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He grimaced and looked away from her, grabbing a banyan that had been lying over the back of a chair. “If the footman was deliberately killed, Megs, then there is at least one man out there willing to murder to hide his crime. I don’t want you poking at this.”
“Godric—”
“We made a pact.” Godric pulled on the banyan, buttoning it up. “I upheld my part.”
She held his gaze a moment longer before throwing the bloody bit of linen down. They’d have to burn it later so the servants wouldn’t see. “Very well.”
His shoulders visibly relaxed.
She pressed her useless hands together. “You said earlier that you had your own Ghostly business to attend to in St. Giles. Can I ask what it was?”
His eyes narrowed and for a moment she thought he wouldn’t answer her. “I was on the trail of a group who steal little girls and work them near to death making silk stockings, of all things. They’re called the lassie snatchers.”
Megs’s mouth sagged with horror. She thought of the girls at the home, the little maids they’d so recently hired. The idea of someone abusing children just like them made her stomach roll.
“Oh,” she said weakly.
He nodded curtly. “Now if your curiosity is assuaged …?”
It was a dismissal, but her curiosity wasn’t satisfied. “What about your back? You’ve pulled the stitches out.”
“Don’t fuss. I’ll have Moulder bandage it later,” Godric said curtly. “It’ll just pull out again when—” He glanced at her and closed his lips.
She felt an awful premonition. “When what, Godric?”
The corner of his beautiful mouth curled down. “When I return to St. Giles tonight.”
Chapter Thirteen
The air became brisk as the Hellequin’s great black horse climbed into the Peak of Whispers. Faith shivered and huddled against the Hellequin until he reached into one of his saddlebags and drew out a cloak.
“Wrap this about you, lass,” he said gruffly, and Faith took the cloak with a grateful word of thanks.
Tall pines, gloomy and black, rose around them now, and as the wind whistled through their branches, Faith seemed to hear faint cries and murmurs. As she looked, she saw small, trailing wisps, floating in the wind. …
—From The Legend of the Hellequin
Artemis Greaves slipped through the crowded London street, her pace fast and determined that morning. She had only a couple of hours to herself before Penelope would wake and want her company to chat and analyze every detail of the previous evening’s ball. Artemis sighed—albeit fondly. If she’d thought Penelope featherheaded before, it was nothing to what her cousin was like when she was determined to marry a duke. There were angled invitations, plotted chance meetings, and the near-constant jealousy over Miss Royle, who, Artemis suspected, didn’t even know she was engaged in a fierce rivalry with Penelope.
All of it would be a quiet source of amusement were it not for the object of Penelope’s obsession: His Grace, the Duke of Wakefield. Artemis didn’t like the man, doubted very much that he would, in the end, make her cousin happy. And if they ever did marry …
She stopped and was nearly run down by a porter carrying two geese on his back.
“Watch out, luv,” the man flung over his shoulder, not unkindly, as he stepped around her.
Artemis swallowed and started forward again, moving easily in the stream of shuffling, stomping, running, strolling, limping, and tripping people. London’s streets were like a great river of people, constantly flowing and ebbing, joining into greater rushing courses, parting into side streams, getting caught in whirlpools of milling humanity.
One swam or ran the risk of drowning.
If Penelope married the Duke of Wakefield, in the best case Artemis would join her in her new home, a constant, pale wraith, as His Grace had put it. Continuing to be Penelope’s handmaiden, eventually perhaps, the kind aunt to their children. In the worst case, Penelope would decide that she no longer needed a companion.
Artemis inhaled shakily. But those worries were for the future. She had more immediate problems to deal with.
Twenty minutes later, she at last neared her destination: a small jeweler’s shop in a not very fashionable area of London. It had taken Artemis months of carefully worded questions among the ladies of her acquaintance to get the address of a suitable shop. Her queries could’ve caused comment and started gossip if she’d taken a more direct route.
Artemis glanced around cautiously and then pushed open the door to the little shop. The interior was very dim and almost bare. An elderly man sat behind a high counter with a few rings, bracelets, and necklaces displayed. She was the only patron in the shop.
The shopkeeper looked up at her entrance. He was a small, stooped man with an overlarge nose and leathery, wrinkled skin. He wore a worn gray wig and red waistcoat and coat. His gaze seemed to appraise her clothing: not rich. Artemis stopped the urge to lower her head.
