She smiled. “I shall be marrying Mr. Pye today.” Violet squealed. “About time,” someone, probably Oscar, muttered. George ignored that and tried to look contrite as she turned to poor Cecil. “I am so sorry, Cecil. I—”
But Cecil interrupted, “Don’t worry your head, old thing. I shall dine out on this tale for the next year. It isn’t every day a fellow is left at the altar.”
“Eh?” A cry from the front pew brought everyone around. The vicar straightened his wig. He returned his spectacles to his nose and searched the gathering until his eyes lit on George. “Now, then, young lady. Which of these gentlemen will you marry?”
“This one.” She squeezed Harry’s arm.
The vicar inspected Harry and sniffed. “Doesn’t look that much different from the other one.”
“Nevertheless”—she fought to remain sober-faced—“this is the man I want.”
“Very well.” The vicar frowned at Harry. “Have you a license?”
“Yes.” He produced the piece of paper. “And my brothers will serve as groomsmen.”
Bennet walked to Harry’s side and stood with Will just a little behind him. The boy looked both terrified and excited.
“Brothers?” Violet hissed. “I’ll explain later,” George said. She blinked back sudden tears.
“My dinner is waiting, so let us commence.” The vicar cleared his throat noisily. He began again in the same falsetto voice he’d used before, “Dearly beloved…”
Everything else was different.
The sun shone through the rose window, lighting and warming the little church. Tony looked relieved, as if a terrible burden had been lifted from his shoulders. Ralph grinned next to him. Oscar winked at George as she caught his eye. Violet kept shooting puzzled glances at Bennet, but in between she grinned at George. Bennet stood a little awkwardly beside Harry, but he seemed proud as well. Will was bouncing on his toes in excitement.
And Harry…
George looked at him and felt a great bubble of joy well up inside her. Harry watched her as if she were the center of his soul. He wasn’t smiling, but his beautiful emerald eyes were warm and serene.
When it came time to pledge herself to Harry, George leaned toward him and whispered, “I forgot one thing when I told you about the end of the fairy tale.”
Her almost husband smiled down at her and asked gravely, “What was that, my lady?”
She savored the moment and the love in his eyes, then declared, “And they lived happily ever after!”
“So they did,” Harry whispered back, and kissed her. Vaguely she heard the vicar moan, “No, no, not yet!” and then, “Oh, never mind. I pronounce you man and wife.”
And that was how it should be, George thought as she opened her mouth beneath her husband’s. She was Harry’s wife.
And Harry was her man.
A masked avenger dressed in a harlequin’s motley protects the innocents of St. Giles at night.
When a rescue mission leaves him wounded, the kind soul who comes to his rescue is the one woman he’d never have expected…
Thief of Shadows
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Chapter One
LONDON, ENGLAND
MAY 1738
The body in the road was the absolute cap to the day. Isabel Beckinhall, Baroness Beckinhall sighed to herself. Her carriage had come to a standstill in the worst part of London—the dirty streets of St. Giles. And why was she in St. Giles as dark descended? Because she’d volunteered to represent the Ladies’ Syndicate for the Benefit of the Home for Unfortunate Infants and Foundling Children at the final inspection of the new Home for Unfortunate Infants and Foundling Children, more fool she.
Never volunteer. Not even when pleasantly filled with warm scones and hot tea. Warm scones were obviously the work of the Devil or perhaps Lady Hero Reading, one of the two founding patronesses of the home. Lady Hero had refilled her teacup and looked at Isabel with wide gray eyes, asking prettily if Isabel would mind meeting with Mr. Winter Makepeace, the home’s dour manager, to look over the new building. And Isabel had blithely agreed like some scone-filled mindless cow.
And the damned man hadn’t even shown!
“Moo,” Isabel muttered to herself just as the carriage door opened to admit her lady’s maid, Pinkney.
“Ma’am?” Pinkney asked, her blue eyes wide and startled. Of course Pinkney’s eyes were nearly always wide and startled. She was one of the most sought-after lady’s maids in London, a paragon of the latest fashion, but Isabel had privately begun to wonder if her new maid wasn’t a bit dim.
