One Night Is Never Enough

by Anne Mallory

  Then he was darting through the partially opened door.

  Charlotte frantically looked around, but there was no evidence of whoever had been throwing knives at them. And she had the very certain notion that Roman wouldn’t have left if he had thought otherwise.

  She held the pistol gingerly in her numb fingers before curling her fingers tightly around the handle, jerkily aiming it at everything in the room that caught her attention. She might have never held one before, but that didn’t mean that with the choice between pulling the trigger and having one pulled on her, she wasn’t going to choose the first option.

  She listened to the roar below and clenched tight fingers around metal. She couldn’t even comprehend what was happening.

  Andreas had betrayed Roman? Had hired someone to kill him? And what . . . people were rioting below to make sure no one escaped alive?

  But . . . but Roman had gone after Andreas. What would Andreas do to Roman? Especially with Roman in emotional pain over his betrayal? Andreas could kill him.

  Her mouth opened, her throat worked, but no sound emerged. Killed while she stood here stupidly waiting—while a crowd tried to break down the building at its foundations and destroy everything within.

  Her feet moved through the bedroom door and toward the outer door without mental consent. She attempted to open the outer door, but it was locked tight. It took a precious thirty seconds to unlock the three locks. How . . . ? She shook her head at the unimportance of the question. The hall was empty, but the only other door in the hall was ajar—Andreas’s room, sharing the other half of the building’s upper floor with Roman.

  Her breath came in pants, but she crept to Andreas’s door, pistol waving all over the hallway toward any noise.

  Then everything went suddenly silent. So silent. Nary a shout from the streets below.

  She slowly peered around the edge of Andreas’s door.

  Her first impression consisted solely of bodies and blood. Then her gaze snapped to Roman, who was crouched, hovering, over someone half-propped against the wall. She took a step forward. Roman spun around and for a split second she saw her life end. His knife hit the wall half a pace from her, as, at the last moment, he threw off his aim. The blade vibrated outside of the tip of its sheath.

  “Shit. God. Charlotte.” He closed his eyes tight, then they shot open. “Stanley,” he shouted. “One-eye, Milton, Bertrand, Lefty! Upstairs, now!”

  She wasn’t sure her body would regain movement, the pistol frozen in her fingers for all eternity. She heard feet furiously stamp up the stairs and down the hall.

  “Sorry, Boss, but someone started a riot and—” The young voice abruptly ended as a boy appeared at her side, stopping dead just inside the frame of the door. She could feel at least one other body at her side, but her head stubbornly stayed forward, unable to move or look to see.

  “Johnny, whiskey, needle, and thread. Peter, the special knife, two candles.” There was nothing soft about Roman’s voice, and his accent was so thick she could barely discern the words.

  The scene finally snapped into sharp focus as someone next to her pried the pistol from her frozen fingers. Roman was crouched over Andreas, who looked as if he’d participated in a war, one leg bent at an odd angle. And there were five other bodies and a flood of spilled blood on the floor.

  “Dammit, don’t touch that.” Andreas, fortunately, or unfortunately, still alive, tried to swat Roman’s hand away from a bloodied gash in his chest.

  “Stop being a fucking lightskirt.” But Roman’s voice was steady—too even. “Charlotte, can you sew him up?” Roman didn’t meet her eyes for a moment, but when he did, they were carefully blanked of expression.

  “No. No bloody way,” Andreas said.

  Roman looked relieved to look away from her and back to his brother. “She’s a lady. They have to know how to sew a perfect stitch. It’s a requirement.”

  Charlotte knew quite a few ladies who were abysmal at it, actually, but she thought it best not to add her thoughts. They kept slipping to the dead bodies splayed on the floor anyway. The blood soaking the floor was like too much wine spilled at a Bacchanalia. She was pretty sure the man nearest her had not died pleasantly. And another one . . . she didn’t know you could actually stick a blade through bone like that.

  She snapped her eyes away, focusing instead on a lock of hair that was falling into Roman’s eye as he argued with his brother.

