The Devil May Care (Brotherhood of Sinners #1)

by Lara Archer

  Rachel sat silently, her face drained of color.

  “What happened to her in that place, the look in her eyes when she spoke of it. It took something from her. I think it’s why she called herself Sal ever after. Sarah was gone. Tainted.” He met Rachel’s eyes as directly as he could bear. “That’s why she couldn’t go home.”

  Rachel shook her head frantically. “She should have come home. She should have known I would never—” Her face was a mask of agony.

  All at once, she wrenched her hands free from his.

  “Turn around,” she said, and snatched up her tweezers again. “I’ll finish your back. It needs to be cleaned.”

  Wordlessly, heavily, he turned, and tweezers nipped against his skin again, less gently than before. Rachel's hands had lost their steadiness, but she clearly needed something to do with them, and he wasn’t going to deny her.

  “Keep talking,” Rachel said. "There's more, isn't there?”

  “A bit." This part was easier at least. “She needed to eat. She tried for work as a housemaid, but with her looks, and the manner she’d acquired on the streets and in that house, no one would hire her. So she went to work for a woman she’d heard of—Madame Jonas—who treated her girls with some decency: only one man each night, a limit on what was permitted, and a wealthier clientele. Men who at least bathed. Who might leave an extra purse of gold for a girl they liked. The rooms had windows, and so it was her choice to stay or leave. Which mattered to her a great deal.”

  “And then? She found her way to Helm?”

  “Yes. I don't know how. I swear I don’t. But he brought her to me one day, told me she would work on my projects. And when she did, she used what she had learned in those houses to gain leverage against Frenchmen. And she used her skills well. She took pride in what she accomplished.”

  Rachel tugged at a last splinter of wood, almost savagely. “But still she didn’t come back to me. She didn’t so much as let me know she was alive, and she didn’t care to know if I was.”

  “You’re wrong about that. She did know. She made it a point to keep track of you.”

  A pause, and the tweezers clicked neatly against the rock as she set them down. “How conscientious of her.”

  He wished she would just weep, and scream, and beat her fists against his back, but instead she brushed her fingers over his shoulder, checking carefully for more glass.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “She underestimated you. She didn’t know you’d grown strong as well.”

  She didn’t answer him. But her fingers finished their exploration of his shoulder, and then she touched one fingertip to the very top of his spine, pressing gently against the bone. For a moment, the rest of her hand came to lay flat against his good shoulder, as though she were a priest offering a blessing.

  It was . . . what? A healing touch? A gesture of thanks? Of forgiveness? Whatever it was, it went straight through him, through every nerve of his body.

  And then she withdrew her hand, and a moment later, abruptly, there was the burn of the aguardente—“flaming water” indeed—as she poured it over his flayed skin, to flush out any tiny fragments that might be left. His spine arched despite his effort to keep still, and he found himself wincing. But also grateful for the pain, which was a thousand times easier to manage than what she’d asked him to tell her.

  A few quick strokes with salve, the cool pressure of a linen bandage, and the strange intimacy of the encounter was over.

  She dug through the pack that held their spare clothing and handed him a clean shirt. Methodical as any housekeeper, she shook out his jacket and flicked her nails across the shredded fabric of its shoulder to be sure nothing else was lodged there to cut him. She held it out to him with all the detached composure of his valet. Her face a careful blank.

  Guarded, again.

  And so was he.

  Chapter Twelve

  Two days later, after they’d hauled themselves over what seemed like a dozen more mountains, along the edges of cliffs and a hundred more rain-swollen streams, Sebastian at last led the way into the back streets of Vigo.

  He’d been ruthlessly efficient once again, pushing them along at top speed, not talking unless necessary, not touching her.

  Despite what had passed between them that one extraordinary night on the Calliope, he was once more acting as though she were an untouchable saint. And Rachel wasn’t entirely sure how she felt about that.

  They moved through a maze of alleyways, and scaled a tall stone fence that dropped them into the back garden of an ancient stone villa. Sebastian ushered Rachel through a leafless grape arbor and between raised beds of fragrant winter herbs, and then to a heavy oak door. It had some strange brass mechanism where the door handle should be, full of small levers canted in different directions; Sebastian seemed to know exactly which sequence to turn, and the mechanism clicked and the door swung open.

