Thief of Shadows (Maiden Lane #4)(87)

“Oh, surely that doesn’t apply to me.” Lady Beckinhall sauntered into the library behind the butler, nodding a dismissal at the man.

He looked relieved as he left the room.

“I’ve come to take you out,” Lady Beckinhall announced, peering at a huge Bible on a stand.

“I’ve got a headache.”

“All the better, then,” Lady Beckinhall said briskly. “Fresh air will do your head good.”

“Usually doctors prescribe bed rest for a headache,” Megs pointed out.

“They prescribe bed rest for everything,” Lady Beckinhall said somewhat obscurely. She turned from the Bible, her expression softening. “Please? It’s been almost a sennight since Mr. Makepeace left the home. I estimate Lady Penelope has about run it into the ground by now. I thought we should at least go see.”

“Mr. Makepeace left?” For a moment Megs felt a stirring of interest.

“Yes. Two days after—” Lady Beckinhall winced and stopped, looking at Megs helplessly.

Two days after Roger died.

Megs looked back at the book in her lap, the words blurring. “I can’t. I’m sorry.”

She felt Lady Beckinhall coming nearer. “Why? Why can’t you leave?”

“I just can’t.”

“What is it?” Lady Beckinhall laid a cool hand against her forehead. “Are you really ill? Have you seen a physician?”

“No!” Megs moved her head aside. “It isn’t that.”

“Then what?”

The words were out of her mouth before she could catch them. “I’m with child.”

She opened her eyes, glancing up, and caught a look upon Lady Beckinhall’s face that she’d never seen on anyone before. She literally went gray, her eyes wide with horror.

Oh, lovely. Apparently she’d shocked the unshockable Lady Beckinhall. “I’m sorry,” Megs muttered inanely. “I don’t know what I was thinking to tell you. Forget I ever—”

“You were thinking that you needed help.” The look was gone from Lady Beckinhall’s face as swiftly as it had appeared, color beginning to seep back into her cheeks. “And fortunately, you’ve told the right person.”

Chapter Seventeen

When the Harlequin slew the last man, the Harlequin’s True Love ran toward him, but as she did so, he turned and sprinted away, as fleet as a stag. For many hours, the True Love pursued the Harlequin, never losing sight of him, until he came to bay against a dead end. Quick as a wink, the True Love darted forward and threw the cord braided from her own hair over his upper body, drawing it tight so that his arms were trapped against his sides. In this way, she bound him with her love…

—from The Legend of the Harlequin Ghost of St. Giles

Isabel entered her pretty little dining room and paused. She and Lady Margaret had never made their trip to the orphanage. Instead, she’d just written and posted a letter on Lady Margaret’s behalf and was ready for luncheon. But Winter was sitting at the rosewood table, a single cup of tea before him. That was odd. Winter usually ate a scandalously early breakfast and then left for the nursery or for a study she’d let him use. Yet he was still here hours after lessons with Christopher should have started.

“What is it?” she asked without preamble.

His gaze didn’t rise from his teacup. “I found them.”

She darted a quick glance at the footman standing in the corner pretending not to listen. “Tell Cook there’ll be two for luncheon.” She waited until the footman had left before asking Winter, “Found who?”

“The children.” His voice was dead.

She frowned. “But that’s good news, surely?”

His gaze finally rose to hers, and she saw that his eyes were red-rimmed and sunken. She revised her earlier thought: It wasn’t that he’d gotten up late this morning. He hadn’t gone to bed at all.

She pulled out a chair and eased into it. “Tell me.”

He spread his hands before him and looked at his palms as if trying to understand his past or future. “They were in an attic of a house divided and then divided again into a warren of rooms. Fifteen girls all crammed into a room with no windows, no ventilation, and a ceiling that was no more than my shoulder’s height at its tallest. Not a one smiled in happiness or even relief when I opened their barred door and rescued them. I think they had given up hope.”

She closed her eyes, mourning those children hidden away and used. Mourning Winter’s pain. “But you did find them. They’ll learn to smile again.”

“Will they?” he asked, and she opened her eyes to see him shaking his head. “I don’t know.”

“Where are they now?”

“I brought them to the home. Knocked on the door and stood in the shadows until the door was opened and they were let in, safe and sound. They didn’t move, didn’t try to flee while they waited.”

The footman returned followed by two of his compatriots bearing platters of cold meats, cheeses, bread, and fruit.

“Just set it here,” Isabel said, waving to the table. “We’ll serve ourselves.”

She waited until they’d trooped out of the dining room again before filling Winter’s plate with a selection of everything on the table. “Here, eat this.”