by Julia London
So if not Farnsworth or the French, then who? Ho, there! He was overlooking another very viable possibility—the English Lockharts. It was far more likely that MacDonnell or Lovat had mentioned his presence to his cousins. As he recalled, Nigel had been a frequent patron of the gentlemen’s clubs—or had it been the brothels? Liam paused, stared blindly at the window. Aye, but why would Nigel do such a thing? If he knew or cared that Liam was in London, even if he knew precisely where, he would have no cause to enter these rooms in such a manner. Would he not have called for him, like a gentleman?
Liam dragged his fingers through his hair, then shook his head. The only way to know for sure was to set a trap. What a bloody damned annoyance.
He slept badly that night, partly because he waited for the intruder and partly because the pillow Farnsworth had provided him was so thin as to be nonexistent and his pistol beneath it made for a strange lump against his skull. When weak light at last filtered in his window the next morning, he groaned and made himself rise. He was still in yesterday’s clothes; his mouth tasted rank.
Liam bathed as best he could with the ice-cold water in the basin, then dressed in clean clothes. As he was tying his neckcloth, there was a knock at his door. He opened it to the footman, who entered carrying another tray, his expression stoic. He walked past Liam without a word, put it down on the table, and picked up the tray from the previous evening, wrinkling his nose. As he turned to quit the room, Liam moved toward the door, blocking his exit.
“Do ye have a name, then?” he asked, stopping the man mid-stride.
The man’s eyes darted to the door, then to Liam, and he nervously cleared his throat. “Ah…Follifoot, sir.”
“Follifoot,” Liam repeated, assessing him. Honestly, Follifoot looked too weak and nervous to be the one to risk his neck entering Liam’s rooms without permission.
Nonetheless, Liam took a step closer, causing Follifoot to have to bend his head backward to look up at him. “Here now, Follifoot, ye wouldna enter a man’s rooms without his permission, eh?”
Follifoot’s watery brown eyes widened. “No, sir! I would never!”
In truth, he looked so horrified that Liam had to believe him. Not Follifoot, then. Unthinkingly, he turned away, his mind racing ahead to other possibilities.
“Sir, I beg of you, please don’t accuse me of such a thing to Lord Farnsworth!” Follifoot pleaded. “If you say such a thing, he’ll toss me out on my ear!”
Liam ignored his plea for the moment. “Who might have a key to this room?” he demanded.
“I…I can’t rightly say—the housekeeper, Miss Agatha, perhaps?” he suggested weakly.
“Perhaps,” Liam said, casting a cold smile at him.
But Follifoot instantly shook his head. “Miss Agatha would not have done so, sir, if you will pardon me saying so. She’s a daily—she departs promptly at five o’clock each day and doesn’t return until six o’clock the following morning.”
“What of his lordship, then? Was he in residence last evening?”
Follifoot winced. “Can’t rightly say, sir, but I rather think not. Most nights he goes to the gaming hells in Southwark. I’d reckon he did so again.”
Aye, so would Liam—the fat little pea had eighty pounds burning a hole in his pocket. He considered the fragile Follifoot, decided he was credible in a weak-willed way, and fished in his pocket and withdrew a crown. He held it up for Follifoot to see, turning it over between his fingers, then laid it on his tray. “I’ll thank ye to keep our conversations to yerself, Follifoot,” he said.
Follifoot nodded eagerly and sort of sidestepped around Liam, inching for the door, anxious to be gone. “W-will there be anything else, sir?”
“Ach, run along with ye, then,” Liam said, and smiled ruefully as Follifoot awkwardly tried to escape with his tray. As he stepped through the door and reached to close it, he looked at Liam once more, and a shudder of fear passed through his eyes.
That didn’t bother Liam—he was accustomed to such a reaction. After all, he was a big man, six feet and three inches in height, and years of fighting and war had rearranged his face a bit. His nose was flat, a scar ran from his brow halfway down his left cheek, and there were a variety of nicks about his face and hands. While he was hardly hideous (according to Mared), he realized that his looks, coupled with his size, often caused a body to look twice, and caused men like Follifoot to scurry as far away from him as possible.