“Nothing,” Isabel replied, waving aside her bovine utterance. “Did you find out why it’s taking so long to move the dead man?”
“Oh, yes, my lady,” Pinkney said. “It’s because he’s not dead.” Her pretty dark blond brows drew together. “Well, not yet anyway. Harold the footman is having a time pulling him aside, and you wouldn’t credit it, ma’am, but he’s a comic actor.”
It was Isabel’s turn to blink. “Harold?”
“Oh, no, my lady!” Pinkney giggled until she caught Isabel’s steady gaze. “Er…” The maid cleared her throat. “The not-yet-dead-man is. He’s dressed as a harlequin, mask and all—”
Isabel was no longer listening. She’d opened the door and climbed from the carriage. Outside the gray day was growing grimmer still with the advent of nightfall. Fires flared to the west and she could hear the rumbling of the rioters from that direction. They were getting closer. Isabel shivered and hurried to where Harold and the other footman were bent over a figure on the ground. Pinkney was such a ninny she’d probably mistaken the costume or the man or the mask or—
But no.
Isabel drew in a sharp breath. She’d never seen the notorious Ghost of St. Giles in person, but she had no doubt that this must be he. The prone man wore black and red motley. His floppy, brimmed hat had fallen from his head and she could see that his brown hair was tied back simply. A short sword was sheathed at his side and a long sword lay by one of his broad hands. A black half mask with a ridiculously long nose covered the upper half of his face, leaving his square chin and wide mouth revealed. His lips were parted over straight white teeth, the upper lip a little bigger than the bottom, and sensuously curved in unconsciousness.
Isabel snapped her attention up to her coachman. “Is he alive?”
“He’s still breathin’ at least, my lady.” Harold shook his head. “Don’t know for how long, though.”
A shout came from nearby and the sound of smashing glass.
“Put him in the carriage,” Isabel said. She bent to pick up his hat.
Tom, the second footman, frowned. “But, my lady—”
“Now. And don’t forget his sword.”
Already she could see a mass of people rounding the corner down the street. The footmen glanced at each other then as one lifted the Ghost. Harold grunted under the weight, but he made no complaint.
A crowd gathered at the end of the street, and then someone gave a shout.
The rioters had spotted the carriage.
Isabel picked up her skirts and trotted after her footmen. Harold gave a great heave and dumped the Ghost and his sword into the carriage. Isabel scrambled rather inelegantly inside. Pinkney was staring wide-eyed at the Ghost, who was in a heap in the corner of the carriage, but for the moment Isabel ignored him. She tossed the hat on top of the Ghost, lifted her seat, and withdrew two pistols from the hidden compartment underneath.
Pinkney squeaked in alarm.
Isabel turned and handed the pistols to the footmen at the carriage door. “Don’t let anyone climb the carriage.”
Harold’s jaw tightened. “Yes, my lady.”
He took the pistols, gave one to Tom, and mounted the carriage.
Isabel closed the carriage door and knocked on the roof. “Fast as you can, John!”
The carriage started forward with a lurch just as something hit the side.
“My lady!?
?? Pinkney cried. “Hush,” Isabel said.
There was a lap robe on the maid’s seat and Isabel pulled it over the Ghost. She sat back on her own seat, clutching the window as the carriage rocked around a corner. Something knocked against the carriage. A grimacing face appeared suddenly at the window, tongue smearing against the glass lewdly.
Pinkney screamed.
Isabel stared at the man, her heart racing, but her gaze steady as she met his eyes. They were bloodshot and filled with maddened rage. The carriage jolted and the man fell away.
One of the pistols fired.
“My lady,” Pinkney whispered, her face white, “the dead man—”
“Not-quite-dead man,” Isabel muttered, eyeing the robe. Hopefully anyone glancing inside would see a robe thrown carelessly in the corner, not the hidden Ghost of St. Giles. She braced herself as the carriage swung wildly around a corner.
“Not-quite-dead man,” Pinkney obediently repeated. “Who is he?”
“The Ghost of St. Giles.”
Pinkney’s robin’s egg blue eyes widened. “Who?” Isabel stared at her lady’s maid in exasperation. Really, the chit was something of an idiot. “The Ghost of St. Giles? The most notorious footpad in London? Goes about in a harlequin’s costume, either ravishing and murdering or rescuing and defending, depending on whose stories you believe?”
