Page 27

FOR SEVERAL MOMENTS, Piers was so stunned by the sight of April that he assumed it was an illusion or a dream. It didn’t matter to him. He embraced that illusion, clutching it to him for however long he had before he woke and she vanished.

By some instinct, he was holding the board off her back with one hand, crushing her to him with the other. Not that he needed to. Her arms were tight around his neck, her breast plastered to his, her fingers scrabbling in his hair, clasping and stroking.

Too solid, too real to be a dream. But if this was insanity, he would take that too, just for this moment.

“April, my April,” he whispered in what was both agony and wonder. “How can you be here? Are you real?”

If she was... Hastily he drew her inside, letting the board down gently behind her. “Mind the glass.”

There was room only for one of his feet on the sill, so he jammed his back against the embrasure wall to steady himself and her as she half-crouched among the glass and debris, half lay across his bare knees.

“You found me,” he said in awe, lifting her beloved face from his shoulder, where she had been pressing so hard it must have hurt.

“’Course I did.” Her voice gurgled slightly, as though her throat was as wet as her dirty, beloved face. The skin around her eyes bore the bruising of exhaustion, and that almost unmanned him. “You told me once you’d always come and get me. Works both ways. Piers, are you well? Are you hurt?” Pulling back slightly, she searched him with her eyes and blinked. “Your legs are bare!”

“Sh-sh, I don’t know how much they can hear.”

“Not much if you’ve smashed the whole window.”

“How are you here? I was so afraid for you... April, the child...?”

Another gasp, as fresh tears coursed down her cheeks and Piers howled inside, for her and for him and for—

“A son,” she whispered. “Early yesterday morning. He’s fine and hungry and needs his papa. Piers, can you climb down?”

His mouth fell open in fresh wonder. Words failed him. He could only press his cheek to hers, as the raging grief faded into relief and wonder and a hundred emotions he had no name for.

“Can you?” she whispered, giving his shoulders a little shake.

Can I? You have just given birth, you should not even be out of bed...

“Climb,” he repeated. “God, yes. I can do anything now.”

“Can you?” Her hands fluttered over his bristly face, his fingers, his bare legs and torn, filthy stockings. “Your hands and feet are bleeding. You’ve got no shoes... Mind you, people often don’t in Seven Dials.”

“They generally have pants, though... Seven Dials? Is that where we are? How did you find me?”

“The ransom demand had a map of where to leave the money. It’s just across the road. I’ve been poking around. How many people are holding you here?”

“Two men. I don’t know if they’re always here at the same time. And there might be a woman, though I only heard her once and that was yesterday. Unless I make a racket, they shouldn’t come in for another couple of hours...”

“Then we should go now.” She began to unfasten a length of rope from around her breeches—Piers’s old breeches, surely those he had worn during his escapades as the slightly dangerous clerk.

“Now,” he repeated. He sounded like a dull child, trying to absorb instruction, but in truth his brain had started to work again. “I don’t know who they are. But they know me. They know I can’t identify them. And they know they can do this again whenever they like. I’ll never see them coming until it’s too late.”

She frowned, her fingers pausing on the rope, though only for a moment. “Then we’ll fetch Bow Street runners round here right away—”

“Our villains will bolt as soon as they know I’ve gone.” He reached out to cover her busy hands with his. “Even if they don’t, even if they’re taken by surprise, once I’m gone there’s nothing to prove I was ever here. And if I insist on charges, everything will fall apart with my failure to identify them.”

She stared at him. “But you have to get out of here!”

Oh God, I do. There is my child, my son...

“Now,” April said urgently.

He closed his eyes, letting his head fall back against the wall, not in despair, but in search of courage. He held both her hands, trying not to crush them in his desperate grip. It felt like holding onto the last gasp of life.

“The ransom will be the only evidence,” he said. “We need the runners to catch our villains with it.”