That was just as well; he had no use for weak men. With a shrug, Liam walked to the tray Follifoot had left and lifted the silver dome. Runny eggs, a tomato, and something that resembled black mud. It was a wonder to Liam that Farnsworth could be so corpulent given the lack of culinary talent in this house. Yet as unappetizing as the meal was, Liam forced himself to eat. If there was one thing he had learned in his years of military espionage, it was to eat every chance he had, because he never knew when the next opportunity would present itself.
He cleaned the plate, set the tray outside his door, then went about setting his trap by rearranging his room and moving the table near the window, close enough that if one were hiding behind the drapes, one could surprise an intruder. On the table, he made sure all of his belongings were displayed, even adding his carefully folded plaid to the mix. Then he straightened the bedding and withdrew his pistol from beneath the mattress and stuffed it in his pocket. Satisfied that everything was in order, he walked to the window, opened it just a crack, then turned and walked to the door, quitting the room. In the corridor he made a show of locking his room. From there he clomped down the bare corridor, making sure that his boots made as much racket as possible to announce his departure for the benefit of anyone in the house who might be the culprit, or aiding one.
As he stepped outside, he shut the main door loudly behind him and bounced down to the street, whistling an old Scottish tune in spite of the rain, so that anyone observing him would think he was on his way. But instead of turning toward town, Liam turned in the direction of the narrow mews that ran alongside the house, and when he was certain no one was observing him, he slipped through the mews gate.
The mews was deserted. Little wonder—the day had all the markings of being another miserably wet one. Climbing up to the window of his rented room was difficult; the brick was quite slick what with the rain, and it took Liam several attempts to gain a foothold and hoist himself up. But in the space of ten minutes he had slipped into his room again to wait for his intruder.
As luck would have it, he did not have long to wait—it astounded him that the intruder would dare to come again so soon.
When he heard the first attempts to open the door, he silently and calmly slipped behind the heavy drapes, his pistol at his side. Whoever the intruder was, Liam was rather thoroughly flabbergasted by his clumsiness—he heard the lock click several times, even heard what sounded like a kick against the door. Such technique could get a man killed, and while he dearly hoped to avoid that possibility, he was quite prepared for the necessity.
The door at last opened with a bang, then closed quickly. Liam scarcely drew a breath as he listened to the footfall, which was, he thought with some confusion, awfully light. And he was further baffled by the pattern of the footfall, which seemed to be going in a circular motion, from wall to wall, round and round. What in the hell was the idiot doing? A thief or assassin worth his collar would not squander precious minutes in such a manner, would come directly to take what he must. Yet the footsteps continued in a circular motion, slowly drawing closer to the table.
Then the footfall stopped.
And the bedsprings creaked loudly beneath the weight of a person.
The improbable notion that perhaps his room was being used as a rendezvous for a tryst flashed in Liam’s mind. That, naturally, would explain the light footsteps (a woman) and the dalliance about the room (a woman). But as he considered the plausibility of it, the creaking on the bed began again in earnest, starting slow, then gaining momentum. Jesus God, how coul
d it be? He had heard only one person come into the room, and as one person could hardly have relations with oneself—practically speaking—that could only mean…
The intruder was jumping on the bed.
The realization hit him hard, and in a burst of frustration at the intruder’s ineptitude, Liam suddenly pushed the drape aside and strode forward, angry to have wasted so much time on this ridiculous task.
The scream of terror that split his eardrums was almost lost in his shock at seeing a little girl fly off the bed in an astounding acrobatic move and run for the door. But Liam was much quicker than she and in three strides was at the door before her, sealing the escape by pressing his broad back against it.
The girl screamed again, and in a panic ran for the bed, then around it—twice—to the table, and at last the drapes, which she dove behind, whimpering loudly.
Bloody hell, this was not good, not good at all. Liam stood, legs apart, rubbing his chin as he listened to the child’s sobs, which seemed to be growing louder, and would inevitably bring the whole damn house down around his head. “Mary Queen of Scots!” he bellowed. “Stop yer caterwauling!”