If Pinkney’s eyes got any bigger they might fall out of her head altogether.
“No?” Isabel waved a hand toward the window and the shouting and screaming outside and said sweetly, “The man that mob wants dead?”
Pinkney stared horrified at the robe. “But… why, my lady?”
The second pistol fired with a deafening BOOM! Pinkney jumped and looked wildly at the window.
Dear God, they were out of ammunition. Isabel prayed the footmen were safe—and that they could hold off the rioters without their guns. She was an aristocrat, but that meant little to a mob such as this. Just last year a viscount had been dragged from his carriage and robbed in St. Giles.
Isabel took a deep breath and felt under the robe until she found the hilt of the Ghost’s sword. She drew it out and put the heavy thing across her lap. If nothing else she could hit someone over the head with it if need be. “They want him dead because this morning he cut Charming Mickey O’Connor down from the gallows.”
Pinkney actually brightened at this. “Oh, Charming Mickey, the pirate! Him I’ve heard of. They say he’s handsome as sin and dresses better than the king himself.”
Of course her lady’s maid had heard of a well-dressed pirate.
“Quite,” Isabel flinched as something hit the window, cracking the glass. “They probably chased him all the way from Tyburn gallows, poor man.”
“Oh.” For a moment Pinkney bit her lip. Then she looked timidly at Isabel. “But, my lady, if the mob wants him and he’s in our carriage… ah…”
Isabel drew on all her strength to smile firmly. Her hand tightened on the hilt of the sword across her lap. “That’s why we’re not going to let them know we have the Ghost, are we?”
Pinkney blinked several times as if working through this logic, and then she smiled. The child really was quite pretty. “Oh, yes, my lady.”
The lady’s maid sat back as if quite confident that they were all out of danger now that everything had been explained.
Isabel twitched aside the curtains to peer through the cracked glass. She wasn’t nearly as sanguine. Many of the streets in St. Giles were narrow and twisting—the reason that her carriage had been traveling so slowly earlier. A mob could move much faster afoot than they. But the mob was beginning to fall away. John Coachman had found a straight stretch of road and was urging the horses into a trot.
Isabel let fall the curtain with a heartfelt sigh of relief. Thank God.
Half an hour later the carriage was pulling up before her neat town house.
“Bring him inside,” she ordered Harold when he pulled open the doors.
He nodded wearily. “Yes, my lady.” “And Harold?” Isabel descended the carriage still clutching the sword.
“My lady?” “Well done. To both you and Tom.” Isabel nodded to Tom. A shy grin split Harold’s broad face. “Thank you, my lady.”
Isabel permitted herself a small smile before she swept into her town house. Edmund, her dear late husband, had bought Fairmont House for her shortly before he’d died, and had gifted it to her on her twenty-eighth birthday. He’d known that the title and estates would go to a distant cousin and had wanted her properly settled with her own property free of the entail. Isabel had immediately redecorated on moving in four years ago. Now the entry hall was all white marble, with soaring gilded Corinthian columns along the edges emphasizing the height of the room.
“Thank you, Butterman,” Isabel said as she tucked the sword under her arm and pulled off her gloves and hat, handing them to the butler. “I need a bedroom readied immediately.”
Butterman, like all her servants, was impeccably trained. He didn’t even blink an eye at the abrupt order—or the sword she carelessly held. “Yes, my lady. Will the blue room do?”
“Quite.”
Butterman snapped his fingers and a maid went hurrying up the stairs.
Isabel turned and watched as Harry and Tom came in with the Ghost between them.
Butterman raised his eyebrow a fraction of an inch at the sight of the unconscious man, but merely said, “The blue room, Harold, if you please.”
“Yes, sir,” Harold panted. “If you don’t mind, my lady,” Butterman murmured, “I believe Mrs. Butterman may be of assistance.”
“Yes, thank you. Please send Mrs. Butterman up as quickly as possible.” Isabel followed the footmen up the stairs.
The maids were still turning back the sheets on the bed in the blue room, when the footmen arrived with their burden, but at least the fire on the grate was lit.
