Eve Silver (15 page)

“Rather unfortunate. I'll have Poole pick up another copy.” He shrugged casually, then returned his attention to the desk and began to examine her sketches, as though he found the matter of the newspaper to be of little consequence.

Darcie cringed inwardly at his words. She could only imagine what Poole would think of the need to fetch a second copy of the
Daily Express.
Though she was no longer directly under his jurisdiction, she could sense the butler's malevolence whenever they chanced to meet. The man hated her. Of that she had little doubt.

“Are you not needed at your offices in the East End today? I had thought you would not be here.”

At her question, Damien glanced at the window. “I have worked since before dawn, and only now returned. The day is half gone, Darcie. Did you sleep well?” His tone implied mere polite interest, but Darcie could not help but wonder if he had seen her at the window the previous night, if he knew that she had been awake for many restless hours.

She wondered if he knew she had watched him, knew she had seen him with the scrap of material torn from Mary's clothing, knew she suspected that all was not right in this house. Her heart gave a single hard kick, and then sputtered before it began to beat a frenetic rhythm. She stammered an unintelligible reply.

Glancing at her over his shoulder, Damien raised a brow inquiringly. “Are you quite all right?”

“Quite.” Darcie choked the word out.

“Mmmm.” He ran his finger over one of her sketches.

“There was another woman killed two nights past. I saw it in the newspaper when I spilled the ink.”

Damien stilled, his shoulders taking on an unnatural tension, and his hand froze above the pages of the sketchbook.

“Yes, I am aware.” Something in his tone frightened her.

Darcie said nothing, just stood with the fingers of her right hand clasped in her left, her thumb nervously rubbing against her scar.

With the speed of a striking serpent, Damien whirled, catching her hand in his, holding it trapped as he brought his index finger to the raised ridge of flesh and touched the line that marred her hand.

“Tell me,” he commanded.

Darcie's gaze shot upward, meeting his, captured there like prey bewitched by a predator's hypnotic stare. Mutely, she shook her head.

Slowly, his eyes trained on hers, Damien lifted her hand to his lips and kissed the scar, tracing the length of it with his tongue.

The contact sent a jolt of lightning slicing through her.

“Tell me,” he whispered, no command this time. A request.

Tearing her hand from his, Darcie made to move past him, to flee his presence before she gave in to the desire to do exactly that, to tell all, to free herself from the terrible truth of what had been done to her, and what she had done in return. But to tell him meant she must share a little of her trust, a little of herself, and she was afraid.

Damien shifted his stance, his broad shoulders blocking her path. Wordlessly, he pulled a second chair closer to the desk, so that two stood side by side, angled towards each other. He guided her to the one further from the door, and then sank into the other, obstructing her path and her hope of escape.

“I don't know where to start,” she said simply, hedging.

He watched her, making no comment, merely waiting.

He would listen. He would not judge. A feeling of serenity settled over her. Yes, she would tell him. Likely he already suspected something worse even than the truth.

“The old man that the newspapers talk about, the one who was killed by the Whitechapel murderer...he was killed by someone else.” Darcie watched him carefully, to be certain that he understood.

“I am aware of that.”

She frowned. He knew that someone else had killed Steppy? How? How could he know that? Perhaps he only meant that some newspaper articles claimed it was so.

“Go on,” he commanded softly.

Somewhere in the darkest corner of her mind, a warning bell tolled, but she thrust her unease aside. The secret had been kept long enough. Now she felt as though it might burst free of her chest, writhe out of her body like a live thing, so desperate was she to share the terrible tragedy of it with another living soul.

No, not true. Not just any living soul. She wanted to share her pain with Damien, to let him catch a glimpse of the fires that had forged her, to let him heal her tortured heart as she so desperately longed to heal his.

Darcie held his gaze. She would watch him as she spoke, gauge his reaction to her words.

“The old man who was killed. He was my stepfather.” There. One secret out. But so many still hidden within. “My life was once different,” she continued. “I lived in a pretty house, wore pretty dresses. Abigail played with me, teased me, dried my tears when I cried.”

“Abigail?” he asked.

Darcie nodded. “Abigail, my sister. Mrs. Feather.”