  The room before them was a rustic kitchen.

  A roaring fire blazed blazing in the grate, casting an orange glow over the rows of shining copper pans that hung along the walls. Roasted vegetables and fresh-baked bread and fine meat scented the air.

  A short, round woman in a voluminous apron stood stirring a huge pot. When she turned and saw Sebastian striding in, her broad, sun-lined face broke into a beaming grin. Slapping her ladle on the table, she ran forwards to wrap him in her arms.

  “Sebastiano!” the woman cried happily, and stepped back to pinch at his cheeks like a proud grandmother.

  Rosa. This was Rosa, the housekeeper of Sebastian’s villa in Vigo, the secret base of operations for Sebastian’s and Sarah’s espionage work here. Sebastian had decided it was far safer if Rosa and her family believed Sarah was still truly alive, and so Rachel now had to fool even people who had shared a home with her sister.

  Rosa’s arms opened for Rachel now, and she enfolded her in an embrace as warm as the one she’d given to Sebastian. “You are here! You return!” she exulted, and released her just long enough to turn and shout into the next room. “Evangelina! Emilio! Eduardo! Come! See los pródigos who have come home!”

  Almost at once, two handsome young men—taller, stronger, masculine versions of Rosa, with matching black hair and equally warm smiles—emerged through the doorway to throw their arms around Sebastian and then Rachel in turn.

  Footsteps tripped from behind them, and out shot a scrawny little girl with two long black braids of jet-black hair. She gasped when she saw Sebastian, and smiled much as the older woman had done. But her dark eyes scanned the rest of the room greedily, and widened with obvious joy when they lit on Rachel herself. The child looked ready to burst into tears. “Señorita! You are alive! You really are alive! I was so afraid!”

  Rachel hesitated. Sebastian had mentioned the little girl who lived in the house, Rosa’s granddaughter Evangelina, but he hadn’t said anything about any special relationship between her and Sarah. Clearly, though, a greeting like that could hardly be ignored.

  So she stepped forward quickly, and caught the child in a warm embrace. “Of course I am alive, sweetheart!” she said. “Nothing ever happens to me.”

  The child stiffened slightly in her arms, and Rachel instantly knew she had done the wrong thing.

  Perhaps Sarah had not been in the habit of hugging the girl.

  Sebastian stepped forward hastily. “Forgive us,” he said to the assembled family. “We’ve had a rough journey of it, and we’re in desperate need of recovering upstairs for a bit before we sit and talk with you all.”

  He was nervous about her performance, she could tell. But for once, his lack of certainty about her skills didn’t matter. Excitement swept through her: upstairs meant Sarah’s room, Sarah’s books.

  “Of course, querido,” said Rosa, rising up on her toes to give Sebastian’s cheek a smacking kiss. “Tomorrow is soon enough to talk. Eduardo will heat water for your baths, and I will send supper up to you. Polbo á feira , and prawns and mussels.” She clucked her tongue at him
. “And some pork, too. You always grow too pale when you go to England.”

  Sebastian grinned at her. “I wither away without your cooking.”

  “Ha!” said Rosa, wagging a finger at him. “You mark my words, hijo. Bad food will kill you quicker than any Napoleon.”

  Rachel couldn’t help smiling, too. This was a home, a real one. And the thought that Sarah had known such warmth and kindness, even for a little while, was a balm to her soul.

  Oh, but the books.

  When Sebastian turned and led the way up the stairs, she didn’t hesitate. And before she knew it, she was opening the door she’d so longed to pass through.

  It felt like walking into yet another embrace.

  Despite everything, despite their separation, despite the fact that they were many hundreds of miles from the place they’d grown up together, Rachel would have known the bedchamber was Sarah’s in an instant.

