The simple truth was that she didn’t want to go home. She wanted to stay as long as she could in tonight’s swirling magic of music, bubbling champagne, glittering lights, and gowns. With Merritt.
But the inevitable end had arrived. The fairy tale was over.
She mumbled her thanks to the footman and stepped onto the muddy ground. Her beautiful slippers sank halfway into the filth. She grimaced. Ball costumes were not made for life in Saffron Hill.
She paused to hand up a coin to the driver in gratitude. Instead of hiring a hackney for her, Merritt had placed her inside one of the grandest carriages she’d ever seen, right down to its matching team of four horses and the tigers in their blue velvet livery. With a glance at the unfamiliar insignia on the door, she asked the tiger, “So you work for Lord Rivers, then?”
“No, ma’am.”
Well, thank goodness for small—
“His Grace the Duke of Hampton.”
Her shoulders slumped as she muttered, “Of course.” Just another reminder of how very different their two worlds were. Merritt was best friends with dukes and earls; she stood in filth nearly up to her ankles. “You’re out on an adventure tonight, then. I suppose the duke doesn’t frequent neighborhoods like this.”
The tiger laughed. “You’d be surprised what that duke gets up to, ma’am, him and his friends.”
Her heart bounced painfully. “Like Lord Rivers, you mean?”
“Aye. He’s unusual, that one.”
Veronica couldn’t stop the smile that pulled at her lips as she muttered beneath her breath, “You have no idea.” She handed the tiger a second coin. “Thank you.”
He gave a quick nod, then swung up into his perch at the rear of the carriage. He pounded on the roof to signal to the coachman, who flipped the ribbons and started the team forward.
Veronica watched until they disappeared from sight around the corner, not wanting them to see her enter the old warehouse and report back to the duke where she’d gone. She might be dressed like a princess, but she lived like a pauper.
“I still have my pride,” she whispered to herself as she walked up the steps. What little of it was left.
She pushed at the old door, but the heavy thing wouldn’t give. Someone had closed it up too tightly against the night. She had no choice but to lower her shoulder and shove into it as hard as she could. The door gave way, the creak of old hinges accompanied by the faint tearing of fabric against the splintered wood. The sound sickened her.
She looked down at her shoulder and the ripped gown. Her heart would have broken at the damage if it hadn’t already been ripped in two tonight.
She closed the door behind her and paused a moment to take in the building around her. Silent, still, and dark, despite the dozens of people crammed inside for protection against the night. There was no difference between this derelict building and countless others like it scattered across London where the poorest of the poor sought refuge.
“Except that I live here,” she breathed out, barely loud enough for a whisper. She’d never been ashamed of this place before and the friends she’d made here who were like family to her. Until tonight.
Now it had become just another reminder of the glaring difference between her world and Merritt’s.
Best that it had, too, she decided as she squared her shoulders and walked through the maze of sailcloth walls. Because she had to find a way to cauterize the wounds that had been sliced into her heart and go on with her life.
Merritt was gone now, slipping away as easily as if he’d never been there at all. But the hole he’d unknowingly left would take a very long time to fill. If ever.
When she rounded the top of the stairs, she saw a figure standing in the makeshift hall. The woman’s white night rail blended with the sailcloth like a ghost in the fog. A tingle swept down her spine, fading only when the girl’s face emerged from the shadows.
“Ivy,” Veronica said quietly, not wanting to disturb the rest of the small village inside the warehouse. “It’s the middle of the night. You should be asleep.”
“I thought I heard something…an odd noise…” With a troubled frown, Ivy glanced down the hall. Not finding whatever she was searching for, she brought her gaze back to Veronica. Her big eyes grew impossibly larger. “Why are you dressed like that?”
Veronica grimaced. Ivy routinely saw her coming and going in her leather and metal-studded patrolling clothes, complete with sword and knives. Yet it was a satin gown that made the girl gape at her as if she were a bedlamite.
“What’s wrong with this?” Veronica stepped past her and hurried toward her room before someone else came out from behind the sailcloth walls and saw her. “I think it’s beautiful.”
“It is.” Ivy fell into uninvited step behind her. “It truly is breathtaking. It’s just…” Veronica could picture in her mind the way the girl was surely biting her bottom lip as she trailed along behind her. “Why are you in it?”
Veronica rolled her eyes. “Sheep herding.”
When she tossed back the piece of cloth that served as her door, she glanced over her shoulder and saw Ivy’s chastising expression. But even Ivy’s angry hands on hips in her best irritated governess pose couldn’t keep Veronica from glimpsing the fleeting flash of wounding on the girl’s face.
Guilt stung her, and she apologetically let out a long sigh. “If you really must know.” She held open the cloth to gesture for Ivy to follow her inside. “I went to a ball. With a prince.”
“You’re lying. Ladies from the Court of Miracles don’t go to parties with princes.”
Wasn’t that the awful truth? “Fine, then.” She let the cloth drop into place and retreated into the space that served as her room, calling out over her shoulder, “I won’t tell you about the palace and all the fine dresses and shimmering jewels I saw.”
The panel flung open. “A palace?” Ivy’s mouth fell open. “You were at a palace?”
