Lord of Darkness

by Elizabeth Hoyt

  Her brows knit. “You didn’t go home to see your family?”

  “No.” His lips pursed very slightly, drawing her eye. The rest of him might be hard, but his mouth, particularly the lower lip, looked soft.

  Was soft. She remembered suddenly his mouth on her breast, the tug of his teeth, the brush of his lips. His lips had been gentle on her breast, but those same soft lips had been unyielding on her mouth.

  Megs swallowed, beating down the image. What was happening to her? She plucked at a thread on her skirts. “That … that must’ve been hard, to be separated from your father.”

  “It was for the best,” he said. “We fought often and it was my fault. I was unreasonable, blaming him for my mother’s death, for his remarriage. I behaved atrociously to my stepmother.”

  “You were only thirteen,” she said softly, her heart contracting. “I’m sure she understood your grief, your confusion.”

  He frowned and shook his head, and she knew somehow that he didn’t believe her. “In any case, that became the pattern for the next several years. When I wasn’t at school, I lived with Sir Stanley. And while I lived with Sir Stanley, he taught me.”

  She frowned, inadvertently tugging hard on the thread. “Taught you what?”

  “How to be the Ghost of St. Giles, I suppose.” He spread his hands. “Although at the time I merely thought it was exercise. He had a kind of practice room set aside with sawdust dummies, targets, and the like. There he taught me tumbling, swordsmanship, and hand fighting.”

  “Tumbling? Like an acrobat at a traveling fair?” She leaned forward in delight, imagining Godric turning somersaults.

  “Yes, like a comic actor.” He glanced up at her, his eyes crinkled at the corners. “It sounds absurd, I know, but the movements are actually difficult to master, and for a boy with too much anger within himself …”

  She bit her lip, thinking of that lost boy, cut off from his family, angry and alone. She had a sudden warm gratitude toward the late Sir Stanley Gilpin. He might’ve been an eccentric, but he also obviously knew much about young men and their needs.

  His eyes drifted to her mouth and then down to his hands, again clasped between his knees. “We continued thus for several years. It wasn’t until I was eighteen that we figured out, from signs and odd comings and goings, that Sir Stanley was the Ghost of St. Giles and—”

  “What? Wait.” Megs jerked up her hands, snapping the thread on her dress, but she was too eager to care. “Sir Stanley was the original Ghost of St. Giles?”

  “Yes. Well”—Godric’s lips quirked and he tilted his head—“at least he’s the only one I know about. The legend of the Ghost of St. Giles has been around for years, perhaps centuries. Who is to say that some other man in some other time didn’t don the costume?”

  Megs’s lips parted slowly as she imagined a parade of men, year after year, pretending to be the Ghost of St. Giles. Who would do such a thing? She looked at Godric, the question on her lips, but she didn’t want to forget another pressing question.

  “Who is ‘we’?”

  “Ah.” Godric straightened in his chair, his hand absently rising to his left shoulder before he apparently remembered and let it drop to his lap. “As to that …”

  Why was he stalling? “Yes?”

  He inhaled deeply and looked her in the eye. “There’s more than me.”

  “More …” Her eyes widened. “Ghosts?” The incredulous word came out a squeak. “At one time?”

  He nodded. “By the time I was eighteen, another boy had joined our practice sessions. He was younger than I, but just as angry as I had been at fourteen.” His brows drew together. “More so, actually.”

  “Who?”

  “I can’t tell you,” he said apologetically.

  “What?” Megs straightened in indignation. “Why not?” He shrugged. “It’s not my secret to tell.”

  Well, she supposed that was terribly honorable of him—and quite, quite frustrating for her. “So there were two of you. …”

  He cleared his throat. “Three, actually. Another came after I left.”

  Her eyes widened, the questions charging about and bumping up against each other in her mind. “Three? But—”

  He held up his hands, palms toward her. “I know you were told that Roger was killed by the Ghost of St. Giles, but that’s simply not true. None of us would ever—could ever—kill a good man such as Roger.”

  She nodded, swallowing. Somehow something was wrong with the story of Roger’s murder. Either the witness had been mistaken …

  Or he had lied. She frowned at the thought.