  “It’s the best option.”

  His hair was always quite fetching.

  “She’s not touching me.”

  “She’ll do you up right.”

  A much nicer color than hers.

  “No.”

  And his eyes. They were fetching as well. Very fetching all around. She felt fetching too when she was around him. “Fetching,” what a strange word. Like fletching, but without the “L” that made one’s tongue do extra work.

  “Why are you whining? She will—shit!”

  Huh. The ceiling wasn’t gold here, but the wood was quite dark.

  “See?” a voice hissed. “Bloody useless.”

  She wondered if they planned it that way—to echo themselves in their décor.

  Roman’s face appeared in her view. How’d he get up there? “Charlotte? Charlotte, are you hurt? Did Slade hit you without me realizing it?”

  He sounded panicked, and she felt his hands moving over her. She tried to reassure him. He would always be so pretty, unlike her. Her mouth opened, but before she could say anything, his eyes went wide, and she found herself twisted to the side.

  A good thing really, as she proceeded to retch all over the floor and what looked like a bloody stump. But that didn’t make sense. There were no bodies over on this side of her. She retched again, only Roman’s soothing hands keeping her from falling into the swirling mess.

  “She fainted.” The voice sounded farther away than the wall. “Ladies faint at the sight of blood. And then vomit. Except they call it ‘casting up their accounts’ because they are too ladylike to use the real word. Bloody useless.”

  Roman uttered a string of words—quick and angry—but she couldn’t catch them with his thickened accent and through her fuzzed thoughts.

  “I will not,” Andreas sounded furious—not that that was different from usual.

  Fifteen minutes later, and with a cold compress pressed to her forehead, she watched from a chair as they bickered over how to stitch up the wound.

  “Now, Boss, you know you ain’t no good with a needle.” Bill rubbed a hand along the back of his neck. “And the only good blood-and-bones can’t be found. Damn riot. Smart bastards to start it. Kept everyone busy downstairs. Lucky we didn’t lose anyone.”

  She had been studiously avoiding watching the boys clean up the bodies. It had taken six trips. She closed her eyes and pressed the pad harder against her forehead, trying not to think about why five bodies necessitated six trips.

  “Anyway,” Bill continued. “Merrick is the best one with a needle. A rotten ass of a doctor, but he gets the job done.”

  “Exactly.” Andreas held out his hand imperiously. “Now bring me a damn mirror and give me the damn needle, so I can sew it up my damn self.”

  “You’ll end up stabbing yourself,” Roman said flatly. “Your hands are shaking. You’ve lost too much blood.”

  “My hands are not shaking.” Andreas’s voice was deadly.

  Charlotte threw the cloth down on the table. “Just give me the damn thing.”

  “No.”

  She stood up and strode around the—wine—on the floor. “Give it here.” She held out her hand, and Roman gamely handed the needle to her.

  The wound had been cleansed, so she could see the blade line.

  “Have you ever even seen this done?” Andreas snarled.

  “No,” she said bluntly. “But you are sorrier-looking than my first embroidery attempt, so shut your gob.”

  Surprisingly, he did. She thought it might be because he was too tired to
do anything else, though. He glared but closed his eyes, leaning his head back against the wall. He had other injuries too, but the chest wound was by far the worst. Somehow his leg looked completely normal again. Obviously a trick of her mind before she’d fainted.

  She threaded the needle. A simple series of straight stitches. She had been able to sew a perfect line since she was eight. That’s all she needed to do. She put her finger on top of the needle and placed the tip against his skin. Of course, sewing through cloth and sewing through skin were hardly equal tasks. She hesitated, point pressed.

  “Just push it through,” he said viciously, eyes still closed. “What difference does it make at this point? You’ll probably faint halfway through the first stitch anyway, then I can just do it myself.”

  She set her jaw and pricked the skin, pushing through to the other side of the gash. “You know exactly how to motivate me, Mr. Merrick. Congratulations.”

