thought” herself back to the bakery. She had to lead Samuel back to the Craythorpe hen house on the double quick. With the boy digging on one side of the wall and the hound on the other, they’d have a hole big enough for Will squeeze through in short order. Once that happened, the boy would run away. He’d disappear into the city and change his name, just as she had when she escaped her Uncle Rowney. Without the right name, Meg would be hard pressed to Find the boy again.
Back in their rooms over Mrs. Waddle’s shop, Meg continued to gulp huge gasps of air, but she was slow to recover this time. Samuel claimed her skin still had a grayish undertone.
“You stayed away too long,” he said with a frown. “Your lips are bloodless. Your nails are blue, too.”
“Stop scolding. Am I a child to be paddled for my misdeeds?”
“Don’t tempt me.”
“But I had to be sure.”
“And you are, you say.” Samuel folded his arms over his chest, still upset with her for the chance she’d taken. “Very well. Where is the boy?”
Meg gave him directions to a house on a street not far from the bakery.
“Did you see Grigori while you were Finding?” he asked.
“No,” she said quickly, averting her gaze.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
“Nothing.” At least she hoped it was nothing. As she fled back to her body, she thought she caught a glimpse of Samuel’s father, indistinct and fleeting, from the corner of one eye. “I didn’t see anything. I was focused on the lad.” She rose shakily to her feet. “We need to go quickly.”
Half-way to the door, her vision began to tunnel. Samuel caught her before she hit the floor. Then he scooped her up and carried her to the bed.
“That settles it. You’re not going anywhere until I see some roses in those cheeks.”
“But if we don’t get there
before the boy escapes, we’ll never find him again.”
“Never say never.”
“Please, Samuel.” She tried to sit up, but the room began spinning and she plopped back on the pillows. Perhaps he was right. She’d pushed the limits of her body’s endurance during her last Finding and now she was paying the price. “You’ll have to go without me.”
“Meg, I don’t dare leave you. What if Grigori—”
She pressed two fingers to his lips. “Do this for me.”
“Don’t ask that.” He caught up her hand and held it against his chest. His heart was pounding on her account, but she couldn’t relent.
“The boy will be lost if you don’t.” She kissed him. “The sooner you go, the sooner you can return. I promise to stay right here and be as meek as a lamb. Please, Samuel.”
“You aren’t happy unless you’re putting yourself at risk, are you?” He strode to the door, anger roiling off him. “I’ll leave you this time, but if you ask me to again, it’ll be for good.”
Samuel arrived in time to see a boy wiggling out from under the chicken coop’s wall. The lad stared up at him, his jaw sagging.
“Who are you?” he managed to whisper.
“That’s not important,” Samuel said.
“My mam always told me there was angels about,” the boy mumbled. “Are you my guardian angel?”
Samuel supposed he might seem like a supernatural being to the youngster since he appeared so unexpectedly in the small rear garden. He was broader, taller, and, according to Meg, fairer of face than most men. If his dark hair was silvered with starlight, it might seem like a halo.
“I’m not your guardian angel. Are you Wilfred Craythorpe?”
The boy nodded. “Mighta known you’re not my angel. No bloke from Cheapside ever had an angel of his own.”
“You’re not from Cheapside. And that’s not really your name,” Samuel said. “You are Henry St. James, the lost son and heir of the Duke of Camden.”
Samuel startled the lad by giving him a respectful bow. But he couldn’t linger long. Not when Meg needed him.
The boy barely had time to snatch up his long-legged puppy before Samuel grabbed him by the hand, hurried him down the alley and over to the next block. A cabby waited there, his cap pulled down over his eyes, clearly asleep on his perch.
Samuel woke him up with a demand that he take the boy to the Duke of Camden’s town house in Mayfair. The horse whickered and stamped, clearly ready to bed down in its stall.
“I can’t leave me fares, guv,” the cabby said grumpily. “I brung three gentlemen from Picadilly for some… entertainment hereabouts. I’m hired for the night and have to wait on their return.”
“Deliver this lad safely to the home of the Duke of Camden. Wait and see that he’s received there and I promise His Grace will make a place for you in his service.”
When Samuel flashed a couple of sovereigns, the cabby snapped upright. “Well, even if the duke don’t make good on somebody else’s promise, likely those gentlemen won’t come back looking for me till first light. I’ll take the boy to Mayfair.”
Samuel bundled young Henry into the cab.
“Wait,” the boy said. “What am I to say once I get to the duke’s house?”
“Tell them Badewyn sent you. Show Mr. Bernard what you’ve got in your pocket and you won’t have to say another word.”
The boy eyed him with suspicion. “Just what is it you think I’ve got in my pocket, mister?”
“Your past, boy,” Samuel said. “And your future.”
Meg was almost asleep when the door creaked open and Samuel came back in. He closed the door softly behind him.
Please don’t let him still be angry with me, she prayed silently. She could stand a great deal, but not that. Someday he’d see that she was right, that they had to put the welfare of the duke’s son ahead of hers, but now was not the time to try to convince him. It was enough that he’d done as she asked. She lay as still as stone, waiting for him to speak so she could gauge his mood.
“Are you asleep, Meg?” he whispered.
