Thief of Shadows (Maiden Lane #4)(31)

The youth hadn’t stopped. He was near the roof edge, debating whether he could make a six-foot leap across to the next building. He backed a step in preparation, the child still in his arms.

And then Winter caught hold of him.

The youth whipped around, as lethal as a snake, and sank his teeth into Winter’s wrist.

Winter grit his teeth and grabbed the boy by his hair, shaking him like a rat. The youth let go of his wrist at the same time as he let go of the child. The child tumbled down, narrowly missing the roof edge, and lay as if stunned, small eyes staring up at Winter unblinking.

With his free hand, Winter took hold of the child’s foot and dragged him away from the roof edge. The child had been wrapped in a blanket, which caught on the roof tiles as he was dragged, leaving him entirely nude.

Winter bent and flung the edge of the blanket over the child. “Stay there,” he whispered.

The little boy nodded mutely.

Then Winter turned to the youth he still held by the hair. He shook him again. “You might’ve dropped that babe over the edge.”

The youth shrugged. “Plenty more where ’e came from, innit there? ’Sides, it’s a boy.”

Winter’s eyes narrowed. “The whoremonger you work for doesn’t take male children?”

“Don’t ’ave a lassie’s nimble fingers, do they?” The youth bared his teeth like a feral dog. “ ’Sides, I don’t work for no stinkin’ whoremonger. You’d best be afeared of the man who pays me—’e’s a toff, ’e is.”

“What toff?”

The youth’s eyes flicked over Winter’s shoulder.

Winter ducked to the side, just avoiding the blow meant for his head. The older man skipped back. But the youth was free now, racing after the older man as they fled away over the rooftops.

Winter instinctively started in their direction but drew himself up abruptly when he remembered the little boy. He turned back to the child.

The boy lay where Winter had left him, still unmoving. His eyes widened as Winter approached and picked him up, bundled in the ragged blanket. He felt too light. No doubt he was undernourished as so many children were in St. Giles. If the child had had clothes before his mother’s death, the other inhabitants in the house where he lived had obviously stolen them.

A black weight seemed to settle on Winter’s shoulders. He might’ve saved this little boy, but no doubt the “lassie snatchers” were running somewhere else in St. Giles, still plying their evil trade tonight even as he stood here.

“What’s your name?” Winter whispered to the boy, pushing golden curls back from the little forehead.

The child reached out a chubby hand and fingered the curved nose of Winter’s mask in wonder. As he did so, a scrap of paper fell from his little fist.

Winter bent and picked up the paper. The child was nude, so he must’ve somehow grabbed the paper off the lad who’d snatched him. Winter couldn’t tell what, if anything, the paper had written on it, but he could feel a part of a waxen seal. He placed it carefully in his pocket and then wrapped both arms about the little boy.

“Best we get you to the home, Joseph Chance.”

“NOW, THEN,” ISABEL said early the next afternoon. “The most important thing to remember when dancing with a lady is not to step upon her toes.”

Winter Makepeace, dressed as usual in his black coat and waistcoat, looked rather like a faintly bemused scarecrow. He nodded somberly. “I shall endeavor to preserve your toes, my lady.”

“Good.” Isabel inhaled and faced forward. They were in her ballroom—a delightful space with green and black marble floors and her prized harpsichord, painted red with gilt trim. “Mr. Butterman has some talent with the harpsichord and has agreed to provide our dancing music.”

The butler bowed gravely from his seat at the harpsichord.

“How kind,” Mr. Makepeace murmured.

Isabel darted a sharp glance at him but was slightly surprised to see no sarcasm in his expression. Indeed he nodded his thanks to her butler, who, looking a tad surprised himself, nodded back. Perhaps he saved his sarcasm solely for her.

Depressing thought.

“Shall we begin?” she asked briskly, holding out her hand to him.

He took her hand in his warm fingers and looked down at her gravely. “As you wish.”

“On three. One and two and three.” She moved forward in the steps she had previously demonstrated for Mr. Makepeace and was astonished to realize that not only had he understood them on the first introduction, but also that he moved gracefully.

She darted a glance sideways at him and found him looking back, a faintly amused expression on his face as if he knew her thoughts. “When did you learn to dance, my lady?”

They faced each other for a beat and then separated and paced gently backward away from each other.

“Oh, as a young girl,” she said breathlessly, even though the dance was slow. “I had a dance master when I was twelve and shared his lessons with my girl cousin who, sadly, I did not get on with.”

They turned and paced in a parallel line together.

“You had no brothers or sisters?” he asked.

“None that I knew,” she replied. “I had an older brother who died in infancy before I was born. Now take my hand.”

He did so, his large hand enveloping hers in warmth as she circled him.