Damien's expression did not change. His face remained a mask of cool compassion. His doctor's face, Darcie thought.

“I lived a sheltered life, and my dreams were those of any young girl. Country balls. A handsome suitor. Marriage. Children. Then my mother became ill.” Darcie's voice caught as she said the words. Ill. Such an innocuous word. It seemed to imply a mild sniffle. Perhaps she should have been more dramatic in order to fully convey the horror of her mother's death. “She coughed away her life.”

“Consumption,” Damien murmured. “A terrible disease.”

Darcie nodded.

He did not rush her. They sat, face to face, he waiting for her to continue, she waiting for the courage to do so.

Finally, she spoke, the words barely above a whisper, wrenched from her in harsh syllables. “We buried her on a cold, wet day, gray clouds and a chilly drizzle marking her passage. It was that same day that the news came. Steppy had lost everything. We were destitute.” Darcie shook her head slowly and twisted her fingers together. “At first, Steppy kept up a cheerful front. We'd get it back, he said. He'd find investors. But the creditors took the house, the silver, my mother's pearls. There was nothing left.”

As she spoke, her voice gained strength, and her palms came to rest calmly on her lap, as though in the telling of the tale she was exorcising the demons that gnawed at her thoughts.

“Steppy found me work through a business acquaintance. They were a nice family, the Grants. I was happy there for a short time. Then Mr. Grant was sent to India, and I was sent back to Steppy. He had acquired a small flat in Whitechapel.”

She could remember the flat, rank with the smell of mildew and decay, and the stench of the desperation of the inhabitants who had passed through over the decades. Closing her eyes, Darcie tried to push aside the image of Steppy, unshaven, unwashed, stinking of liquor and misery.

“Where was Abigail?” Damien's quiet question insinuated itself into the sad image, weakening it, making it fade.

Darcie stared down at her hands for a long moment, remembering.

“She had a secret suitor. At least, she believed at the time that he was a suitor. Mere months before our world collapsed, she fled, went to the man who had promised her everything only to find he had been toying with her. He already had a wife and two small children, or so he claimed. I don't know exactly what happened to Abigail then, only that she somehow became who she is today—Mrs. Feather. She never came back, and wrote only once. The letter came just before they took the house, and by then she had already been gone for nearly a year.” Darcie smiled sadly. “I kept it. The letter. That was how I found her that night. Funny, I had lived in Whitechapel for a good long while before I came to know that Abigail was Mrs. Feather. I'd heard of Mrs. Feather, but I had not encountered her. Not until that night.”

“The night I found you.”

“Yes.”
The night you saved me.

“Tell me about your stepfather's flat.”

“It was cold. And gray. Cheerless. He didn't care. Most of the time he barely knew I was there. We had no money for coal, for clothes, for food. But somehow, Steppy always found coin for drink.” Her voice held no rancor. She was long past the wasteful luxury of resentment and blame.

“One day, I came home to find him in a state. His eyes were bloodshot, his hands shaking. There was vomit on the floor. He had found no money for many days. No coin meant no drink.” Darcie looked away, focusing on a small smudge on the desktop. “Two men waited on the far side of the room, standing by the open window. Steppy caught my wrist as I came through the door. He shoved me across the floor, and I fell at the feet of those men.”

Damien made a rough noise, low in his throat. Turning her gaze on him, she found that his mask had been wiped away, replaced by an expression of cold fury. He looked primitive, feral.

“They tossed Steppy a bag of coins. I heard them chink as they hit the floor. Then one of them grabbed my wrists and dragged me to my feet. They took me to an empty warehouse near the dock. I heard one of them say I would fetch a good price, being a vir—” She looked away, embarrassed. “Being untouched. When they left me, my wrists were bound, a dirty cloth tied across my mouth. They locked me in a small, empty room.”

“Your stepfather sold you.” Damien's voice came low and hard.

Darcie shrugged, as though it were of little consequence, yet the truth of his observation was a terrible thing. She had loved Steppy, trusted him with the open honest heart of the child she had been until that terrible night, and he had betrayed her.

