Page 2 of The Thorn and the Rose

“Rest now,” she said, and so he did.

Chapter 1

Gabriel, if there is anything you can do, for God’s sake, do it. I am growing desperate. I have had men out looking everywhere and spoken to everyone. No one has seen him since the night of the 15th. He left the club in the early hours, a little the worse for wear, but never returned home to his rooms. I cannot think someone has kidnapped him, for there has been no ransom. God help me, I have had every morgue and back alley searched, checked every corpse until I am sick to my stomach. He has simply vanished, and I feel entirely impotent to act. Matilda is beside herself and I feel I will run mad if I cannot discover some trace of him soon. Pip is coming to stay with us, which may give her some comfort at least. We have kept this from Catherine for now. She is staying with friends in the countryside, and I pray we can keep it from her until I can offer her some better news.

―Excerpt of a letter to Mr Gabriel Knight from The Most Hon’ble Lucian Barrington, The Marquess of Montagu.

Somewhere in London.

Thorn didn’t know how long he slept. When he was somewhat conscious, he was only vaguely aware of gentle hands bathing his face with a cool cloth, feeding him spoonfuls of soup and laudanum, and applying ointments to his cuts and bruises. He drifted in and out, plagued by strange dreams. Often, he was chasing a woman who was always just out of reach. He caught glimpses of her, but every time he called out to her to wait for him, his voice would not work, the sound that left his mouth only a whisper, and so she disappeared. Frustration gnawed at him but then he was thrust back into the alley, with the man who had beaten him with such enjoyment as his hired thugs held him still.

When he woke, he thought the dreams were preferable. Pain and disorientation were the only benefits of opening his eyes. He had never considered himself especially vain, perhaps because there were plenty of women ready and willing to show him how handsome they thought of him with no need for further proof. Waking now, however, the strange sensation of his head being far larger than normal was enough to make him quail at the thought of facing a mirror. Not that he’d see much if he looked; his eyes were so swollen it felt as if he was peering at the world through a narrow slot.

“Oh, you’re awake!”

Gingerly, Thorn turned his head toward the soft voice he recognised. He tried to smile, quickly regretting the impulse as he realised he had a split lip. He winced and raised a hand to his mouth, regretting that too, as the muscles down his side and back shrieked in protest. Deciding he’d best not move at all, he tried to speak instead, blinking in the glare of the single candle the woman held.

“I am, though I’m regretting that fact, currently.” His voice sounded a little odd, he supposed, because his lips were swollen, and his jaw badly bruised.

“I imagine you are,” she said sadly.

Thorn tried to focus on her face, but she held the candle before her, and he could not see.

“You were very kind to come to my aid.”

There was the slightest hesitation before she replied. “Oh, n-no. Not really. I… I wish I could have done more. I wish… well, never mind. I did no more than anyone would have done.”

She sounded uneasy and so Thorn hastened to reassure her.

“No, they wouldn’t, and I’d have likely been robbed in the bargain.” He glanced down at his battered hands, relieved to see the heavy gold signet his father had given him on his twenty-first birthday was still in place. She moved closer to him, keeping the candle flame before her. Thorn squinted, trying to make her out. “Where am I, by the way? How long have I been here? I must get word to my family, you see, and—”

“Here. You must be thirsty. It’s hours since you drank anything.”

Carefully, she set down the candle and moved closer, carrying a glass to him and lifting it to his lips.

Thorn sipped gratefully, wishing she had brought the candle for she was wreathed in shadow now.

“There. Now you must rest.” She set down the glass and hurried away again, picking up the candle as if to leave the room.

“Wait. Please. I must—”

“Shhhh!” The woman glanced up at the ceiling as a floorboard creaked overhead. The heavy tread of someone moving about above them galvanised her into action. She hurried to the bed and pressed her finger to his lips. “My brother. He’s home early. Please, don’t make a sound. He must not find you here!” Thorn stilled, taken aback. His mind was sluggish, his thoughts too clouded to think clearly, but even in his muddled state the situation seemed bizarre. Her brother didn’t know he was here? That did not seem possible. An odd weariness tugged at him. He shook his head, as if he could dispel the strange feeling, but his mind was increasingly hazy. His attention snagged on the one thing he was certain of, his gaze riveted on the woman before him. Now the candle was not blinding him, he could see her clearly. He stared, unabashedly entranced by the beautiful face illuminated before him. Perhaps it was the glow of the candlelight, or the strangely euphoric sense of wellbeing that suffused him, making him care little for anything else, but her face struck a chord inside him.

Her hair was a soft brown, thick and curling, her eyes a bright hazel, glinting in the flickering light, glittering with sparks of amber and bronze. She removed her finger from his lips and sent him one last anxious look before she disappeared from the room and closed the door silently behind her. Such was his state of mind he wondered if he’d dreamed her.

Thorn slept again, heavily, dead to the world and unaware of time passing. Occasionally, he would wake with a sense of unease, fighting through the fog to wonder how he came to be in this woman’s house with her brother unaware of his presence. How the hell had he got himself in such a fix? Desperately he tried to get his brain working but his head ached and throbbed, and it was hard to focus. He’d been set upon and beaten up for a reason other than robbery, which meant this was part of the ongoing vendetta against the Sons of Hades. He must get word to them, and to his parents. His poor mother would go out of her mind if he’d been missing for long. He reached for the water beside the bed, sucking in a breath as pain jolted through him, reminding him of bruises and, he suspected, at least one broken rib, but at least the pain made his mind clearer. He tried to remember exactly what had happened, how long he had been here. The realisation that he had no idea was not a happy one, but he set the glass back down as a wave of exhaustion rolled over him and he could not find the energy to do anything about it.

He jolted awake sometime later, blinking again in the glare of a candle. The woman had come back in, holding a tray with a candle and a bowl set upon it, and Thorn’s stomach gave a loud growl at the scent emanating from the steaming bowl. It felt like he’d not eaten for days. Was that true?

She hurried to him and set the tray on his lap.

“I’m so sorry, you must be famished, but I couldn’t come until my brother left.”

“He still doesn’t know I’m here?” Thorn asked, aware his voice sounded a little slurred. Yet the fact that her brother was unaware he was in his house, was so bizarre he could only cling to it, trying to understand how that was. There were no windows in the room, so he must be in a cellar of sorts. Unease rippled down his spine.

The young woman shook her head. “He never comes down here. I had the bed made up when our cousins stayed with us at the weekend. You’re lucky I hadn’t stripped the bed and put everything away. We rarely use this room for anything but storage.”

There was something in the way she spoke the words that struck him as odd. Unnatural.