It Happened One Midnight (PG8) (12 page)

The light bobbed and weaved; it was a lantern. They heard heavy shuffling footsteps, as if someone large was having difficulty lifting his feet. A lantern carried by a staggering, likely inebriated servant.

Unfortunately, the swaying light threw a wayward beam right into Jonathan’s face.

Christ! Jonathan crammed his hat lower onto his face, seized Tommy, and shoved her behind him.

The servant halted his shuffling steps and hoisted the lamp high, peering into the dark.

“That be Lord Feckwith?”

“Yes,” Jonathan replied coldly, muffling his voice in his cravat.

The lamp continued to sway. Fortunately the man couldn’t hold it steady.

“Wiv a doxy?” Interestingly, the servant sounded entirely unsurprised.

“Yes. Wiv a—with a—doxy. Off with you now.”

He couldn’t tell if Tommy had stiffened with indignation or hilarity.

“Very well, sir. I be sorry to trouble ye. It’s just we’d beef for dinner, and seems the beef turned, ye see, and . . .”

As the consequences of the beef turning were really rather self-explanatory, he bowed, the lamp clinking and swinging on down with him, and turned and shuffled into the house.

They waited. Jonathan counted to ten after the door shut behind the servant. Tommy’s breathing was alarmingly swift now. And then she crept forward, out from behind him.

He followed.

And when they were close enough to the privy to make their eyes water, she whispered: “Sally?”

Seconds later there was a rustle.

All the little hairs stood up on Jonathan’s neck. A tiny figure crept out from behind the shrubbery near the privy. “Tommy?”

And Tommy lunged for whatever it was, snatched it up, turned tail, and ran back down the passage.

“The
devil
—”

Jonathan bolted after her. She couldn’t move very quickly with her bundle, but fright often substituted for strength in extreme circumstances.

The carriage driver laconically opened the carriage door when he saw them tearing toward him. Tommy transferred her bundle to beneath her arm, Jonathan gave her arse a nudge up with a shoulder to get her all the way in, and then he locked his pistol, and with a “Back to where you found us, and a shilling more if you go like the devil,” to the driver, he leaped aboard.

The carriage lurched forward, tumbling the passengers a little. They righted themselves apace.

Across from him, Tommy flung herself backward and heaved a sigh of relief. She gently settled the bundle down next to her on her seat, patted and soothed it.

Jonathan stared. “It’s a
child
.”

No one, no one, had ever sounded more aghast than Jonathan at that moment.

Tommy was unaffected. “For heaven’s sake. You say that the way someone else might say, “It’s the
pox!
”

Just then the little girl—for that’s what it was— seemed to notice Jonathan.

And she screamed.

And screamed.

And screamed and screamed and screamed.

It was a scream of exceptional quality. A nerve-shattering, eardrum-shredding, blood-congealing scream that shaved years off his life, hurled him backward in his seat, and nearly made him wet himself. He found himself clawing at the walls of the carriage, as if that could help him escape it.

Tommy was in a flailing panic, too. She’d whipped off her cloak, and Jonathan harbored a brief irrational hope she might smother the thing with it.

Instead, she whisked it over the little girl’s shoulders and started up a nonstop soothing one-sided conversation. “Sally, it’s all right. It’s all right. Hush now. Hush.
Hush
.”

Oh,
enough
.

“CEASE THAT NOISE AT ONCE!” he bellowed.

Sally ceased with remarkable equanimity and stared at him, wide-eyed. Clearly impressed with the power of
his
lungs.

Oh, the bliss. The bliss of silence. How had he never appreciated it before? He vowed never again to take it for granted.

“The . . . fekking . . .
hell . . .”
he said faintly.

Tommy clearly couldn’t yet speak.

He felt like he needed smelling salts.

The horrible sound lived on in the ringing of his ears. He put one finger in and twisted it, as if he could return his hearing to its former innocent state. He wished he was one of those young bloods who carried around a flask of whisky.