Veronica smiled at how the girl had so easily taken the bait. “I was at Carlton House at a grand ball thrown by the prince regent himself.”
Ivy stepped inside and let the cloth fall closed behind her. “The regent was there? Did you see him? Did you get to meet him? What’s he like? Oh, tell me!”
The young woman practically bounced with excitement. Curiosity and awe lit up her pretty face, framed by her loose, golden hair. If Ivy had been the daughter of a lord—or even a merchant of the middling sort—she would have been declared an Incomparable, with gentlemen waiting in line for the opportunity to court her. As it was, she would be lucky not to be forced into prostitution just to survive.
But not if Veronica could help it.
That was the first thing she wanted to change as soon as she received her pardon and could make an honest living. She wanted to find good positions in households and shops for the young women who lived here and apprenticeships or naval positions for the boys.
“Unbutton me, and I’ll tell you.” Veronica removed her fur-trimmed wrap, turned her back to the girl, and gestured at her bodice. When Ivy came forward to undo the tiny pearl buttons, she continued, “Actually, I didn’t get to meet him. There were simply too many people at the party.”
“Oh.” Disappointment dripped from the girl’s voice.
Veronica allowed herself to feel one last rush of pleasure about the evening. She smiled at Ivy over her shoulder and admitted, “But I did waltz with a baron.”
“Did you?” Ivy’s fingers flew to undo the tiny buttons. “Was he dashing?”
“Utterly.”
“What did he look like?”
Veronica’s lips curled in ironic amusement. “A bit like Mr. Herbert, I’d say.”
“Oh, he’s very handsome then!”
She murmured, mostly to herself, “I think so.”
“Tell me everything,” the girl pleaded. “And don�
��t leave out a single detail.”
She laughed. “If I do that, we might be here longer than I was at the ball!”
“And what’s wrong with that?”
The buttons gave way, and her bodice loosened. “Nothing, I suppose.” After all, there would be no patrolling tonight. No reason not to stay right here until morning, pleasing the girl with stories. Ivy had so few other amusements in her life that Veronica couldn’t bring herself to deny her this one. “Well, to begin, I rode to Carlton House in a fine black carriage drawn by two beautiful bay horses.”
The girl heaved out a sigh of romantic longing and sank down onto Veronica’s pallet bed, settling in like a child for a bedtime story.
“Once we arrived at the palace, there was an army of uniformed footmen in the finest livery and powdered wigs just waiting to serve us, complete with gold trim on their velvet jackets and boots shined so well that I could see my reflection in them.” With that captivating description, she pulled up one of the loose floorboards to fish out the key to her armoire. “And those were just the servants. You should have seen the guests. The place was a flood of satins, silks, and kerseymere.” She crossed to her armoire, unlocked it, and opened wide the doors. Inside, she kept all her most precious possessions safely under lock and key, including her sword and knives. “The light blazed from a thousand shimmering candles in the chandeliers overhead, and everywhere I looked, women were draped in diamonds and rubies and wore tall ostrich plumes in their hair.”
“And pearls?”
A slow smile crossed her face as her fingers touched the earbobs. “Yes, those, too.”
“Tell me about the baron you met. Is he special?”
“Very much so.” Too much so. Her smile faded. “He told me that he was once a soldier. Undoubtedly, he was a hero in the wars, although he would never admit to being such a thing. He’s far too modest for that.”
She removed the earbobs and placed them into a secret drawer with its own separate lock. She had to return them to Claudia as soon as possible, and all the while, she would have to pretend with the woman that she didn’t know they were a gift from Merritt. All the while, she would have to pretend that her heart wasn’t breaking. But she simply couldn’t keep them.
“He asked me to dance with him and bowed to me as if I were a grand lady,” she said quietly. She prayed Ivy couldn’t hear the sadness in her voice. “And the way he waltzed, to be in his arms, it felt…”
“Perfect?” the girl guessed.
No. It had felt like coming home.
Veronica took a moment to gather herself as that realization twisted grief through her that she would never be there again. Then she pulled in a deep breath, pasted a smile on her face, and turned around. “It felt like I needed more dance lessons before—”
She froze as icy fear darted through her bones.
Ivy no longer sat on the bed. Instead, she stood next to the sailcloth wall; a man behind her held a knife to her throat. Terror gripped the girl’s pallid face, and she was too frightened to scream or cry for help. In the slant of moonlight that fell through the window, Veronica could see the glistening tears of fear on her cheeks.
“Let her go,” Veronica demanded as coolly as possible.
“I will,” the man answered in a low voice, “if you come with me.” The sailcloth stirred around them in the nighttime drafts like a crowd of ghosts. “I won’t hurt the girl if you do.”
“No,” Veronica countered, turning so she could slowly reach her hand behind herself into the open armoire without him seeing. “You want to hurt me instead.”
“I only want to talk to you.”
As if she were foolish enough to believe that! Her fingers crept slowly along the edge of the shelf. “About what?”
“The riots.”
Her hand touched the hilt of a small knife. “What do you care about those?”
“You’re sticking your nose into places it don’t belong,” he warned. “I need to find out why.”
