Page 41

“Thank you.” She studied him, unmoving.

“Don’t mention it.” He waited for her to come back to herself. Then, because he could not help himself, he thumbed the stuck curl back from her cheek.

His touch set her in motion again. She stepped back with a little shiver and removed her cape and gloves. “Wait here,” she said. “I will bring…towels.” She tossed her cape onto the table and spun away.

As her light footsteps faded on the stairs, a cold drop trickled down under his collar. He removed his jacket and waistcoat, stripped off his ruined tie, and hung them over an empty drying rack in a corner of the fragrant room. His lawn shirt stuck to him. He pulled it away from his body and gritted his teeth against a sudden chill. His false betrothal to Vivian Bradish was hard on his wardrobe.

His clothes and hers were soaked and dripping because she had seen something admirable in Lark’s Haitian neighbor. Viv’s single-minded determination to pursue the woman’s story had meant she laughed at such slight inconveniences as rain. They had walked blocks in the downpour before finding a second hackney.

He circled the little room to warm himself. She had accused him of being an actor, and in truth, he needed to remember that he was playing the part of a lover. He’d almost lost his head for a moment, tempted to disappear into the role of Edward Larkin, as if Lark had never existed. She hadn’t said his name once today, and he thought the omission deliberate.

After all, the ruse worked because Edward Larkin wasn’t so different from Lark. Both knew London. Both had a head for figures and investments, and both had money in Hammersley’s Bank. The time he’d spent in coffeehouses overhearing men boast of their shrewd dealings, and the hours he’d poured over the bankruptcy notices in the papers, observing their patterns, had prepared him for this imposture. He could go on pretending to be the gentleman of independent means that Viv Bradish thought him to be. No one in London would miss that other man, Lark. He could forget his search for Lark’s past and add whatever he liked to Edward Larkin’s history.

It was true that Rook wanted to pull Lark back into their old life, but even Rook’s attachment to their partnership would fade in time. The duke was a different problem. There was a good chance that Lark’s masquerade would require contact with the duke at some point. He would devise a plan for meeting the duke later.

Lark shivered, his skin pebbled with the cold, a good antidote for folly. He came to a halt under the small window with its square of pale light. An unwelcome memory returned of the day he learned that Boy, their leader, was Kit Jones, a man with a family.

It had been a snowy day, Boy had led their gang of waifs across London to Bread Street, following a coach in which a woman lay captive and drugged. Ruffians carried her into the deserted public house at the foot of the street. For hours the boys played a desperate game in the deserted street, trying to wake the captive woman, feeling an unseen menace that hung over the scene. When she woke, they gave her an iron rod, with which to break out of her prison at Boy’s signal. When the moment came, a man named Xander Jones appeared, and Boy directed him to the woman while Lark led their gang to the rooftop opposite. Then from the top of the street broke a flood of beer from a brewery’s sabotaged tanks, and thousands of gallons of black, foaming brew roared down upon them.

From the roof opposite the pub, Lark and the others held their breath until the man named Xander and the woman emerged from an upper story window to clamber onto an adjacent roof. That had been the beginning of the end of their gang. Boy was not one of them after all. He had a family, a family that wanted to reclaim him from the streets. And his was no commonplace family, for his father had been Lord Daventry, and he became not Boy or Kit, but Dav, a duke’s grandson. No such transformation had waited for the rest of them.

Beyond the stillroom door, Lady Melforth’s people came and went, busy with their household tasks. More than ten years had passed since Lark and Rook had walked away from Daventry Hall. Kit was no longer a lost boy like them. He was the Duke of Wenlocke. And Lark was still an outsider in the duke’s world.

Viv returned with a lamp and a pair of towels draped over her arm. She set the lamp on the table and handed him a towel. He applied it to his head and stopped, finding her watching him. She still wore the damp gown.

“You’ll catch your death,” she said.

“No more than you. I thought you went to change.”

“Jenny’s bringing me a gown. Give me your shirt. Jenny will dry it for you.”

He undid his cuffs and collar and pulled the damp linen over his head. A quick intake of breath from Viv made him pause. When he emerged from the shirt, she stood with her back to him. He lay the shirt on the table, picked up the towel, and slung it around his neck. The ends hung down over his chest.

“How is your wound?” she asked. “You removed the wrapping I put on.”

He glanced at the plaster. It was wet and curling up at the edges. Even he knew it needed to be removed. He took hold of one ragged end and pulled. The wet bandage came away easily. He turned toward the lamp and glanced down at the wound, now a thin red line like a tightly closed pair of lips with the black silk threads crossing it at neat intervals, like careful tally marks. The doctor had done his work well. Only the faint yellows and purples of his bruises surrounded the area. Viv’s mark on him was fading. Nothing much to hold Viv to him now, but he wasn’t ready to let her go.

“It’s red and swollen and there’s something oozing from it.” He spoke to her back.

She spun toward him, her eyes big with alarm, and stopped when she saw his side. “You wretch. Infection is not a thing to jest about.”

He caught her hand and pressed it to the wound. Her fingers were cold as ice, the ring he’d given her loose on her finger, but he held her hand there, knowing with absolute clarity, that whatever happened if he were exposed and the masquerade ended without his kissing her, he was going to feel cheated.

“I’m going to kiss you,” he said.