Staked (The Iron Druid Chronicles, #8)(106)
“Mr Ketch, is it? Mr William Ketch…?”
He leaned in and Ketch, frozen, watched his nostrils flare as he appeared to smell him. The midnight blue that the man was dressed in seemed to absorb even more light than the woman’s black dress. He wore a knee-length riding coat cut tight to his body, beneath which was a double-breasted leather waistcoat of exactly the same hue, as were the shirt and tightly knotted silk stock he wore around his neck. The only break in the colour of his clothing was the brown of his soft leather riding boots.
His hair was also of the darkest brown, as were his thick and well-shaped eyebrows, and his eyes, when Ketch met them, were startlingly … unexpected.
Looking into them Ketch felt, for a moment, giddy and excited. The eyes were not just one brown, not even some of the browns: they were all the browns. It was as if he was looking into a swirl of autumn leaves tumbling happily in the golden sunlight of a blazing Indian summer.
One look into the tawny glamour in those eyes and Ketch forgot the blade at his throat.
One look into those eyes and the anger was gone and all was simple again.
One look into those eyes and Bill Ketch was confusingly and irrevocably in something as close to love as to make no difference.
The man must have seen this because the blade did something fast and complicated and disappeared beneath the skirts of his coat as he reached forward, gripped Ketch by both shoulders and pulled him close, sniffing him again and then raising an eyebrow in surprise, before pushing him back and smiling at him like an old friend.
“He is everything he appears to be, and no more,” he said over his shoulder.
The woman stepped forward.
“You are sure?”
“I thought I smelled something on the air as he knocked, but it didn’t come in with him. I may have been mistaken. The river is full of stink at high tide.”
“So you are sure?” she repeated.
“As sure as I am that you will never tire of asking me that particular question,” said the man.
“‘Measure twice, cut once’ is a habit that has served me well enough since I was old enough to think,” she said flatly, “and it has kept this house safe for much longer than that.”
“Are you the Jew?” said Ketch. His voice squeaked a little as he spoke, so happy was he feeling, bathed in the warmth of the handsome young man’s open smile.
“I do not have that honour,” he replied.
The woman appeared at the man’s shoulder.
“Well?” she said.
The chill returned to Ketch’s heart as she spoke.
“He is as harmless as he appears to be, I assure you,” repeated the man.
She took off her glasses and folded them in one hand. Her eyes were grey-green and cold as a midwinter wave. Her words, when they came, were no warmer.
“I am Sara Falk. I am the Jew.”
As Ketch tried to realign the realities of his world, she put a hand on the man’s shoulder and pointed him at the long bundle on the floor.
“Now, Mr Sharp, there is a young woman in that sack. If you would be so kind.”
The man flickered to the bundle on the floor, again seeming to move between time instead of through it. The blade reappeared in his hand, flashed up and down the sacking, and then he was helping the girl to her feet and simultaneously sniffing at her head.
“Mr Sharp?” said Sara Falk.
“As I said, I smelled something out there,” he said. “I thought it was him. It isn’t, nor is it her.”
“Well, good,” she said, the twitch of a smile ghosting round the corner of her mouth. “Maybe it was your imagination.”
“It pleases you to make sport of me, my dear Miss Falk, but I venture to point out that since we are charged with anticipating the inconceivable, my ‘imagination’ is just as effective a defensive tool as your double-checking,” he replied, looking at the girl closely. “And since our numbers are so perilously dwindled these days, you will excuse me if I do duty as both belt and braces in these matters.”
The young woman was slender and trembling, in a grubby pinafore dress with no shoes and long reddish hair that hung down wavy and unwashed, obscuring a clear look at her face. At first glance, however, it was clear she was not a child, and he judged her age between sixteen and twenty years old. She flinched when he reached to push the hair back to get a better look at her and make a more accurate assessment, and he stopped and spoke quietly.
“No, no, my dear, just look at me. Look at me and you’ll see you have nothing to fear.”
After a moment her head came up and eyes big as saucers peered a question into his. As soon as they did the trembling calmed and she allowed him to push the hair back and reveal what had been done to her mouth to stop the screaming.
He exhaled through his teeth in an angry hiss and then gently turned her towards Sara Falk. She stared at the rectangle of black hessian that was pasted across the girl’s face from below her nose down to her chin.
“What is this?” said Mr Sharp, voice tight, still keeping the girl steady with his eyes.
“It’s just a pitch-plaster, some sacking and tar and pitch, like a sticky poultice, such as they use up the Bedlam Hospital to quiet the lunatics…” explained Ketch, his voice quavering lest Mr Sharp’s gaze when it turned to add him up again was full of something other than the golden warmth he was already missing. “Why, the girlie don’t mind a—”