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Her face crumpled. “It’s my fault, milord, I know. I left her alone for only a moment. When I returned to the kitchen, she’d bolted.”
“Have you checked the garden? Her bedchamber?”
“I beat the bushes, milord. Scoured every room in the house, but it’s no use. She’s slunk back to whatever sewer she crawled out of.”
Her tone of voice said plainly—What did you expect from a slum doxy out of the Liberties? We’re just lucky we weren’t murdered in our beds.
“Should I call a constable?” the housekeeper asked.
His gaze moved from the diary back to the portrait, the ghosts of his broken family awaiting his decision. Cat could read the journal. So far, the only person he’d found with that ability. He refused to let her escape stymie his efforts.
He shrugged into his coat. Brushed past Mrs. Flanagan on his way out the door. “No. I’ll bring her back.”
“You, milord? How on earth will you find her?”
He bared his teeth in imitation of a smile. “Search house by goddamned house if I have to.”
Cat slipped through the filthy back lanes and mud strewn alleys of Saint Patrick’s deanery on an unerring course. She’d done it. Slid into the anonymity of the city to be swallowed unseen.
She shoved her hands deeper into her jacket pockets. Kilronan would never find her. Probably wouldn’t even look. For some reason that thought didn’t make her feel better. In fact, it made her feel worse. And how ridiculous was that? Kilronan didn’t care about Cat O’Connell. He only cared about his damned diary. He was a user. Like Jeremy. Like her stepfather. Like all men with their wily double talk and false promises. All men but Geordie.
He’d be worried sick, wondering what had happened to her. Her first real friend in the terrifying
new world she’d fallen into, he’d sheltered her in those delirious weeks when she’d been out of her head with grief and fear. Coached her in the thievery that kept food on the table and a roof over their heads. Two misfits against the world, he’d told her more than once.
He’d be disappointed at the loss of the diary’s income—the promised payment had been outrageously extravagant. But Geordie had a nonchalant outlook on life—take it as you find it. To be too up or too down meant you cared too much. Had invested too much of yourself. He’d tried instilling that same casual disregard in Cat. And to some extent succeeded. Cat wouldn’t make the same mistakes again. There would not be another Jeremy to destroy her a second time.
Fending off the overfriendly hands of a bearded man in bloody apron and rolled shirtsleeves, she rounded the corner onto Crooked Dog Lane. Clambered up the last alleyway, the boards laid across the mud bowing beneath her feet. Took the stairs two at a time.
“Geordie? I’m back,” she shouted. “It’s me. Cat.”
No answer.
She slowed her steps, a slithering apprehension curling up her spine. “Geordie?” Her voice came low and uneasy.
Reaching the landing, she pushed the door wide.
“Cat! Run!”
Geordie’s warning shattered the unnatural stillness, leaving Cat but a moment to take in the scene—the glowering features of Smith and another man, Geordie lying prone on the rug, his undersized, misshapen body no match for their bearlike strength.
“Go!” he screamed again just before a meaty fist struck him a knockout blow to the side of the head.
Cat spun on her heel, tearing back down the stairs. The heavy booted feet of her pursuers matching beat for beat the pound of her terrified heart. She swallowed back the panic coating her throat like bile. Making her yearn for the first time in years for the claustrophobic security of her stepfather’s town house in Ely Place.
Smith’s threats echoed off the walls of the narrow, crooked passage. Dogged her heels. Slipping, she fell to her knees, allowing them to gain ground. She scrambled back to her feet, expecting any moment for a hand to clutch her collar. Snake around her neck.
Even as she ran she conjured the confusion of the spyrel visouth. Used the spell to disguise her hair. Her clothes. Prayed it would be enough to lose herself among the throngs clogging the streets.
She tore back onto Canon Street. Doubled back down a covered close, ducking laundry lines and dodging market stalls. A stitch cramped her side, and blisters already stung from her ill-fitting boots.
And then they were there. One in front. One behind. Closing the gap from either direction.
What had she gotten herself into? What was so blasted important about that damn book? And where was Kilronan with his bloody great pistol now?
Where the hell was she? Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, she’d said. Cat had been instructed to leave the diary at the cathedral, the epicenter of his search. He’d crisscrossed the streets leading away in every direction. Tramped up and down for hours, braving suspicious glances and outright hostility. Only boneheaded stubbornness kept him searching when every other instinct told him to give up and go home. He’d found one person who could read the diary, he could find another. Unfortunately a louder voice chided that, in point of fact, Cat had found him.
He kept at it.
