Lucan nodded. “Perhaps not in years, but in spirit. Yes.”
“Do you think he killed my mother? I feel in my heart he couldn’t have. Perhaps that’s foolish.” She didn’t know why she was telling him this.He didn’t care.
“No. I don’t believe he killed Cordelia Hargrave. I don’t believe he did any of the horrible things he’s been accused of.”
Effie nodded toward the bag across Lucan’s chest, the faded leather bright in the moonlight against the knight’s black, quilted gambeson.
“Because of what’s in there?”
He almost smiled. “No. Good night, Effie.” He walked into the mist of the alley yard and disappeared around the front of the house, leaving Effie alone outside the servant’s entrance.
* * * *
The cook was nowhere to be seen when Effie passed through the kitchen. Lucky for her, Effie thought to herself; Lucan Montague’s dismissal of her to the servants’ quarters had soured her mood, although she wasn’t sure why. She had intended on entering the house through that same door before Lucan had waylaid her. She had been in—well, if not a fine mood—a more optimistic frame of mind upon the family’s return from the Strand Vicinity Tavern Tour. Lucan Montague had not insulted her, accosted her—he’d not even really argued with her. He’d left her in the same location in which he’d found her, and Effie had walked in the house on her own two legs through the very portalshe’d intended.
She was certain her sour mood was still somehow Lucan Montague’s fault.
She came to the door of the small chamber she was sharing with Gorman and pushed it open. He was already lying in bed, one arm behind his head, his eyes closed as the candle light played over his face and beard, deepening the shadows of his mouth and the folds in his loose shirt showing above the coverlet.
He opened his eyes at the door scraping closed. “Alright?”
Effie nodded. “Montague stopped me in the alley.” She crossed the room, untying the laces at her sides. She couldn’t wait to get out of those blasted skirts. “He’s decided to go with us inthe morning.”
Gorman tapped his ear and then pointed at the door. His hands spoke:Steward in the next room.He waited for you to return.Aloud, he said, “I’m not really surprised.”
Effie quickly signed out the basics of satchel’s contents using the motions Winnie had taught them.
When she was down to her long chemise and hose at last, Effie crawled into the space Gorman created for her, where he lifted the corner of the blanket. This bed was twice as wide as the pathetic excuse for a cot in the scullery’s cell, but it still meant that she had to curl into Gorman’s side with her head on his chest in order to not roll out on the floor. She found she didn’t mind.
“It’s been nice sleeping together again,” he murmured against her hair as if he’d read her thoughts, and then kissed her head.
“It has,” she agreed with a smile. He was warm and solid and smelled like… like Gorman. She turned herface up to his.
He kissed her and Effie kissed him back.
“I still love you,” she whispered against his mouth.
“I know,” he said before he kissed her again.
It was like being home in the Warren again, and Effie could pretend that they were in the chamber they used to share; that George Thomas was asleep in his cot in the alcove. That it was the family against the world, good against evil, and they were winning.
They made love, and it was comfortable and good. And for a little while, Effie could forget that they were in London. She could forget that George Thomas slept under the same roof as Caris Hargrave. She could forget that, in the morning, she would begin the search to bring Thomas Annesley before the king.
He is very much like Padraig… I don’t believe he did any of the horrible things he’s been accused of.
She could forget aboutLucan Montague.
Chapter 8
It was a more difficult journey to return to the Warren than it had been to reach London, thanks in part to cold, heavy, late February rains that fell like slushy nectar and turned the roads to deep, frigid bogs that threatened the very lives of the horses and their riders. Every day of travel left the caravan members soaked to the skin, shivering, and with numbed extremities that took painful hours to revive around a struggling fire. They abandoned the corpse wagon on onlythe third day.
Lucan kept a vigilant eye to the rear of the party as they traversed saturated fields carpeted with broken stalks—some still stiff and sharp enough to pierce a boot when walking the horses around the wallows, while thunder rumbled above the low clouds. He’d seen no sign of them being followed so far but, thanks to the rain, the days were all dark, foggy, and prevented a crispline of sight.
Every shadow could be the hem of a cape, every crack of water falling through the trees a twig snapped by a trailing spy. It made Lucan unusually jumpy.
Streams and rivers had burst their banks, and the party were stranded in camps between villages on several occasions, waiting for water to recede from a bridge or crossing before they could carry on. The water usually lessened enough by morning, but the halfhearted sunrise often revealed that the bridge itself had followed the flood, and they had no choice but to travel upriver several more miles to find a crossing, the unspoken realization that entire days of travel were being wasted darkening the days even more so than the boiling storm clouds.
It had made the band rather irritable and sharp tongued, especially Effie Annesley. So when the dark, watery outline of an inn emerged from the misty rooflines of a village that night, a collective, relieved sigh rose up with the horses’foggy breaths.