Harold hesitated, probably because the Ghost was quite dirty and bloody, but Isabel gestured to the bed. The Ghost groaned as the footmen laid him on the spotless counterpane.
Isabel propped his sword in a corner of the room and hurried to his side. His eyes were closed. His hat had been left in the carriage, but he still wore his mask, though it was askew on his face. Carefully she lifted the thing over his head and was surprised to find underneath a thin black silk scarf covering the upper part of his face from the bridge of his strong nose to his forehead. Two eyeholes had been cut into the material to make a second, thinner mask. She examined the harlequin’s mask in her hand. It was leather and stained black. High arching eyebrows and the curving grotesque nose gave the mask a satyrlike leer. She set it on a table by the bed and looked back at the Ghost. He lay limp and heavy on the bed. Blood stained his motley leggings above his black jackboots. She bit her lip. Some of the blood looked quite fresh.
“Butterman said ’twas a man injured,” Mrs. Butterman said as she bustled in the room. She went to the bed and stared at the Ghost a moment, hands on hips, before nodding decisively. “Well, nothing for it. We’ll need to undress him, my lady, and find out where the blood’s coming from.”
“Oh, of course,” Isabel said. She reached for the buttons of the Ghost’s fall as Mrs. Butterman began on the doublet.
Behind her, Isabel heard a gasp. “Oh, my lady!” “What is it, Pinkney?” Isabel frowned as she worked at a stubborn button. Blood had dried on the material, making it stiff.
“ ’Tisn’t proper for you to be doing such work.” Pinkney sounded as scandalized as if Isabel had proposed walking naked in Westminster Cathedral. “He’s a man.”
“I assure you I have seen a nude man before,” Isabel said mildly as she peeled back the man’s leggings. Underneath, his smallclothes were soaked in blood. Good God. Could a man lose so much and survive? She began working at the ties to his smallclothes.
“He has bruising on his shoulder and ribs and a few scrapes, but nothing to cause this much blood,” Mrs. Butterman reported as she spread the doublet wide and rais
ed the ghost’s shirt to his armpits.
Isabel glanced up and for a moment froze. His chest was delineated with lean muscles, his nipples brown against his pale skin, black, curling hair spreading between. His belly was hard and ridged, his navel entirely obscured by that same black curling hair. Isabel blinked. She had seen a man—men, actually—naked, true, but Edmund had been in his sixth decade when he died and had certainly never looked like this. And the few, discreet lovers that’ she’d taken since Edmund’s death had been aristocrats—men of leisure. They’d hardly had more muscles than she. Her eye caught on the line of hair trailing down from his navel. It disappeared into his smallclothes.
Where her hands were.
Isabel swallowed and untied the garment, a little surprised by the tremble of her fingers, and drew them down his legs. His genitals were revealed, his cock thick and long, even at rest, his bollocks heavy.
“Well,” Mrs. Butterman said, “he certainly looks healthy enough there.”
“Oh, my, yes,” Pinkney breathed.
Isabel looked around irritably. She’d not realized the maid had come close enough to see the Ghost. Isabel drew a corner of the counterpane over the Ghost’s loins, feeling protective of the unconscious man.
“Help me take off his boots so we can bare his legs completely,” Isabel told Mrs. Butterman. “If we can’t find the wound there, we’ll have to turn him over.”
But as they stripped his breeches further down his legs a long gash was revealed on the man’s muscled right thigh. Fresh blood oozed and trickled over his leg as the sodden material was pulled away.
“There ’tis,” Mrs. Butterman said. “We could send for the doctor, my lady, but I’ve a fair hand with the needle and thread.”
Isabel nodded. She glanced again at the wound, relieved it was not nearly as bad as she’d feared. “Fetch what you’ll need, please, Mrs. Butterman, and take Pinkney with you to help. I have the feeling he won’t be much pleased by a doctor.”
Mrs. Butterman hurried out with Pinkney.
Isabel waited, alone in the room save for the Ghost of St. Giles. He was unconscious, but still he was a commanding presence, his big body sprawled upon the dainty bed. Isabel looked at him. He was a man in the prime of his life, strong and athletic, nearly bare to her gaze.