  “Megs.”

  She looked up, meeting his eyes. She would follow the trail of Roger’s murder, but at the moment Godric needed to finish his tale. “How did there come to be three Ghosts?”

  Godric sighed. “I think Sir Stanley saw it as a lark, dressing up as the Ghost of St. Giles. He had rather a mischievous sense of humor. But by the time I left for Oxford, he was definitely looking for a successor for his grand scheme. He’d fallen in love with the people of St. Giles and wanted to make sure they had a protector even after he became too old to play the Ghost himself.”

  More questions trembled on her lips, and Megs had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep her mouth shut and not interrupt. She nodded for him to continue.

  “I went away, as I said,” Godric said. “I had come to terms with my father by then, knew that I’d been acting like an immature fool. I determined to right my life and perhaps gain the respect of my father and stepmother. I could tell Sir Stanley was disappointed in my decision, but he was understanding as well. Too, by that point he had his second apprentice well in hand.”

  Megs actually had to dig her nails into the palms of her hands to keep herself from asking the questions. Who was the other apprentice? Had Godric wanted to become the Ghost of St. Giles at such a young age? Had his father known what Sir Stanley was training Godric to be?

  But her husband was speaking again. “So I went off to Oxford, learned many things, grew into a man, and when I came home to Laurelwood, I met Clara at a country ball.”

  He closed his eyes. “I’ve told you how that went. We were happy—so very happy—for nearly a year. And then she became ill. We moved to London to be closer to the doctors. I hoped—I prayed—that we could find an elixir or treatment to cure her. I held out hope for a year and a half before I realized there was no cure for my Clara. That she would die from this disease and I could do nothing about it—nothing but watch.” A corner of his lovely mouth lifted, curling into an ugly sneer of pain. “I watched as she grew thinner, as the agony began to claw at her from the inside.”

  He opened his clear gray eyes then, and she saw the remembered despair. It must’ve been truly hellish being helpless in the face of his love’s suffering.

  She could stand it no more. Megs reached out, taking his cold hand in hers.

  Godric bent his head, staring at her fingers atop his, making no move to grasp hers but not shaking her off either.

  She took comfort in that.

  “I think I would’ve gone insane,” he murmured to their hands, “if Sir Stanley had not called upon me one day. He’d heard, from my father, about Clara’s illness, and he had a simple offer: to come train with him again. He had by then the third of our small coterie, a young man, barely more than a lad. His second disciple, the one I had known, had broken away from Sir Stanley and had already become the Ghost of St. Giles. Sir Stanley made the excuse that his new pupil would need a sparring partner, but I knew. He offered salvation, a respite from the daily torment of watching Clara die. He offered the Ghost for me as well.”

  Megs stared. “I don’t understand. If there was already a Ghost, how could you become one as well?”

  “It wasn’t just me,” he said. “The third man took up the mask and swords soon after I did. Until two years ago, all three of us were the Ghost of St. Giles.”

  Megs’s brow wrinkled. “Didn’t you run into ea
ch other?”

  A smile lit Godric’s solemn crystal eyes. “Very rarely. You have to understand—I didn’t go out every night and neither did the other Ghosts. If by some chance we were both active on the same night, it was merely whispered that the Ghost could be in two places at once, which,” he said wryly, “he can.”

  “But three different men …” Megs shook her head. “Didn’t people notice you weren’t the same man?”

  Godric shrugged. “No. We have similar physiques. Besides, if one is wearing an outlandish costume composed of a mask, cape, large hat, and a harlequin’s livery, well, any witnesses rarely notice what the man beneath looks like.”

  Megs nodded thoughtfully. “I think your Sir Stanley must have been a very clever man.”

  “Oh, he was,” Godric said softly. He bent his head, seeming to be lost in a memory. He’d turned his hand in hers, and now his thumb was moving in circles on the back of her hand.

  It was a rather nice sensation, actually.

  “Godric,” Megs whispered carefully.

  He glanced at her. “Hmm?”

  She swallowed, loath to shatter this moment. But her curiosity had always been her downfall. “Clara died three years ago, didn’t she?”