Taking her hand, Damien sandwiched it between his callused palms. She could feel the heat of him, smell the fragrance of soap and endless summer sky. Strange, that she could think he smelled of summer. What, exactly, did summer smell like? Leaning closer, she breathed in the scent of him. She longed to lay her head on his shoulder, to be enfolded in his warm embrace.

Idly, Damien ran his thumb along the scar, waiting patiently for her to continue.

The feel of his hand on hers reassured her. She sucked in a shaky breath, drawing strength from his implacable calm.

“There was a small lamp. They left it for me. A tiny kindness, or perhaps an oversight, but it proved to be my salvation. The flame faded and died, leaving me in darkness. I wiggled over and banged the lamp as hard as I could with my elbow. I heard the glass shatter.”

Her voice caught as she forced herself to go on. She didn't want to tell this story, didn't want to remember that terrifying night. But a part of her wanted to tell it very much, to share it with him, to let him in.

“I picked up a shard and began to saw away at the rope. But it was dark. My hands were numb after being bound for hours on end. I-I couldn't hold the piece of glass steady, couldn't aim it where I wanted it to go. It cut the rope, but it cut my skin, too. And the muscle underneath. All the way to the bone before I was free.” There were tears streaming down her face. Darcie could feel them on her cheeks, taste their salty tang on her lips. “There was blood everywhere. My hands were slick with it. At last I was free.”

Pulling her hand from his grasp, Darcie jumped to her feet. She paced to the window. Damien made no move to stop her.

“I ran.” She gave a hollow laugh and spun to face him, her voice rising. “And can you imagine? I ran to Steppy's flat. Can you imagine a more stupid girl?”

Damien rose from his chair and crossed to her, gently brushing the tears from her cheek.

“I cannot imagine a more brave girl.”

She blinked, his words penetrating her mind, lending her calm reassurance. He thought her brave. Desperate now to finish it, she continued. “Steppy was passed out on the floor, a nearly empty bottle on the table. I gathered my folio of drawings, and tried to tie some stale crusts of bread in a cloth, but my hand was almost useless. Though I had wrapped an old cloth about the cut, there was so much blood, and my thumb would barely move at all.” Darcie swallowed, and her voice dropped to a whisper as she continued. “I thought that if a seam would hold with the help of good, even stitches, my hand would do the same. I took a needle and some thread and sewed it up as best I could.”

Damien caught her hand and turned the scar to the light, examining it closely. “You stitched your own wound.” His voice was flat, his lips pulled in a taut line.

Darcie nodded.

Slowly, he raised his head, and she saw his thoughts mirrored in his eyes. Terrible rage mingled with boundless admiration. For her. She felt stronger now, buoyed by his silent support.

“I heard a sound. It was the men, the ones Steppy sold me to. They banged on the door. I was clumsy. I knocked over the bottle on the table, spilling the last of the liquor over my wound.”

At her words, Damien exhaled sharply.

“I would not have thought the pain could get worse, but it did. The men were pounding on the door. Then they kicked it.” Raising her hands, she covered her ears, the sound of the pounding echoing in her mind.

“I turned. Steppy was awake, watching me, his eyes wretched and sad. ‘Hide in the shadows. Run, girl, run,’ he cried, and I knew he was resigned to his fate. He had sold me once, but could not bring himself to do it a second time. So I did as he bid. I climbed out the open window, hid in the shadows. I left him there to die. They stabbed him, over and over. The blood—” She covered her face, desperate to block out the sight that haunted her still.

Damien stared at her, and in his liquid silver eyes, she read admiration and empathy, perhaps even affection. He blinked, and it was gone. His expression became shuttered, his thoughts and emotions hidden behind his habitual mask.

“I am so sorry,” he whispered, folding her in the warm cocoon of his embrace.

Sheltered in his arms, Darcie experienced a feeling of safe harbor, and she reveled in the momentary freedom from the terrible weight that had pressed down on her since her mother's death.

“Why do you apologize?” She ran her hand along the hard angle of his jaw. “You didn't even know me then.”

“Perhaps that is why I am sorry.”

Darcie rested her head on his shoulder, allowing herself the luxury of feeling cared for and protected, imagining what it would be like to be loved by this man. She thought of his words, of the way he touched her, embraced her. Mayhap he cared for her on some level, loved her just a little.