But the crying did not stop, and Liam marched to the window, reached behind the drape, and grabbed onto a small shoulder. He pulled the girl out from behind the drape—Good Lord, what wailing!—and forced her into a seat at the table.
Tears streamed down a small face gone quite red with the exertion. Her blond curls, having come loose from their pins in her panic, seemed to be going in all different directions. Every sob racked her little frame so violently that Liam worried she might actually harm herself. Confused, flustered, and quite uncertain what to do, he could only stand there staring down at her.
She at last looked up at him with wet but pretty pale blue eyes, and her gaze slid to his hand. All at once her face screwed into a mottled mass of features, and she screeched. Startled, Liam glanced down—he was still holding the pistol, which he immediately put down on the table. He pointed a finger at her, said sternly, “Ye donna touch it, now, or I’ll bite yer fingers off, one by one—I swear I will.”
Her eyes grew impossibly wide; for a moment there was silence. Then the girl opened her mouth to let loose a wail like he’d never heard.
Liam felt a moment of panic—if the rafters didn’t come tumbling down, all of Belgrave Square would hear that scream and think he had murdered the child. “Stop it at once!” he demanded loudly. “I’ll no’ have ye screaming like a banshee!”
The girl opened her mouth again, but only a hiccup came out, and she blinked up at him, wide-eyed. “What’s a banshee?”
“A banshee!” he said impatiently, waving his hand at her. “A spirit of sorts…” He looked up at the ceiling, trying to think how best to describe it. “She looks a wee bit like the trolls—” Oh for God’s sake, what was he doing? Liam growled, jerked his gaze back to the girl, and pierced her with a heated gaze.
She had stopped crying now, was looking at him openly, curiously. Ach, but he didn’t like that look. It was too…straightforward, too direct. This child, whoever she was, must have been sent here by someone who meant him harm. However improbable that sounded, what else would she be doing in his rooms? But Liam had never really been around children, and he really didn’t know how to go about interrogating someone so…so small.
He punched his fists to his hips, puffed his chest. “All right then, lassie, ye’ll make it easier on us both if ye’ll tell me who sent ye here.”
The girl swiped at the tears beneath her eyes. “You sound very strange when you speak.”
Liam blinked, thrown off course for a moment. “Aye! And so do you!”
“Why do you speak that way?”
Why indeed! Liam snorted. “I’ll ask the questions, if ye donna mind.”
“What’s your name?” she asked, leaning back and putting her hands primly in her lap, as if they were about to have a nice, polite conversation. “My name is Natalie,” she informed him before he could respond that his name was none of her concern.
“I donna care what they call ye—” Liam stopped, perplexed by her sudden shout of laughter.
Her nose wrinkled appealingly. “You sound very funny when you speak!”
Oh, no. He was not going to be fooled by charming little giggles. “Never mind that,” he said, and leaned over her to demonstrate that he was quite serious. “What are ye doing here?”
“What are you doing here?” she responded.
“I asked ye first.”
“Where do you live?”
Liam straightened up. All right, then, it really should not be this difficult. He glared down at her, trying to think what to do. She was a child, damn it all to hell.
“I was born in Laria,” she said blithely. “It’s a kingdom just this side of Austria.”
That unbalanced him momentarily as he tried to remember a place called Laria.
“But my father brought us here when I was a baby.” She smiled up at Liam, her eyes as blue as a summer sky. “Where were you born?”
“Under a bridge.”
“Is that why you have a scar?” she asked in sweet honesty.
Unconsciously, Liam touched the scar, and duly perplexed now, sank onto the corner of the bed. He gazed at the girl as she studied his features. “Be a good lass now, and tell me who sent ye here. Will ye tell me please, leannan?”
“Oh, my name is not Leannan. It is Natalie.”
“No, no, leannan is our word for ‘sweetheart’—never mind. Who sent ye here, then, Natalie?”
The bridge of her nose crinkled as she giggled at him. “Why, no one!”