  He stiffened at the mention of his first wife’s name on her lips and dropped her hand. “Yes.”

  She felt strangely bereft, but she soldiered on, asking the question. “Then why are you still the Ghost of St. Giles?”

  WHY WAS HE still the Ghost of St. Giles?

  Godric snorted under his breath as he edged close to the corner of a crumbling brick building. He peered around it, making sure the dark alley beyond was free of soldiers before darting quickly around it. It was often easier—and safer—to travel by rooftop, but the wound to his back made that impossible tonight. Thus he was forced to make his way by foot, keeping watch for Trevillion and his soldiers all the while.

  He paused at the end of the alley, listening, and remembered the look in Megs’s eyes as she’d asked the question: puzzlement tinged with worry. Worry for him.

  The memory made his lips quirk. When was the last time anyone had worried for him? Not since Clara had died, surely, and even before that it’d been him worrying for her, not the other way around. Clara had never known he was the Ghost, but even so, she’d trusted that he was strong enough, smart enough, man enough never to come to harm. He supposed that he should be insulted that Megs thought him so frail that she worried over him, but he couldn’t muster any outrage.

  Actually, her concern was rather endearing. His wife had a soft heart—but a strong mind. She’d been shocked that he hadn’t agreed to quit his life as the Ghost. He’d known that he’d disappointed her, and there was a part of him that wished he could give her what she wanted.

  Both things that she wanted.

  Godric ran across the street, whirling into the shadows again as he heard approaching footfalls. Two men reeled into the moonlit street, half propping each other up, half pushing each other down. The taller of the two tripped over his own feet and sank to the cobblestones in the strangely boneless manner of the very drunk. His companion braced himself on his knees and howled with laughter, stopping only when Godric slipped from his hiding place and continued on his way. He glanced over his shoulder to see the upright drunkard gaping after him.

  The two drunkards seemed a clownish duo, but Godric’s blood froze in his veins as he considered what might have happened if Megs had encountered them. Very few in St. Giles—drunk or not—were benign when faced with the temptation of a rich, beautiful woman.

  His jaw clenched at the thought. Any other woman would’ve stayed far away from this area of London after that first trip. Not Megs, though, and he hardly thought the events of last night would keep her away either. No, she’d declared that she would go back to St. Giles—and continue to do so until she found Fraser-Burnsby’s killer. It might possibly be bravado, but he didn’t think so. His wife was setting a course of suicide.

  Damnation. He wouldn’t let her own stubbornness lead to her hurt—or worse. Somehow he needed to find a way to send her back to the country, and the sooner the better.

  St. Giles in the Fields church loomed up ahead, the tall steeple bisecting the full moon. Godric crossed to the brick wall surrounding the little graveyard. There was a lock on the gate, but it hung open.

  Carefully, he pushed open the gate.

  The hinges had been oiled and he slipped inside the churchyard without sound. The wind picked up, bending the branches of a single, pathetic tree and moaning around the headstones. Some might find it eerie, but Godric knew there was far more to fear in St. Giles than where the dead slept.

  A very human grunt came from near the opposite wall, and Godric smiled grimly: He hadn’t come in vain tonight. He slid from shadow to shadow around the perimeter of the graveyard, not speaking until he was within feet of his quarry.

  “Good evening, Digger.”

  Digger Jack, a small, hunched man who happened to be one of the most notorious resurrectionists in London, straightened with a gasp.

  His companion, a brawny, lumbering lad, was less sanguine. “It’s the Devil!”

  The lad threw down his shovel and sprinted for the cemetery gate with impressive agility, given his size.

  Digger Jack made one abortive move, but Godric laid a heavy hand on the other man’s shoulder before he could run. “I need a word with you.”

  “Awww!” Digger moaned. “Now, why’d ye ’ave to go an’ do that? Ye’ve scared off Jed. ’Ave ye any idea ’ow ’ard ’tis to find a lad wif a strong back in St. Giles? I’m gettin’ on in years, I am, an’ the lumbago’s been botherin’ me somethin’ fierce. ’Ow’m I to do me work wifout ’is ’elp?”