  She finished the half stitch, pulling the thread through as carefully as she could. She peered up to see his eyes still closed but with something looser in his expression.

  “Are you going to faint, Mr. Merrick?”

  He peeked one eye open to look at her, death promised in his glare.

  She looked down, satisfied, and started the next stitch, settling the scene into a rhythm as she worked.

  Andreas took a swig from the bottle in his hand a few minutes later, far calmer. “I don’t know whether to be insulted or pleased that they sent five men after me and Slade after you,” he said to Roman.

  But now that things were being taken care of, Roman was unresponsive, rolling a pair of dice under his palm, across the table, over and over, staring at them as if doing otherwise would produce dire results. Charlotte spared him a quick look as she threaded the needle with a new line. She was nearly done stitching. Apprehension slid through her, but she couldn’t identify why.

  Bill looked pensive. “Maybe luck of the draw. Slade’s expensive. So they sent one pot one way and the other”—he shrugged—“to the other. But they didn’t make the proper inquiries, or else they would have sent Slade after you instead, Merrick. There’s only one person in this world who Slade would show himself to, and they submitted his name to the fold.” Bill shook his head and shot a glance at Roman. Charlotte’s apprehension grew at the concerned look in Bill’s eye as he too watched the steady crackle of dice.

  Andreas smiled, eyes closed once more. “Does my heart good to think that the bastard’s reputation took a hit tonight.”

  “He’ll probably hold it against you,” Bill pointed out.

  Andreas smiled thinly. “I hope so. It will give me opportunity when they send round two.”

  “Only thing in our favor is that they might think Slade can’t do the job properly and not hire him again. How did people without an arseload of inquiry figure out how to contact him anyhow? S’not easy. It has to be multiple factions working together, Boss, you were right. Bad communication is to our advantage.”

  “Who’s Slade?” Charlotte asked, pricking Andreas’s skin again with a far steadier hand than she had any reason to claim.

  She could see Andreas study her from beneath cracked lids. “He’s an assassin,” he said finally.

  “I put that together, actually,” she said calmly, pulling the thread through. “But who is he, and why didn’t he kill us?”

  “What difference does it make who he is?” But Andreas moved his fingers slightly around the neck of the bottle, belying his words. “Wouldn’t have killed you anyway unless you saw his face, or he was paid to put you in a grave. Roman was the target.”

  “Slade’s the best,” Bill piped in, then held out his hands. “No offense, Merrick.” Bill addressed Charlotte again quickly. “Boss saved his arse years ago when Slade was still wet behind the ears.” His brow furrowed, and he turned to Roman. “You know, Slade might have chosen his target. Taken you instead, Boss. To protect you like.”

  Roman shrugged. He looked bored. “Perhaps. Though why now?” And now his voice sounded anything but bored. Vicious, angry, savage. “This happens all the time after all.” He swept the dice, flinging them harshly against the wall. He threw back his chair and went to the sideboard.

  Andreas’s eyes narrowed on him. Charlotte’s unease turned into a raging tumult.

  “What’s crawled up your breeches?” Andreas demanded.

  Roman fished through glass containers, ignoring him, clinking bottles together.

  “Stop abusing my liquor.”

  “Walk over here and stop me.” Roman’s voice retained the vicious thread as he grabbed a bottle, nearly breaking it along with another as he yanked the glass container from its pocket.

  “Roman.” The voice held warning. A warning laced with some unidentifiable emotion. And like before, her body instinctively reacted to the threat underlying every aspect of Andreas, and her shoulders rose and tightened.

  Glass shattered somewhere behind her.

  Andreas thumped his own bottle down roughly, and she found the needle plucked from her hand. She blinked at her empty fingers. Shock overpowering everything else.

  “Out! All of you. Now,” Andreas barked, holding the needle, threaded and still attached to him.

  And it was as if everyone had a pressing urge to use the commode, as they all stumbled over each other trying to get to the door. She stared at the madness.

  “You, out too,” Andreas hissed at her.

