The Devil May Care (Brotherhood of Sinners #1) (20 page)

He’d seen the softness inside her. She didn’t have Sal’s defenses, or her skills. How was he going to protect her? Especially when she didn’t even seem to want to be protected.

His hands fisted around the reins.

He had no choice—he had to trust in her strength. She might lack Sal’s impenetrable armor, but she had her own fierceness: her will simply would not be broken, or even significantly bent.

And he would fight like hell to protect her.

At last, after nearly two hours’ hard travel, they’d crossed the green border into the wooded hills, and the world became almost quiet again. The footpath they followed showed few signs of recent travel, with piles of snow still gleaming in shaded places, undisturbed. Thankfully, though, the air was turning warmer, with hints of the normal spring-like mildness of the Galician winter.

When the jangle of battle finally drained from his nerves, he risked stopping only for Rachel’s sake and the sake of their steaming mount. He found a spot screened by pines and rock from the main road, which was now downhill about twenty yards from the rise on which they stood.

Between the pines were glimpses of a lovely view glowing in the Mediterranean sunlight: hills green by Spanish standards, thanks to the heavy rains of Galicia, with stands of live oak and lemon and pomegranate trees, speared here and there by great jagged ridges of sun-forged granite. And between the hills, wide, flat vineyards—leafless now, but laced prettily with tendrils of Galician mist the winter sun never quite managed to burn away.

A landscape harsher, but somehow more striking, than the soft, rolling lushness of the English countryside Rachel would know. Given her response to the music at the Leeds’ ball and to her first sight of the ocean, he thought she might appreciate the view. It was one small compensation he could offer her, when he had so little else to give.

He helped Rachel down from her horse, feeling another stab of guilt at the stiffness with which she moved, and hobbled both horses in a thick carpet of winter grass.

A high wall of granite rose just behind them, cracked along its height; from the fissure ran a thin, crystal-clear stream that pooled below in a shallow basin of stone. He brought drink to the horses, then joined Rachel in cupping their hands to scoop up mouthfuls of bone-chilling but still blessedly welcome water.

The rock wall had absorbed the afternoon sun, and was almost comfortably warm. He found them a relatively flat pair of rocks to sit on, and dug in their packs for a simple meal of cold empanadas and a jug of ribeiro.

He also pulled out a small medical kit and a bottle of the clear but potent liquor
aguardente
, and gingerly pulled off his coat and shirt. In the air, his skin stung as if cat claws had raked it.

Rachel eyed him warily as she chewed a mouthful of her meat pie. “What are you doing?”

He sat the
aguardente
and medical kit beside her, then turned so she could see his back in full sunlight.

Her gasp was not reassuring. “This—this happened in that blast?”

“That shattered window. My coat took most of it, but a few bits seem to have got through.” He indicated the kit. “They need to come out, and I’m afraid I can’t reach them.”

After a moment, her fingertips touched his shoulder blade, then danced gently over the surface of his injured skin, an unexpected silken pleasure marred by quick jolts of pain. He tried to keep his breathing slow and even, his muscles relaxed, but the longer she touched him, the less control he seemed to have over his muscles or his lungs.

“Does that hurt?” she asked.

“Are you hoping the answer will be yes?”

“Maybe.” Her tone was tart, but the gentleness of her touch belied it.

“Then, no,” he lied, “it doesn’t hurt at all.”

She clucked her tongue. “You look like you’ve had a run-in with a nutmeg grater.”

“How very heroic you make me sound.”

“A very
large
nutmeg grater, to be sure,” she declared. “A particularly savage and ill-tempered one.”

He chuckled. He wasn’t quite sure what to do with this whimsical side she sometimes showed. Sal had never been whimsical.
Witty
to be sure, but it was brittle society wit, part of her armor. Whimsicality was . . . soft.
Of course
. And warm.

Dangerous, dangerous. For her. And for him.

He didn’t know how to keep up his guard against that.

Her fingertips were exploring again, and the tiny stabs beneath his skin where debris shards lodged were a welcome distraction.

“You know,” she said softly, “I believe you saved my life more than once today.”

He jerked guiltily under her hands. “I’ve been putting your life in danger since we met.”

“Don’t flatter yourself, Lord Hawkesbridge. I keep telling you, it was my choice to come here. Mine alone. You can’t be rid of me.” She paused to rummage through the kit, and soon the cool points of tweezers touched where her fingers had been. “Now hold still.”

The next half hour was less than pleasant, as the tweezer-points dug repeatedly into his shoulder, and a growing pile of tiny glass and wood slivers dotted the rock beside him. Her hands were steady and efficient, but he couldn’t help wondering if—despite her grateful words just now—she was taking the opportunity to punish him for at least a little of what he’d done to her the past few days.

A far worse torture—though he hoped she was unaware of it—was the fact that she sat very close as she worked. Her body warmed his bare skin, her soft breath caressed his neck. The effect of it fluttered down his back as though her fingers were still wandering down the length of it, and swirled through the center of him clear to his belly. And down to certain sensitive regions a short distance below that.

He was glad he was hunched over, with good, thick leather breeches, so his physical reaction stayed hidden from her. He’d nearly crossed the line with her before, and he was damned well determined never to do it again.

“You know,” he said, hitting upon a distracting subject for conversation, and a suitably non-erotic one, “a century or so ago, this route we’re traveling would have been full of faithful pilgrims. The Camino de Santiago de Compostela.” He gestured at the broad road below them. “It leads from here down south to the tomb of St. James the Apostle.”

“Christ’s Apostle? He’s buried in
Spain
?”

