A Night Like This (Smythe-Smith Quartet #2)(68)

“What about the attack?” she demanded. “When we thought it was just petty thieves?”
George looked at her as if she were speaking in tongues. “What are you talking about?”
“When Lord Winstead was attacked!” she practically yelled. “Why would you do such a thing?”
George drew back, his upper lip curling with condescension and contempt. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he sneered, “but your precious Lord Winstead has enemies of his own. Or don’t you know that sordid story?”
“You’re not fit to speak his name,” she hissed.
But he only laughed, then crowed, “Do you have any idea how long I have been waiting for this moment?”
About as long as she’d been living as a castoff from society.
“Do you?” he growled, grabbing the knotted handkerchiefs and twisting them viciously.
She spat in his face.
George’s face mottled with rage, his skin turning so red that his blond eyebrows nearly glowed in relief. “That was a mistake,” he hissed, and he pulled her furiously toward a darkened alley. “Convenient of you to choose such a disreputable neighborhood,” he cackled. “No one will even look twice when I—”
Anne started to scream.
But no one paid her notice, and anyway, she only made noise for a moment. George slugged her in the stomach, and she stumbled against a wall, gasping for breath.
“I’ve had eight years to imagine this moment,” he said in a terrifying murmur. “Eight years to remember you every time I look in the mirror.” He pressed his face close to hers, his eyes wild with rage. “Take a good look at my face, Annelise. I’ve had eight years to heal, but look! Look!”
Anne tried to escape, but her back was jammed up against a brick wall, and George had grabbed her chin and was forcing her to face his ruined cheek. The scar had healed better than she would have thought, white now instead of red, but it still puckered and pulled, distorting his cheek into a strange bisection of skin.
“I’d thought I’d have some fun with you first,” he said, “since I never got to that day, but I didn’t envision myself in a filthy alleyway.” His lips twisted into a monstrous leer. “Even I didn’t think you’d be brought so low.”
“What do you mean, first?” Anne whispered.
But she didn’t know why she asked. She knew. She’d known all along, and when he pulled out a knife, they both knew exactly what he planned to do with it.
Anne didn’t scream. She didn’t even think. She couldn’t have said what she did, except that ten seconds later, George was lying on the cobbles, curled up like a fetus, unable to make a sound. Anne stood over him for one final moment, gasping for breath, and then she kicked him, hard, right where she’d kneed him before, and then, her hands still bound, she ran.
This time, however, she knew exactly where she was going.

Chapter Eighteen


At ten that evening, after another fruitless day of searching, Daniel headed home. He watched the pavement as he walked, counting his steps as he somehow pulled each foot in front of the other.
He’d hired private investigators. He’d combed the streets himself, stopping at every receiving house with Anne’s description and both of her names. He’d found two men who said they remembered someone of that description dropping off letters, but they didn’t recall where she sent them to. And then finally there was one who said that she matched a description of someone else altogether, someone named Mary Philpott. Lovely lady, the proprietor of the receiving house said. She never posted letters, but she came by once per week like clockwork to see if she’d received any, except for that one time . . . was it two weeks ago? He’d been surprised not to see her, especially since she hadn’t received a letter the week before, and she almost never went more than two weeks without one.
Two weeks. That would correspond with the day Anne had come running into Hoby’s looking as if she’d seen a ghost. Had she been on her way to pick up her mail when she’d run into the mysterious person she had not wished to see? He had driven her to a receiving house to post the letter she’d held in her reticule, but it had not been the same one “Mary Philpott” used to receive her letters.
At any rate, the man at the receiving house had continued, she’d come back a few weeks later. Tuesday, it was. Always Tuesday.
Daniel frowned. She had disappeared on a Wednesday.
Daniel had left his name at all three receiving houses, along with a promise of a reward should they notify him of her appearance. But beyond that, he didn’t know what to do. How was he supposed to find one woman in all of London?
And so he just walked and walked and walked, constantly searching faces in crowds. It would have been like the proverbial needle in the haystack, except that it was worse. At least the needle was in the haystack. For all he knew, Anne had left town entirely.
But it was dark now, and he needed sleep, and so he dragged himself back to Mayfair, praying that his mother and sister would not be at home when he arrived. They had not asked what he was doing each day from dawn to late evening, and he had not told them, but they knew. And it was easier if he did not have to see the pity on their faces.
Finally, he reached his street. It was quiet, blessedly so, and the only sound was his own groan as he lifted his foot to the first stone step at the entrance to Winstead House. The only sound, that was, until someone whispered his name.
He froze. “Anne?”
A figure stepped out of the shadows, trembling in the night. “Daniel,” she said again, and if she said anything more, he did not hear it. He was down the stairs in an instant, and she was in his arms, and for the first time in nearly a week, the world felt steady on its axis.