  Godric raised an eyebrow behind his mask. “Sad as your tale of woe is, Digger, I can’t find it in myself to pity you when you’re in the very act of exhuming some poor corpse.”

  Digger pulled himself up to his full height of something under five foot two. “Man’s got to make a livin’, Ghost. ’Sides,” he continued, narrowing his eyes spitefully, “leastwise I’m not a murderer.”

  “Oh, let’s not start a game of name-calling.”

  The other man made a rude noise.

  “Digger,” Godric said low, his patience at an end, “I’m not here for your opinion of me.”

  The grave robber licked his lips nervously, his eyes sliding away from Godric’s. “What yer want, then?”

  “What do you know about the lassie snatchers?”

  Digger’s bony shoulders lifted. “Just talk ’ere and there.”

  “Tell me.”

  Digger’s hard little face contorted as the man thought. “Word is, they’re back.”

  Godric sighed. “Yes, I know.”

  “Uh …” Digger toed absently at the edge of his half-excavated grave. Clods of earth tumbled down, making no sound. “Some say as ’ow they’ve taken near on two dozen girls.”

  Four and twenty girls missing? In any other corner of London, there would’ve been a public outcry. News sheets would’ve printed outraged articles, lords would’ve thundered their ire in Parliament. Here, no one had bothered to even notice, it seemed.

  “Where are they taken to?”

  “I dunno.” Digger shook his head. “But it’s not a regular bawdy house, like. Don’t no one ’ear from ’em again.”

  Godric’s eyes narrowed. Digger didn’t appear to know that the girls were used in a workshop. The place must be well hidden. A secret kept very close.

  “There’s a wench, though,” Digger said as if remembering, “’oo ’elps to catch the lassies.”

  “Do you know what she looks like?”

  “I knows better’n that,” Digger said with a hint of pride. “I knows ’er name.”

  Godric cocked his head, waiting.

  “Mistress Cook is what she goes by—or so I’ve ’eard.”

  It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing. Godric produced a silver coin and pressed i
t into Digger’s grimy palm. “Thank you.”

  Digger perked up at the sight of money, although his tone was still a bit surly when he answered, “Anytime.”

  Godric turned to go, but hesitated as a thought struck him. “One more thing.”

  The grave robber heaved a heavy sigh. “What?”

  “Two years ago, an aristo was murdered in St. Giles. His name was Roger Fraser-Burnsby. Do you know anything about the matter?”

  If Godric hadn’t spent years questioning informants of dubious reputation, he’d have missed the slight stiffening of Digger’s body.

  “Never ’eard of ’im,” Digger said carelessly. “Now, if’n ye don’t mind, I ’as me work to finish afore sunup.”

  Godric leaned into the smaller man until the crooked nose of his black leather mask nearly touched Digger’s face. “But I do mind.”

  Digger gulped, his eyes flaring wide in alarm. “I … I don’t know nothin’, ’onest!”

  “Jack,” Godric rasped quietly. “You’re a liar.”

  “All right, all right.” Digger held up his hands as if warding off a physical attack. “There was rumors about when it ’appened. Talk that it ’adn’t been the Ghost at all ’oo killed that aristo.”

  Godric raised his brows. “Did you hear who the real murderer was?”

  Digger glanced over his shoulder as if searching for eavesdroppers. “Word was, it were another toff.”

  “Anything else?”

  The grave robber threw up his hands. “Ain’t that enough? You could get me killed, if’n this is toff business and they ’ear I been flappin’ me mouth.”

  “No one will hear,” Godric said softly. “You won’t tell and I certainly don’t plan to.”

  Digger’s only reply was a derisive snort.

  Godric tipped his hat ironically to his informant and made his escape from the graveyard, loping on foot toward the river and Saint House. The thought of Megs seeking bloody revenge troubled him. She was a woman of light and laughter. She wasn’t made for grim retribution and death.

  That was his job.

  He couldn’t let her do it. Even if it were safe for a lady to seek a murderer in St. Giles, he couldn’t let her risk dimming her light, tarnishing her laughter. That kind of revenge would scar her forever.