He sounded like himself, always putting her first. If she didn’t answer, she suspected he’d try to slip between the sheets without disturbing her. But she was more than ready to be “disturbed” by the handsome man she loved. She stretched and sat up.
“Did I wake you?” he asked.
“No, I was waiting for you.”
He settled his hip on her side of the bed and leaned over her. “I’ve been waiting for you, too.”
Alarm bells jangled in her brain. He hadn’t called her “his sunshine,” the code words they’d agreed upon and hoped never to have to use.
“How is His Grace’s son?” she asked. Now. Say it now.
A slice of silence cut between them. “Spoiled and self-indulgent, I warrant. How should the son of a duke be?”
He wasn’t describing the poor child Meg had sent Samuel off to save. He leaned in to kiss her, but she stopped him with a hand to his chest.
“I’m tired,” she said, hoping he wouldn’t feel her hand tremble. Like Lucifer who could assume pleasing shapes, other fallen angels could evidently do likewise. In the shaft of moonlight, the face Meg saw was Samuel’s. The voice was his. Lord help her, the smell of his skin was even the same, but the wicked smile on his lips was all Grigori.
“Not too tired,” he said hopefully, still trying to pass as his considerate son.
She feigned a yawn. “The travel has caught up to me. I can scarcely keep my eyes open.”
“I don’t care if you close your eyes.” He untied the lace at the bodice of her chemise.
“I said no.” She tried to roll away from him, but he pinned her to the feather tick with his body. “You can’t trick me. I know who you are.”
His smile faded. “Then you should know that, unlike my son for whom a ‘no’ means something, I’m used to having my way with my offspring’s wives.”
“But Samuel and I aren’t married.”
“A technicality. You should thank me, actually,” Grigori said, his face morphing back into its more mature manifestation. “Once I get you with child, he’ll have to marry you.”
Meg started to scream, but Grigori covered her mouth with his hand. “Not yet, sweeting. I haven’t begun to give you reason.”
“And you won’t as long as I draw breath,” a deep voice came from the doorway.
Meg wrested her mouth free and cried, “Samuel.”
He bounded across the room and hauled his father off her.
Grigori bared his teeth at him. “You can’t stop me.”
“You can’t stop me from trying,” Samuel said. “I’d walk through fire for her.”
“That can be arranged.” A ring of blue flames appeared around the bed, licking at the coverlet, but not catching.
Meg’s eyes widened as the men began to circle each other. She rose to her knees to see over the flames. Samuel peeled out of his jacket and waistcoat, the better to free his arm movement. Muscles bunched beneath his shirt. His dark brows lowered as he raised his fists.
Grigori laughed. “A fist fight? Do you really think you can best me with nothing but your fingers?”
Samuel jabbed his father in the face before Grigori saw the blow coming. Blood trickled from his nostril.
“Aw, hell,” the fallen angel swore softly.
And indeed in the next few seconds, all hell did break loose.
There were no rules in this brawl, no finesse, no regular punch and counter-punch. Samuel and his father hammered each other with bone-jarring strokes. Rage seemed to give Samuel extra strength for, unlike the fight Meg had witnessed in the great hall, he was giving as good as he got.
He connected a ringing blow to Grigori’s temple and his father staggered back a pace, shaking his head.
“This shouldn’t be happening. How are you doing this?” he demanded.
“My will is stronger than yours,” Samuel said, sucking in gasping breaths. “I want to
protect her more than you want to defile her.”
“We’ll see about that,” Grigori said. He lifted a hand toward Meg and the flames around the bed died. “It’s time to take this outside.”
Between one blink and the next, Meg found herself transported to another place entirely. Instead of a feather tick beneath her, she was on her knees on a gravel and crushed bark path. Judging from the trees and the line of lighted lamps stretching in either direction, she and Samuel were on Rotten Row, the fashionable haunt of the ton for riding at certain hours of the day. Now at night, it was deserted.
Where Grigori should have been, there was now a centaur. Samuel had told Meg his father could assume any shape he pleased, but she’d never have believed this if she hadn’t seen it.
The horse part of him was the glossy black of a Percheron, his flanks powerful, his sex dangling long and loose between his hind legs. Thick black hair draped from his fetlocks over hooves that were the size of dinner plates. Metal glinted on each one. He was shod with the accoutrements of a warhorse, whose four feet were as deadly as any rider’s blade. Centaurs were supposed to be wise and benevolent beings, but the face on this one was the face of Grigori. His expression was a study in cruelty.
He reared and lashed out a wicked swipe of his front hooves. Samuel dodged, barely avoiding them. Meg cringed and ducked in empathy with him.
“This isn’t fair,” she shouted. “Samuel is unarmed.”
But Meg was wrong. Even as she said it, Samuel scooped up a large stone from the edge of the path and sent it hurtling through the air. The centaur shied, sidling out of the path of the rock and Samuel ran toward him, brandishing his boot knife. He sliced from Grigori’s equine chest up to his withers. Grigori loosed a long horsy squeal of pain and bucked his rear around to face Samuel. He threw out his back hooves in a powerful thrust. It was a draft horse version of a graceful Lipizzaner “airs- above-the-ground.”
Samuel tried to dodge again, but one of Grigori’s hooves caught him in the shoulder. He was thrown back about ten paces off the path, landing on his back, fortunately in a spongy, moss-covered patch.