  She bristled and opened her mouth to respond, but something in Andreas’s eyes stopped her. Something neither cold nor cruel. Something almost approaching fear. And it stopped her.

  She looked from one of his dark eyes to the other, and in other circumstances she might have been surprised to notice that his eyes weren’t inky black—they were a very dark blue. And as if the realization that Andreas wasn’t a fathomless pit, and instead was just very, very dark, made a difference to her worldview, she rose and stiffly walked to the door.

  Roman stood rigidly by the sideboard, gripping a bottle, aggression vibrating underneath his skin. His mouth tightened as his eyes slid past her, still not fully meeting her gaze. Saying nothing.

  But as she touched the handle of the door, the words came, dark and harsh, as if torn from him.

  “Do not leave this floor.”

  She gripped the handle, turned it, and walked stiffly into the hall, where a gaggle of men and boys shifted uneasily. She shut the door behind her just as the shouting started.

  Charlotte curled into Roman’s plush seat and idly moved pieces on the chessboard. The yelling—and a few conspicuous thumps and sounds of breaking glass—had ceased half an hour ago. There hadn’t been a peep since, though neither Andreas nor Roman had emerged. They had either killed each other or worked through the argument, as stupid men did.

  Bill, who had been the only one to remain with her—having sent the others to various defensive stations or tasks—had looked relieved, so she was inclined to the latter view. Some of the words had penetrated the wood, though most of the time it had been obvious that they were too aware that there were others near.

  Still, it had become evident that Roman felt he had endangered her life. That he would always do so. Andreas had not been kind, saying she had been in as much danger the day before, and yet he hadn’t cared then.

  That hadn’t gone over well.

  She had finally given up waiting outside and numbly walked to Roman’s room, which had already been thoroughly searched for intruders and cleared, and closed the door behind her.

  She had then leaned against it for long moments, with her eyes closed and a delayed whimper on her lips. Finally, after gathering herself, she had moved to the table—not a desk, for there were no desks in his personal rooms—and sat in his cozy, well-loved chair.

  Roman was going to push her away. That much was clear because that’s what stupid people did.

  Stupid people like she, too scared to grab the good that she could have.

  Smart people like she, wi
th enough regard for others to understand that her actions didn’t impact just her alone.

  She moved the white queen, dragging her rigid hem along the squares.

  She should let him push her away. Make it easy.

  Make life easier. Make life safer. Make life so less vibrant and bright and warm.

  She heard a door shut down the hall, then Roman’s door opened. Andreas strode inside, dark and deadly, though the sinister air that usually surrounded him was conspicuously absent, and there was a slight hitch to his stride. Probably more to do with the loss of blood than anything else.

  He regarded her for a long moment, taking her measure. She took his right back. She figured that she had poked a needle through his flesh, she might as well tell him to go to hell too.

  “If you are here to tell me to stay away from Roman, you can—”

  He gave a humorless laugh, eyes dark. Dark blue. “I’m not.” It was hard to hold his piercing stare, truly, but she did so, determined. He lifted his chin, regarding her as if she were a mangled insect that somehow still managed to stay alive. “If you make him happy, then I will tolerate you.”

  Only the stubborn urge not to allow him to flummox her moved her tongue. “That is very sporting of you.” At least, that’s what she figured she should say. “Thank you.”

  She couldn’t read his expression for a moment. “But just because I know why he likes you,” he said, “doesn’t mean I have to like you.”

  “Of course.” She smiled without humor. “I’d hardly think you a man to be swayed by cool manners or a pretty face.”

  His finger nearly vibrated as he jammed it in her direction. “If you think he likes you because you are beautiful or finely mannered, then you are as stupid and useless as I once thought you.”

  She blinked.

  He turned and was almost to the door before he stopped and angled his head slightly back toward her. “Oh, and thank you for stitching me up.”

  And then he was gone.

  Roman had tried to grab Andreas before he entered the room, but even injured, his brother was a slippery bastard.