“The child?”
He looked at his sister, emotions stripped raw. “I am going to be a father…,” he said. His voice broke. “Tell Grace I love her.”
He swung up on the horse and raced toward Seven Dials.
The crowd gathered outside the Nolans’tenement seethed with agitation, the group parting with hostile glances as Lucien shouldered his way through them. The moment he stepped inside the single room, he smelled the coppery tang of blood and the sourness of fear. The table lay on its side, crockery shattered, a stool splintered as if there had been a fight. The children cowered in the darkest corner, the whites of their eyes visible in the glow of the rush light. Moira Nolan bent over the mattress on which O’Malley lay, his face ashen, blood oozing from a gash on his brow. His arm hung at a strange angle.
“I have a shilling for the first one to bring a surgeon and some whiskey,” Lucien barked to the crowd then turned to the Irishman. “What happened here?”
“Darragh. He was talking wild—half out of his head. Clubbed me when I tried…tried to stop him.”
“Stop him from what?”
“Damned fool intends to set off a bomb.” O’Malley slurred his words. “Kill himself and a whole lot of people. Bastards convinced him…” He leaned over and retched onto the floor.
“Who convinced him?” Lucien demanded. “Radical Chartists? Irish rebels?”
“How many times do I have to tell you! Not us! Rich toffs been paying spies to incite mobs to violence. Darragh Nolan is not the first hired to do their killing. If they make it looklike us, they can start another Peterloo and this time crush us completely.”
Lucien had heard men in the House of Lords saying they wanted to end things…but to incite a massacre on purpose?
Lucien felt a sick sense of foreboding. “Where is this bombing to take place? Where did Darragh go?”
“Some party at a nob’s house. Perfect place to fire up ’ristocrat’s rage.”
There were society gatherings all over the town tonight, including one at Lucien’s own house. The target could be any one of those.
“Darragh is not—not a bad man,” Moira Nolan wept. “The men who hired him promised they would take care of me an’ the wee ones if he did it. They gave us coin enough that I’ll never have to fear again.”
“Did Darragh or those men say anything that would give you a clue where he means to strike? Think or people will die!”
“Some fine house is all I know.”
Lucien felt a tug on his sleeve. He looked down and saw Sibby Rose, her eyes huge. She handed him a crumpled handkerchief. Blue initials were entwined in a spray of flowers. He’d seen a handkerchief just like it in Grace’s hand when she’d pressed it to his chest after Cassandra had wounded him. “Da left this when he sent back the lady’s tin soldier.”
Lucien turned to ice. “Your father had the tin soldier?”
Sibby nodded.
“He’s going to Raven’s Court,” Lucien said, balling up the embroidered square and thrusting it into his pocket.
Moira grabbed at his arm, her hands like claws. “Don’t hurt him!” she sobbed.
Lucien thrust her away. “He’s going after my wife! How long have you known?”
He would send the woman to the devil, but his gaze caught on Sibby Rose and Scrap. “Get O’Malley and the family the devil out of here,” Lucien told O’Malley’s friend. “Hide them well.” He thrust pound notes into the man’s hand.
Moira wailed. “But I?—”
Lucien turned on her, fierce. “The men who hired Nolan won’t leave anyone alive to implicate them.”
O’Malley stumbled to his feet. “He’s right, Moira. Darragh’s a damned fool.”
Lucien started for the door, but the Irishman called out. “Wait! Take this!” O’Malley staggered to where the framed sketch of Nolan’s face stood on the mantel. He slammed the frame against the wall, breaking it, then pulling the paper free. He thrust it into Lucien’s hands. For a moment their eyes caught, held.
Lucien jammed it into the pocket of his coat, then wheeled and shoved his way through the crowd, praying he was not too late.
CHAPTER 35