Tommy’s voice still had a certain tremolo quality when she spoke.

“Sally, this is . . . er . . . Mr. Friend. He is a good man and I trust him and he’s here because he wants to help you. He will
never
hurt you. There is no need to scream.”

“Mr. Friend would very much like to hurt
you
right about now,” Jonathan muttered blackly to Tommy, through clenched teeth.

Tommy ignored him.

Sally was looking at him with wide-eyed equanimity. She had the sort of eyes possessed by puppies and fawns. Glossy and enormous and liquid with innocence.
The better to disguise evil,
Jonathan thought darkly.

“Cook said I’d get the collywobbles if I talked to strange men. And that I ought to scream if I see one, sudden like.”

Jonathan snarled, “What the bloody hell are collywob—
OW!
”

Tommy kicked him in the shin.

He glowered poisonously at her.

She hiked her eyebrows to her hairline.

He sucked in a long breath, a symbolic attempt to siphon patience from the air of what had clearly become a rolling madhouse. He exhaled to steady himself.

He had only himself to blame. He knew it. He possessed a sixth sense for this sort of thing because he wanted none of it, none of the nerve-taxing complications that women like Tommy represented. It was bleak satisfaction to know that he’d been right, oh so right.

“The cook is wise to tell you not to speak to strange men, Sally. Fortunately I had the collywobbles when I was very young, a long time ago, and recovered nicely, so you can’t get them from me.”

Tommy coughed a laugh.

“Oh.” This satisfied Sally, apparently.

He stared across at the little girl from beneath beetled brows. She was certainly a little thing, very pale, her white cap askew. Dark curls bounced like springs from beneath it. She was a servant, clearly. A scullery maid, mostly likely. And couldn’t be more than seven years old. Possibly younger, given her size.

She stared back at him shyly, curious now. And then she smiled. He almost rolled his eyes. A little flirt, this one, as capricious as the big one against whom she snuggled. He refused to be charmed.

And that’s when he saw the white bandage on her forehead, beneath her cap. There was a dark spot on it, not a small one.

And he suspected it was blood.

“What happened to your head, Sally?”

“Master William coshed me,” she said softly. She was young enough to lisp. “And when ’e did, I fell and broke me crown.”

“Master Willi . . .”

Master William was Lord Feckwith, the younger.

Who was Jonathan’s age.

And easily three times the size of Sally.

Could this be true?

Tommy’s eyes were on Jonathan. She seemed to be holding her breath.

“Why?” he asked Sally finally. The word was a bit choked.

Though he suspected the answer was “because he could.” Because big men who would hit a little female child . . . let alone hard enough to knock her down . . .

“Shhh, Sally, love, there’s a good girl,” Tommy interjected firmly. “All is well now. We don’t need to talk about that now.”

All was well?

All was
well?

Jonathan aimed a look of such sizzling disbelief at her, their hackney driver must have felt it through the ceiling on his bum, and might have been grateful for the heat.

But Tommy refused to meet his gaze. She promptly either forgot or pretended to forget he was even there. She softly sang some nursery song to Sally, who leaned back against her, comfortable and utterly at home despite the bizarre circumstances, her eyelids lowering.

Tommy had likely shushed Sally here because the more Jonathan knew, the more enmeshed he became in . . . whatever this was.

His head was a writhing tangle of questions.

And he’d have his answers. Oh, he’d have them.

For now, he shrugged out of his coat and thrust it at Tommy.

She stared at it blankly. Then looked up at him, clearly preparing a look of defiance.

But the abruptness of his gesture and the black quality of his silence warned her not to refuse it.

She took it from him and settled it over her shoulders.

“Thank you,” she whispered regally.

He snorted. Softly, so as not to wake the little beast.

“I’ve something for you, too,” she whispered.

She shifted the child on her lap and then he watched in some fascination as she fished about for a time in her bodice.

She emerged with a flask and handed it over.

He did note it was still warm from being nestled against her breasts. For a moment thought was obliterated in favor of sensation and imagination. He was male, first and foremost, after all.