“So sayeth the Vatican.” He clenched his hands as she wiggled at another buried shard and its edge jabbed a yet-undamaged bit of his skin. “Pilgrims used to come here from all over. Perfect route for the penitent: the way is hard and brutally windy and largely unsheltered, and they were required to travel on foot.”

She made a soft snort. “Finally, a holiday my great aunts might have approved.”

“It has its beauty, too,” he added, lifting his chin to indicate the green hills beyond. “And utility, to people of my profession. This whole area, clear down to Vigo, has families with French blood, descendants of those who made the pilgrimage from Paris, but couldn’t stomach the prospect of hiking all the way home again. Even today, it makes fertile ground for Napoleon’s spy network. And excellent hunting for English counter-spies looking for access to Bonaparte’s secrets. Sal and I spent a great deal of time here.”

Rachel’s fingers stilled. He sensed she was looking about her with new eyes.

“This was one of her favorite places in the world,” he said. “She loved the sunlight, and the open air. She talked of having a farm here some day. If ever there were peace.”

“Did she?” Rachel’s voice was a strange blend of yearning and hurt.

He sighed. When Rachel agreed to this mission, the one thing she’d asked for was information about Sal. He’d held it back so far, as Sal had always commanded him to do. But Sal was beyond caring now, wasn’t she. And Rachel deserved more than what she’d been given so far. “She was very strong, your sister.”

“But it seems she lacked the strength to manage the walk home again.”

Ah. That accounted for the hurt.

He stood and turned, sat back on the rock again so he was facing her.

Her eyes were downcast. “You said she kept her books in the house in Vigo,” she said stiffly. “If her books were there, that was what she considered home. In Vigo. Not with me.”

He reached for her hands. “You don’t understand. She couldn’t come home. She didn’t think she could face—” How exactly was he to put this? He’d held Sal’s secrets so close to his chest all these years, his own flesh had seamed over them. They didn’t want to be pried loose. “She was—she was
ashamed
.”

Rachel’s gaze flew up to his, and her eyes glistened with unshed tears. She shook her head fiercely. “Because she was a courtesan? That wouldn’t have mattered, not to me.”

“It’s more complicated than that.” The air suddenly chilled his bare skin. “Listen, sweetheart. Her life before she came to work for Helm was not a good one. I didn’t meet her until she was eighteen. But the three years before that were something she did not wish to discuss in much detail.”

Rachel tensed, but said, “Tell me. Whatever it is. Tell me what you know.”

“I don’t know everything. I know that when she first reached London, she fell in with a rookery, a band of children. She had friends, shelter, nearly enough to eat. Even books sometimes. She was quick with her hands, and very fleet of foot; she more than earned her keep.”

“She was a
thief
? Our aunts would have had palpitations if they knew.”

“A
child
thief. She did it to eat, and to feed the other children in her band. An honorable profession, if you think about it the right way.” He paused. There was no avoiding the rest. He carried a burden of jagged stones, and Rachel was waiting expectantly for him to transfer them into her arms one by one. “But the story gets worse.”

Her hands stiffened in his. “Worse how?”

A sour metallic taste filled his mouth at the thought of telling her more, but she was gazing at him with that steady, level, forthright, unflinching look of hers. She wouldn’t back down from the truth. She’d take that pile of stones from him, relentlessly, and bear them as she bore everything.

“Does it matter?” he murmured, shivering. The sun had lost its power to warm him.

“Yes. I’ve waited so long, not knowing. Just terrified. Alone. There’s nothing you could tell me that would make me feel worse than that.”

She looked so brittle right now; he could crack her right down the middle. But he could not turn back. “She was with the rookeries one year. But once Sal turned sixteen, she caught the eye of the master of another group of thieves, a man named Murdoch. He didn’t care about her speed or skill in picking pockets. Murdoch wanted her for another purpose. Another way of turning a profit.” He glanced up to see if she understood him. “One a pretty girl was good for.”

Rachel flinched. He could see the agony in her eyes.

“Tell me to stop, Rachel. Tell me you’ve heard enough already.” His hands around hers were nearly crushing her bones, but he couldn’t seem to gentle them.

“No,” she said. “Go on.”

His chest clutched. “Sal managed to elude him for some months. But in the end, he caught her . . . " It was hard to keep forcing his voice up through his throat, but he did, because that steady gaze of hers didn’t leave his face, wouldn’t release him. “She was in his service for the next year. Not willingly.” He hesitated, wanting desperately to stop.

But Rachel was looking at him with a set expression that said,
don’t spare me
,
don’t
lie
. He owed this to her.

“She was . . . locked in a room,” he said. “Murdoch kept guards in the hallways outside, to keep—to keep all the girls in their rooms, waiting for their customers. For whatever the customers wanted with them. It was a house that tolerated almost anything. And there wasn’t so much as a window for the girls to try to leave through.”

Rachel’s hands trembled in his. He had a sense now, from the terror he’d seen on the Calliope, when he’d insisted she stay in that small space below-decks, what the thought of being locked in a windowless room would mean to her. To her sister.

“Sal did try to get away,” he said. “But Murdoch was brutal. He beat her again and again. And—and punished her in other ways.” He stopped, licked his dried lips. “Eventually, she did manage to get a client to bring her a bottle of wine, and some opiates. She used that later to drug the guards in the hall, and took their pistols. She shot and killed the man who had enslaved her. That was one killing she never regretted, except to be sorry she had no time to kill Murdoch slowly. She escaped, and got the other girls out with her. But she felt too ashamed of what she’d been doing to return to her old friends.”

Rachel sat silently, her face drained of color.

“What happened to her in that place, the look in her eyes when she spoke of it. It took something from her. I think it’s why she called herself Sal ever after. Sarah was
gone
. Tainted.” He met Rachel’s eyes as directly as he could bear. “That’s why she couldn’t go home.”