  The color of the bed covering, a deep indigo, was Sarah’s favorite. The decor was spare, mostly exposed, weathered wood. A doll with auburn hair lay on the bed—the sort of doll Sarah had always longed for in girlhood, though their great-aunts forbade such graven images. It had porcelain skin and wore a lovely dress of white lace, with a deep blue ribbon around its waist, and matching ribbons in its hair.

  Rachel picked it up, cradled the expensive weight of it in the crook of her arm, stroked its cool cheek with a fingertip. Her throat tightened, and the brief, buoying joy she’d felt was born down by an almost suffocating current of grief.

  Too many thoughts and memories pressed in against her, like spring rains hitting winter-hardened soil, far too much to absorb at once. Childhood images—the peace of the bedroom she and Sarah shared, the chill hell of the locked cellar. The sight of Sarah running away. The horrible things Sebastian had told her about the monster who locked her in, not just for a night, but for a year. A year.

  All those inexplicable feelings that had come to her while she and Sarah were apart—the anger, the terror, the hatred—oh, God. She understood it now, all too well.

  It would be so easy to break down and weep.

  Not now. Not yet. If she started, she might never stop. And she needed to be strong now, for Sarah’s sake. She had to find Sarah’s killers, and stop them.

  So she hugged the doll tight to her chest, kissed its smooth forehead, and laid it back on the bed.

  She turned her eyes to Sarah’s books.

  Books everywhere. A thrilling wealth of books, such as they never could have imagined owning when they lived at Stone Cottage. Shelves covered most of the walls, all of them crammed full, and even then, books were piled high all along the writing desk, and along the nightstand, and even stacked along the floor under the curtained window. A faint scent of tallow and neatsfoot oil still clung to them, signs of precious care given to their leather covers.

  Rachel trailed her fingers over the spines, relishing the thought that Sarah’s fingers had skimmed here, too, that her hands had held the books open. She pulled one off the shelf: the plays of Seneca. Mr. Rapson hadn’t yet had them read Seneca when Sarah ran away from home.

  She hadn’t abandoned her Latin, then.

  Rachel lay the book open in her palm. Elegant blue handwriting filled the margins—Sarah’s thoughts in response to the plays. Some notes were written in English, some in Latin, some in a simple code they’d worked out together when they were girls.

  The handwriting looked strikingly similar to Rachel’s own. Rachel ran her fingertips over the looping letters, fighting the rather maudlin urge to press her lips to them as she had with the doll.

  Her chest burned with unshed tears, and a strange measure of joy.

  She set down the Seneca, picked up another volume. Voltaire’s Candide. And beside that, Rabelais. And the essays of Rousseau. Sarah had developed a taste for French literature, then, just as Rachel had herself.

  The novels of Dumas, père et fils, filled an upper shelf. Of course, Sarah would have loved those. They suited her temper, her taste for adventure. Her heroism, apparently.

  Rachel picked up another volume, and settled onto the bed, nestling the little doll against her side. She meant to read, but instead found herself beginning to pray. Not the sort of prayer her aunts would have recognized, but a form of prayer she’d discovered for herself, many years ago—a sort of reaching out from within her to something wild and powerful in the universe—something she felt in the urging of the wind, in the blazing of the sun. An energy, a fierce and driving purpose, that seemed to underlie everything.

  She had felt it, she realized now, as she’d looked out across the surging ocean when they’d crossed from England. The great force of creation.

  She closed her eyes and let her mind and soul drift along with that current of wild power, reaching for some trace of Sarah within it.

  But a knock at the door startled her out of the trance.

  She sat up.

  A small figure was looking in around the door. It was the little girl, Evangelina. She poked her head into the room, her black braids swinging. “Can I bring you something to eat, Miss?” she asked in English. “Sebastiano says you must be hungry.”

  “No, sweetheart.” She smiled at the child. How old was she? Seven or eight, perhaps? “I’m not hungry. I—I just wish to have some quiet for a little while.”

  The little girl was watching her in the oddest way, one small hand tugging at one of her braids. “You’re certain, Señorita?”

  “Yes. Quite.”

  The child hesitated. Her bottom lip stuck out slightly, and then she bit it between her teeth. There seemed to be some pressing question on her mind. “Do—do you want a gown pressed, Miss?” Somehow it seemed this was not the question the child had wished to ask.