She’s infinitely too much trouble, Redmond
.

And then he silently raised it in a sardonic toast to her and bolted half.

A
FEW MINUTES
later she thumped the roof of the carriage, and Sally, who’d been sleeping, stirred against her.

“I can get down on my own, but will you hand her to me?” she said quietly. “Mr. Friend will help you, Sally, all right?” To Jonathan she whispered, “Right, Mr. Friend?”

What could he reply? He could hardly nudge the child out of the carriage with the toe of his boot as if she were a sack of flour.

He gave a short nod.

Sally sleepily stretched her arms up. Jonathan ducked awkwardly between them and she looped them around his neck, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, something she did all the time.

He hoisted her up. Ironically, she weighed about as much as a bag of flour.

A man his own size had coshed her in the head, but someone she trusted told her to trust
him,
and so she had. He knew a brief sudden sweep of vertigo, near terror, as if he were walking a wire strung between buildings. God, what a perilous thing it was to be a child. To go from screaming looby to unquestioning trusting innocent in the space of a single hackney ride. And this, he suspected, was perfectly typical child behavior.

“Thank you, Mr. Friend,” she mumbled sleepily.

“You’re welcome, Sally,” he said stiffly.

She was either nuzzling into his shoulder or wiping her runny nose on his coat right now. He very much suspected the latter. Mad disgusting creatures.

Not
entirely
without charm. But only just.

“I’ll have the pearls sent over to your town house tomorrow morning.” Tommy whispered it.

It was tomorrow morning already, but neither of them pointed that out. A wan light was pushing through London’s haze of coal smut, and drunks all over were stirring awake from the light, if not warmth, in Covent Garden.

“I’ll need answers,” he said in a tone that really was more of a threat.

“You don’t want them, believe me.”

She hadn’t phrased it as such, but Jonathan heard it like an accusation.

And she was likely right. He’d been utterly right about
her,
that was certain. That she was likely a labyrinth of a woman, and God only knew her true past or predilections. He’d be better off snatching her pearls and forgetting the night had ever happened.

“I’ll have them.” Each word was a dire promise.

They stared a stalemate at each other.

“How on earth did I help matters tonight, by the way?” he whispered.

“It went better this time,” Tommy said. “No one was shot.”

Christ. “Were
you
—?”

Sally stirred and muttered something against Tommy’s leg, which gave Tommy an excuse to look down.

Her head snapped up again immediately, and she was clearly distressed. “I’m sorry, Mr. Redmond, but she has a toy, a tiny doll . . . it’s really her only possession, and I think we’ve left it inside the carriage. Could you have a look? On our seat? Can I trouble you to do that for us?”

This
minor inconvenience she begged prettily about?

Jonathan hopped aboard the hack again, patting his fingers along the seat, feeling along the floor with the heel of his boot. He found nothing. “I’m afraid I don’t see—”

Tommy gave the side of the carriage a hard thump with her fist, the driver cracked the ribbons, and when the team lurched forward, the door of the hack swung shut and Jonathan toppled backward onto the seat.

He
might
have imagined the laughter behind him, but he doubted it.

Chapter 11

T
HREE SHORT RAPS.
A pause. Two short raps. Pause. Four short raps.

Tommy dashed for the entrance, slid the bolt, and The Doctor slipped in swiftly and followed her briskly down the stairs and through the dark corridor.

She didn’t know The Doctor by any other name, which suggested his occupation was just as dubious as everyone else’s in her building, though no one knew precisely where he lived. Rumor had it he did a brisk business as a resurrectionist. Judging from his pallor, his work
did
take place primarily at night. She unfortunately had no trouble picturing The Doctor selling corpses, but he seemed competent enough about patching up the living. Rutherford had found him for her—it was a case of knowing someone who knew someone who knew The Doctor. She was hardly in a position to critique his pedigree, particularly since he worked on account, and her resources were thin indeed.