“Where are yer parents, then?”
Her feet, encased in tiny velvet slippers, began to swing beneath the table. “Well, my father is an admiral in the Royal Navy—”
An admiral! Liam sat up, duly impressed.
“—and Mother is in Laria. Just for a visit, of course. Did it hurt very badly?”
“Eh, what?” he asked, confused.
Natalie pointed to his scar.
Silly child; Liam clucked at the very suggestion. “No,” he said sternly. “Where is your father, then?”
“Oh, he’s at sea. He’s fighting a rather nasty war with the French people.”
But the war with France was over—she was confused. He thought to ask more, but the girl had slipped off her chair and walked around the table…to where his plaid was laid out.
Liam leapt to his feet. “Donna touch it!” he cried, and Natalie yanked her hand back as if it had been burned. Liam snatched up his plaid and quickly moved to the other side of the bed to put it out of her reach. “You shouldna touch things that donna belong to ye,” he chided her. “This is very precious.”
She sniffed somewhere behind him. “I’m sorry. But it’s so pretty.”
“Well, now, I wouldna call it pretty, but ’tis precious to me nonetheless—” The sound of her little feet interrupted him; he whipped around. She was almost to the door, her hand reaching for the knob.
“Wait!” Liam exclaimed. “Ye didna tell me who ye are!”
“But I did!” she exclaimed cheerfully as she opened the door. “You didn’t tell me who you are,” she said. “I’ll come again on the morrow, and you may tell me then.” And as casually as you please, she walked through the open door, leaving a gaping Liam behind.
Five
Little Natalie became a frequent and uninvited guest to Liam’s rooms from that point forward.
The only bright spot, as far as Liam could see, was that she could not enter his two rooms unless the door was unlatched. He had quickly discovered, the very morning of their improbable acquaintance, how she had managed to unlock the door—the latch was old and in need of repair, and she had been able to jiggle it out of place. Liam had corrected that problem with his dagger—she would not be jiggling anything else out of place.
What really disturbed him was exactly how he had missed such a fundamental thing as a loose lock, which caused him to won
der if perhaps his skills were eroding.
No longer able to enter his rooms on her own, Natalie began to make a habit of popping in with Follifoot when Liam’s food was brought, or worse, taking the tray from Follifoot and delivering it herself, even though she was hardly able to carry the heavy wooden thing. On those occasions Liam would instantly take the tray from her lest she drop it, and Natalie would rush through the door behind him, intent on becoming his dinner companion, apparently of the understanding that the one not eating should be talking. And she would sit on the edge of his bed, her feet swinging, oblivious to the fact that he was paying her no mind, laughing when he belched his opinion of the grotesque meal. And talking.
Talking.
The girl was absolutely astonishing in her ability to talk without taking as much as a breath! From the moment she managed to gain entrance to his rooms, she never stopped, going on and on about such things as her age (nine years, four months, and on her next birthday, the two-digit number of ten, which, according to Natalie, was quite significant); her mother (in Laria, seeking treatment for some hideous disease about which Liam did not want to know the details); and less frequently, her father (whose naval career was quite stellar, and one that left Liam suitably impressed).
The girl also talked at length about the province of Laria (wherever that was—Liam could not recall it from his studies), and her friends there, who were, from what he gathered, frequent, gift-bearing visitors to London.
When she wasn’t talking, Natalie filled in all the silence with her many, many questions, seemingly unconcerned whether Liam answered or not. Which he didn’t, as a rule. He was, and always had been, a rather private man. But none of that stopped Natalie. She managed to drag his name from him and instantly proclaimed she would name her baby Liam. She asked him about Scotland (Miss Agatha says it is a place for heathens); about his family (Have you brothers and sisters? And what are their ages? And did you play together when you were children? And what was your favorite game? Do you know my favorite game? My favorite game is princess. Did you ever play princess? Do they have princesses in Scotland? Is your sister a princess?); about his plaid (How do you wear it? When do you wear it? Where do you wear it? May I wear it? May I touch it? May I look at it one more time, please?).