  “A gown? Has Lord—has Sebastian said we’re going somewhere?”

  “No, Señorita. But you’ve been traveling. I thought you’d wish to—I mean, you’re dressed like a caballero. Those clothes are awful.”

  It seemed wise to simply go along with whatever she suggested. “Of course, Eva. A gown would be lovely. And—a bath.”

  That seemed to relieve the girl a bit.

  And then an odd thought popped into Rachel’s head. The child seemed quite familiar with this room. And accustomed to speaking English. Along with the sweetness in those shining dark eyes, there was intelligence too. And perhaps an air of expectation. “Eva,” Rachel said, taking a risk. “Perhaps after my bath we can read together for a while?”

  The child rewarded her with a beaming smile. “Oh, yes, Miss. I should like that above all things!”

  Such an English turn of phrase. Sarah’s influence no doubt. Of course—how could Sarah have resisted, with a little girl in the house? Sarah would have shared these books if she could. Perhaps they’d even started Latin. Rachel took another gamble. “Primum quam primum,” she promised. As soon as possible. One of Sarah’s favorite phrases.

  Eva beamed again. “Primum quam primum!” she said. “I shall tell Eduardo and Emilio to bring up the water to the bathing-room.”

  “Thank you, dear.”

  The child left, still smiling, but Rachel had an awful feeling she’d given herself away somehow, that Evangelina knew she was not who she claimed to be. Which should not be possible—no one in this household knew that Sal had a twin.

  She would have to talk to Sebastian about it, when she could get a minute alone with him.

  By the time her bath arrived, however, she utterly forgot any ambitions beyond the glory of soaking in warm water, and washing away all the filth and grit of their travels. She’d enjoyed the first warm baths of her life in Sebastian’s townhouse in London, with Jenny washing her with a sponge, and slowly drawing an oiled comb through her hair.

  But this tub was even larger, and, somehow, being alone in the room while she bathed was a thousand times more relaxing. The warmth of the water worked its magic on all her stretched out, pummeled, exhausted muscles, loosening and easing them.

&nbs
p; Unbidden, a memory of Sebastian came into her mind. That afternoon when they’d fled Corunna, and he’d helped her down off that wretched horse to rest by the little waterfall, he’d stripped off his shirt, and she’d seen him bared to the waist for the first time. Suddenly, all that gold-tinged skin was displayed before her. Along with the remarkable shape of his chiseled arms and shoulders, the swift tapering from broad chest to lean hips, and the dark hair that flared across the top of his chest and ran in one remarkable line down his hard belly.

  And then he’d turned, and showed her he’d been injured. For her sake. Her stomach had plummeted, then. And she’d tended to him, trying not to hurt him more. Noticing all the scars he bore already—a remarkable collection for an aristocrat who had the means to live in complete safety. A jagged line crossing the back of one shoulder. Three long, pale scores as thick as her thumb at the base of his ribs on the right. Small pink puckers in his left bicep and just over one hip, each the diameter of a musket ball. And when she should have felt only sympathy for him, she was distracted by his subtle, musky scent, which mingled with the lingering smells of leather and gun smoke and the deep perfume of the surrounding pines.

  Oh, Lord. Not something it was wise to think about.

  She closed her eyes, focused on the water, focused on the warmth, focused on the lavender scent of the milled soap that she’d found in a little basket by the tub.

  That soap was Sarah’s choice, no doubt. She had always loved the scent of lavender. A neighbor back in Rookshead had grown it in her summer garden, and Rachel and Sarah would hurry ahead after church just to run their fingers through the purple tufts and come home faintly scented with wonder. Their great aunts, thank goodness, had neither one of them a particularly keen sense of smell, and so they’d always got away with bringing that little bit of perfumed beauty into the gray desolation of Stone Cottage.

  Rachel lathered up her hands now, and put them up to her face and inhaled the scent deeply. Slowly, she soaped every inch of her body, using the wonderful silky cloths Eduardo had brought up along with the hot water, and scrubbed between her toes, and behind her knees.