Lord of Darkness (Maiden Lane #5)(3)

He thought his tone gentle enough, but the elder girl’s face wrinkled mutinously. “We’re not going wif you.”

Godric smiled pleasantly—before swooping down and scooping one child over his shoulder and the other under his arm. “Oh, yes, you are.”

It wasn’t that simple, of course. The elder cursed quite shockingly for a female child of such tender years, while the younger burst into tears, and they both fought like wildcats.

Five minutes later he was within sight of the Home for Unfortunate Infants and Foundling Children when he nearly dropped them both.

“Ow!” He swallowed stronger language and took a firmer grip on the elder child, who had come perilously close to unmanning him.

Grimly, Godric stalked to the back door of the St. Giles orphanage and kicked at it until a light appeared in the kitchen window.

The door swung open to reveal a tall man in rumpled shirtsleeves and breeches.

Winter Makepeace, the manager of the home, arched an eyebrow at the sight of the Ghost of St. Giles, holding two struggling, weeping girls on his doorstep.

Godric hadn’t time for explanations.

“Here.” He unceremoniously dumped the children on the kitchen tiles and glanced at the bemused manager. “I’d advise a firm hold—they’re slipperier than greased eels.”

With that, he swung shut the home’s door, turned, and sprinted toward his town house.

LADY MARGARET ST. John started shaking the moment her carriage left St. Giles. The Ghost had been so large, so frighteningly deadly in his movements. When he’d advanced on her, his bloody swords gripped in his big, leather-clad hands and his eyes glinting behind his grotesque mask, it had been all she could do to hold herself still.

Megs inhaled, trying to quiet the quicksilver racing through her veins. She’d spent two years hating the man, but she’d never expected, when she finally met him, to feel so … so …

So alive.

She glanced down at the heavy pistols in her lap and then across the carriage to her dear friend and sister-in-law, Sarah St. John. “I’m sorry. That was …”

“An idiotic idea?” Sarah arched one light brown eyebrow. Her straight-as-a-pin hair varied from mouse-brown to the lightest shade of gold and was tucked back into a sedate and very orderly knot at the back of her head.

In contrast, Megs’s own dark, curly hair had mostly escaped from its pins hours ago and was now waving about her face like a tentacled sea monster.

Megs frowned. “Well, I don’t know if idiotic is quite—”

“Addled?” Sarah supplied crisply. “Boneheaded? Daft? Foolish? Ill-advised?”

“While all of those adjectives are in part appropriate,” Megs interjected primly before Sarah could continue her list—her friend’s vocabulary was quite extensive—“I think ill-advised might be the most applicable. I am so sorry for putting your life in danger.”

“And yours.”

Megs blinked. “What?”

Sarah leaned a little forward so that her face came into the carriage lantern’s light. Sarah usually had the sweet countenance of a gently reared maiden lady—which at five and twenty she was—belied only by a certain mocking humor lurking at the back of her soft brown eyes, but right now she might’ve been an Amazon warrior.

“Your life, Megs,” Sarah replied. “You risked not only my life and the lives of the servants, but your life as well. What could possibly be important enough to venture into St. Giles at this time of night?”

Megs looked away from her dearest friend. Sarah had come to live with her at the St. John estate in Cheshire nearly a year after Megs’s marriage to Godric, so Sarah didn’t know the real reason for their hasty nuptials.

Megs shook her head, gazing out the carriage window. “I’m sorry. I just wanted to see …”

When she didn’t finish the sentence, Sarah moved restlessly. “See what?”

Where Roger was murdered. Even the thought sent a shard of dull pain through her heart. She’d directed Tom the coachman to drive into St. Giles, hoping to find some lingering trace of Roger. There hadn’t been, of course. He’d been long dead. Long lost to her. But she’d had a second reason to look around St. Giles: to learn more about Roger’s murderer, the Ghost of St. Giles. And in that, at least, she’d succeeded. The Ghost had appeared. She hadn’t been adequately prepared tonight, but next time she would be.

Next time she wouldn’t let him get away.

Next time she’d blast a bullet through the Ghost of St. Giles’s black heart.

“Megs?” Her friend’s gentle murmur interrupted her bloody thoughts.

Megs shook her head and smiled brightly—perhaps too brightly—at her dear friend. “Never mind.”

“What—”

“Goodness, are we here already?” Megs’s change of subject was not subtle, but the carriage was slowing as if they’d finally arrived at their destination.

She leaned forward, peering out the window. The street was dark.

Megs frowned. “Maybe not.”

Sarah crossed her arms. “What do you see?”

“We’re on a narrow, winding lane and there’s a tall, dark house up ahead. It looks very … um …”

“Ancient?”

Megs glanced at her companion. “Yes?”