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Juliet had to commend Ness—she’d whimpered, took seething breaths, but never once in the lastseven hoursopened her mouth to complain about the horse ride here to Edinburgh. Admirable, for the amount of pain every jostle must have cost her.
“What Evan said doesn’t matter.” She looked down at Ness sitting on a crate in a narrow alleyway she’d found close to the departing mail coaches.That Ness was still sitting upright, not passed out from the pain, was a marvel.
“No, listen to me, Juliet.” Ness didn’t let Juliet escape her gaze. “I heard what he said. I heard what you gave up to get me here. You didn’t have to do it.”
“I did. Gilroy may get his way with Evan—and then he would hurt you again, or worse. No.” She shook her head, not letting the tiniest crack in her façade give window into how very destroyed she’d been at leaving Evan. There would be time to wallow in that heaping pile of regret later.
Juliet’s fingers lifted to tug the hood of the cloak further out around Ness’s bruised face. She needed to be hidden as much as possible. “That wasn’t going to happen. I wasn’t about to set you at the mercy of that man.”
“But you and Evander—”
“What will happen, will happen. Do not fret on it.” Juliet took a step to her left out of the shadow of the tight close and found the mail coach. The horses hitched to it were already straining, pawing at the ground, eager to start running. She ducked back into the lane. “We have to separate our paths here.”
Ness’s right hand moved from holding her left arm and she grabbed Juliet’s wrist. “What? No—you cannot leave me.”
“There isn’t time, Ness. You can’t stay any longer. The mail coach is leaving in five minutes. It will not wait. We were fortunate to get here before they’d left.” Juliet dropped to her left knee and reached under Ness’s skirts to grab her right foot. She unlaced Ness’s boot and yanked it off her foot. “There isn’t room on the coach for both of us—I was lucky to get you passage—and you are the one that needs to disappear as quickly as possible. I don’t know what Evan did after we left him in the woods. He could have followed us. He could have gone to Gilroy and told him we left—I don’t know.”
A gasp gurgled in Ness’s throat. “He couldn’t have gone to Gilroy, could he?”
Juliet lifted herself to standing and leaned back against the brick wall behind her. Cocking her right leg up, she quickly undid the laces on her own right boot and slipped it off. “I don’t know what he would have done after we left—I was stupid, telling him we were leaving in the first place. I never should have trusted him. I had just thought…” She shook her head, still furious at her own idiocy.
She’d put too much faith in Evan. How many times would she make that mistake—putting too much faith in a man?
She motioned for Ness’s right foot and Ness lifted it to her. Juliet quickly slipped her own boot onto Ness’s foot, her words flying. “There are coins in the heel. There is a flap on the inside under the leather. There is more than enough to get off the mail coach at any town along the way and hire a carriage to London—but if you can stand it, stay on the mail coach. It is the quickest way to London with the fewest witnesses. You’ll be there in days and it will keep you the safest.”
Panic agitated Ness’s right arm, her fingers twitching. “But what do I do once I’m there?”
“You get to Talen Blackstone.” She tightened the laces on the boot. “You’ve never been to London, correct?”
Ness shook her head.
“Ask anyone where Seven Dials is. The driver will know. Go there and ask any vendor for Blackstone and they will point you to him. It’s not a good area and it will scare you.” She considered for a short moment strapping her dagger to Ness’s leg. But with her broken arm and left eye swollen shut, Ness pulling a dagger on anyone would not turn out well for her friend.
She dropped Ness’s foot to the ground and tugged the front of Ness’s skirt down. “Once you get to Talen Blackstone, he is the one that can protect you from anything, no matter what. Gilroy could bring an army for you and Blackstone wouldn’t blink. He owns that area and no one in London is going to cross him.”
“Talen Blackstone. Talen Blackstone. Talen Blackstone.” Ness’s good eye closed as she repeated the name, memorizing it. Her eye flew open. “What do I tell him?”
“Tell him I sent you. Tell him he’s to protect you, that you’re calling in a favor he owes me.”
“What is the favor?”
“TheSelkie South Brothel.” Juliet hunched over and slipped Ness’s boot onto her own right foot. A little small, but better that Ness had extra space in her boot than the reverse. “Blackstone will know exactly what I’m referring to and he knows there will be hell to pay if he doesn’t help you.”
Ness’s jaw dropped, her swollen bottom lip only allowing the tiniest crack of her mouth. “Who are you, Juliet? You keep coins in your boot. A dagger on your leg. How do you know people like this?”
“I’m just someone that knows the wrong sort of people.” She grabbed Ness’s right elbow and lifted her to her feet. “That, in this instance, are the right sort of people. There’s no time to write it before you get on the mail coach, but I’ll post a letter to Blackstone today to explain everything. With luck it will get there shortly after you do.”
After a quick survey of the people on the busy street, Juliet ushered Ness out of the close and moved along the street toward the mail coach. A passerby nudged into Ness’s left arm and a half-squelched squeal escaped from her lips.
Juliet stopped, looking at her. “Your arm—will you be able to make the ride? There’s not time to reset it and you need to get out of here. But if you cannot, I can try to figure—”
“Juliet, stop.” Ness grabbed Juliet’s wrist with her right hand as they reached the mail coach. “I will suffer it. I will suffer anything if I am away from this life. Do not worry on it—pain is nothing to me now. I’ll make it to London. I swear it.”
The sudden fortitude in Ness’s dark golden eye made Juliet pause. Ness had a hidden spine of steel she’d never shown before. Sending her off in the mail coach alone didn’t worry Juliet as much as it had just a moment ago.
Juliet wrapped her hand around the back of Ness and gently hugged her. “Until I see you again, my friend.”
“And I you.” Ness pulled back, turned and stepped up into the mail coach,squeezing herself into the last of the four interior seatsbetween a portly gentleman and the side of the coach. Even with the hood hiding most of her face, Juliet saw her grimace as she twisted her body so her broken left arm wouldn’t hit the wall of the coach with every bump.