Slowly, she closed her hand around the knife. But helplessness turned to acid on her tongue that she was too far away to save Ivy. There were too many steps between Veronica and the man to cover in the split second it would take for him to slit the girl’s throat. All Veronica could do was hope for an opportunity to move close enough to strike.
“What does it matter to you?” she pressed, hoping to distract him. “Who paid you to come after me? Was it Malmesbury’s mistress?” She remembered Merritt’s belief that someone else was orchestrating the riots, someone far deadlier… “Or was it Scepter?”
The man froze for only a beat, yet long enough to convince her that her guess was correct. Fresh fear enveloped her. Good God. All this time, she’d thought Merritt and Clayton Elliott had been exaggerating about Scepter’s involvement, that the group couldn’t possibly be connected to the riots.
“Come with me,” the man offered, “and I’ll let the girl go.”
“Let the girl go,” Veronica countered, “and I might come with you.”
“Go on, then.” He jerked his head toward the flap in the wall. “You go first. I’ll follow.”
Veronica slipped the knife from the shelf as she slowly turned toward the door as if to carry out the man’s orders. Her hand nestled unseen in the folds of her gown, with the handle of the knife clasped against her palm and the blade pointing back up her wrist toward her elbow.
She stopped and shook her head as if changing her mind. “And have my back to you so I won’t know when you’ve stabbed a knife into it or reached around to slit my throat? I don’t think so.” She was at least half a dozen feet closer now. Close enough that she might just be able to strike before he could hurt Ivy. She took another step toward him. “You’ll have to do better than that.”
He grinned a devilish smile. Slowly, he moved the edge of the blade back and forth beneath Ivy’s chin. “I don’t have to do anything. I’ve—”
“Please!” Ivy cried, her voice shattered with terror. “Please let me go!”
Veronica moved forward. “Ivy, it’s all right—”
“This has nothing to do with me!” The girl’s frantic voice rose higher in mounting panic. “Let me go!”
Veronica took another step. She stood so close now that she could lunge and be on top of the man before he could react. Her hand tightened around the knife. She shifted her weight to the balls of her feet in preparation to spring, for a powerful right thrust to that soft spot between the man’s ribs and hips—
A long blade sliced through the sailcloth, into the man’s back, and out through his belly.
He spasmed, jerking violently as his hands fell away from Ivy. The girl tumbled to the floor as his mouth opened and blood spilled out. Then the sword yanked back free of his body, and he fell forward, dead before he hit the floor.
“Ivy!” Veronica dropped her knife and ran forward. She fell to her knees on the floor and pulled the wailing girl into her arms.
A hand reached beneath the sailcloth and lifted it out of the way. Filipe ducked beneath it and stepped into the room. He paused at the man’s feet as a thick, red puddle oozed around his boots. Matching blood dripped from his sword. Filipe poked him with the toe of his boot to make certain he was dead.
The attacker’s shirt had pulled back when he slid to the floor and revealed marks on the side of his neck. Through the shadows, Veronica could just make out a tattoo—
Her heart lodged in her throat. A key. The same symbol she’d seen on General Liggett’s uniform.
“He was here after you,” Filipe muttered and kicked the man again. Hard.
“Yes.” She pressed Ivy’s head against her shoulder as the girl fought to choke back her terrified sobs.
His dark gaze lifted slowly to meet Veronica’s. “God only knows how many people he could have hurt while looking for you.”
“Yes,” she whispe
red, self-recrimination pulsing through her as painfully as the sound of Ivy’s cries.
“He was here because of the riots.” Filipe wiped the sword over his thigh to clean off the blood, then spat on the man. “Not because of thief-taking.”
“Yes.” She tightened her arms around Ivy to gather what little resolve she could and admitted, “I’ve lied to you. The past few nights…I haven’t been out catching criminals.”
“What have you been doing?”
She confessed softly, “Working for the Home Office.”
The expression of betrayal that tightened his face pierced her. He was a brother to her, the only person left from her childhood who loved her. And she’d deceived him.
“Their agents caught me a few nights ago while I was patrolling for Fernsby. They knew I’d escaped from prison.” She smoothed back Ivy’s hair and placed a kiss to the girl’s forehead, equally to console herself as much as Ivy. “They offered me a pardon if I cooperated with them to find the men responsible for the riots.”
He paused to absorb her confession, then he asked quietly, “So that Mr. Herbert you brought here—is he a rioter or a Home Office snitch?”
“A barrister.” Telling Filipe anything more would put Merritt in danger. “He’s going to secure my pardon when the mob’s leaders are found.”
Filipe gestured a hand at her gown. “Did he dress you up like this, too?”
“Yes.” Her heart broke at the torn and blood-stained gown that had once been so beautiful. She’d danced with Merritt only a few hours before, but now, the ball seemed a lifetime ago.
Filipe stared at her for a long while as if trying to find the sister he knew inside the woman at his feet. Then he gave up, as if she were a stranger to him. His resignation filled her with guilt and desolation.
He pointed his sword at the body that was still bleeding out onto the floor. “Your presence here endangers the entire Court.”
“I know.” Just as she knew in her gut what was coming next—
“I want you to leave.”
An Extraordinary Lord Page 19