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They hadn’t seen each other for fourteen blasted months! And even now, he refused to tell her anything.
And yet, one encounter with him almost had her crawling back to him.
Oh, how she had missed him. His voice, his touch. One glance from his dark, impenetrable eyes, and she was melting before him. One word out of his mouth in his smooth gravelly voice, and she was that naïve debutante again, hopelessly in love with her magical prince.
What a fool she was. After all this time, did she still harbor the hope that they could live happily together? After all the torment he had put her through?
She stepped away from the door and moved to change into her nightgown. He wasn’t going to call after her. He never did. She might as well try to get some sleep, although she knew she wouldn’t be able to rest.
She called Ruth to help her don her nightgown, and after Annalise dismissed her, she then turned and stared at the door. Should she have left him all alone? After all, he’d just gotten back after fourteen months of absence. Perhaps she was wrong to leave him. Perhaps he needed her.
She heaved a sigh. He would call if he needed her, wouldn’t he?
That’s what it had always been like with them. She, waiting for his call, while he—the door to his room clicked closed and then there was a sound of his steps stalking out of the house—left her without a second thought.
* * *
“The Shadows.” Ford Gunning, the professional thief-taker and Blake’s long-time friend, looked at Blake as if he was mad.
Ford was standing in his small study in a dark blue banyan, leaning his hips against the tiny desk, dwarfing it even more with his huge form. He was unshaven, and his hair was mussed, having just been roused from sleep by Blake’s rather unprecedented and unexpected appearance. After the shock of seeing Blake alive and well settled in, he’d eagerly listened to Blake’s story.
Blake had told him everything. Starting with how he got captured and tortured for information about the Shadows, finishing with how he finally escaped and got back home. He skipped the most gruesome parts of his tale, sticking only to the facts he thought the thief-taker would find of use.
“Yes, the Shadows, is that a problem?”
“No, not a problem per se, it’s just that….” Ford scrubbed his hand over his face. “They are a myth, Payne. A horror story criminals tell their recruits so they will be careful and not make hasty mistakes.”
“A myth.” Blake scoffed. “Don’t tell me I’ve endured fourteen months of hell because of a boogeyman in a wee criminal’s closet.”
Ford pushed off his desk and went to his sideboard to pour two glasses of cheap brandy. He extended one glass to Blake, but Blake waved the gesture away.
“I do not drink strong alcohol,” he said.
“Since when?” Ford raised a brow.
“Since my return.”
Ford didn’t comment further. “Please, sit,” he said and settled behind the desk.
Blake sat across from him and stared at the amber liquid in Ford’s glass. A little over a year ago, Blake would have ridiculed the drink. He used to be too refined to drink cheap alcohol. Well, he wasn’t anymore. Blake had had worse. And he would have loved to sip on the burning liquid, drowning his horrid memories. But since he returned to England, he swore to himself to never have another drop of spirits. Annalise didn’t like the smell of it. And Blake wasn’t exactly acting like a gentleman when he was foxed. If he were to win Annalise back, he couldn’t afford missteps.
Ford took a sip of his brandy and placed the glass on the desk. “The rumors—or the myths—about the Shadows have existed as long as I can remember. The Shadows are presumed to be this elite force of assassins who worked as Mary I’s spies to eliminate her Protestant opposition. After they disassembled, it is speculated that they continued their training and their work but as mercenaries. If someone needed another person killed or some information gathered, they were the ones to talk to.
“Recently though, and by recently, I mean several decades before either of us was born, new whispers started going around the criminal world. Someone, or rather several someones, donning the attire of the infamous Shadows, started waging wars on criminals. Sabotaging the deals, stealing back stolen goods, burning illegal gin houses, bawdy houses, and other houses of ill disrepute.
“But it’s just rumors and ghost stories, Blake. Criminals are fighting each other all the time in an attempt to establish rule over the less fortunate. Sometimes it’s just bad luck that gets the bandits, sometimes their own recklessness. But there always seems to be the one person who saw a man in pitch-black clothing standing a few feet away from the incident.” He took another sip and turned to look Blake straight in the eye. “It’s an excuse of an incompetent brigand or a cautionary tale to keep their recruits on alert. Perhaps even a conjuration of a savior by an overexcited maiden. Hope for a miracle, someone who would protect the regular folk where they are unprotected now.” He shrugged and placed his empty glass on the desk with a deliberate clink.
“How do you know that?” Blake tilted his head. “If there are whispers, if there have been whispers for so long, surely there’s something to it?”
“If it were true—if any of it were true—we would have found some evidence by now. Crime has risen in London in the past decades. Especially in the rookeries. It is only natural to hear superstitions. Now it’s the Shadows. Tomorrow they will be ghosts.” Ford waved his hand dismissively. “Besides, what kind of ninny head stands around watching the evidence of his destruction long enough to get spotted but not long enough to get caught? These stories are not true, Blake.”
Blake laughed bitterly. “The thugs who got me would argue with you.”
“They were also sure you were one of the Shadows, weren’t they?” Ford countered.
Blake nodded thoughtfully. Yes, they’d been sure, until their leader came in. Blake didn’t see his face—he wore a kerchief over it. He’d examined Blake’s person inch by inch and decided he was not the one he needed. He got extremely angry with his subordinates and told them to get rid of him. But the thugs had proved incompetent, even in that.Thanks to the heavens.
To this day, Blake didn’t know if finding his signet ring was what prompted the leader to let him loose or if perhaps the brigand was looking for something else.
