The Devil May Care (Brotherhood of Sinners #1) (26 page)

The young orange tree, maybe six feet high, glossy and healthy and green, was given the place of honor in the full glow of the southern sun. Clusters of tight ivory buds thrust outward between the whorls of its leaves; they’d make quite the show of fragrant blossoms in just a few weeks.

There was no bench, so the Giant simply sat down on the bare ground not far from the base of the tree.

Rachel did the same, close beside him.

He didn’t seem to expect her to say anything, and she was grateful for that. It was comforting somehow, to sit like little children, with the earth warm beneath them and the dappled shade of the leaves moving caressingly over their faces. She pressed her palms flat against the soil, knowing Sarah rested somewhere here, that this was a place of peace made just for her.

By Sebastian.

A surge of tenderness swept through her. A dizzying, frightening tenderness.

Her fingers clutched at the earth.

Suddenly, it was all too much. She wanted everything to go backwards. She wanted to be away from all this, from the danger and the confusion. She wanted Sarah back, alive, to have her sister with her again, and not just this little patch of earth, and the faint heat of this alien winter sun.

Her lungs ached, and hard pressure rose through her chest and behind her eyes. All at once, a great swell of sorrow roared up and broke inside her.

Its force was shocking—like a river breaking through a dam. Like the violence of an ocean wave. The feeling washed up and over, and suddenly the tears couldn’t be held back.

All the tears she’d fought down since the first day she’d come to London and Helm’s words burned away the last of her hope—they came violent and breathless and horrible, sobs jerking from her lungs until there was no space left to breathe. And all the years she’d spent, waiting, longing for Sarah to come back, trapped in that cold and loveless house, turning slowly gray and lifeless as the cottage stones—she wept for that, too.

Why? What had it all been for?

Why hadn’t she run after Sarah that night Sarah first left?

Why hadn’t fate just once taken pity in all the years since—let Mr. Rapson find her sister while she still had some innocence left? Let Sarah escape with her life from Victoire de Laurent?

Aching and anger and fury and regret all clawed their way up from inside her, such a great weight of pain, from so deep down, she thought she might be ripped to shreds by the sheer bulk of it. It hurt and it hurt and it hurt.

She didn’t know how long the storm of it lasted. When at long last it slowed, and her head fell to rest against her knees, she was dimly aware the sun had moved. Her chest still shuddered and her throat ached as though it had been scoured out, but the tears were done at last. She felt bruised and empty—but lighter, too, somehow.

Over the years, she’d shoved so many things deep down inside, such a great, dark mass of awfulness, it was a wonder the weight hadn’t sunk her through the earth long ago.

It had always been a point of pride with her not to complain, not to let her pain show to anyone on the outside. But just at the moment, she couldn’t recall why that had seemed a good idea.

Swallowing hard, she wiped at her face with the heels of her hands.

Gradually, she realized that the Giant was watching her. He hadn’t so much as shifted his legs while they sat beneath the tree, but had waited like a very large and very patient watchdog. Not a savage beast at all.

On a sudden impulse, she stretched out her hand towards his. He looked at it for a moment as if baffled over the meaning of it, but then he moved his own the few inches necessary to make contact. He bent his strong fingers around hers briefly, awkwardly, as though he were not used to such contact. He squeezed lightly before dropping them again.

“I’m very sorry,” he said.

She tried to give him a smile. “Not your fault, is it?”

He seemed to wince. “Rachel, listen. There’s—there’s something I really ought to tell you.” His voice had gone low, scarcely audible, and rougher in its accent than before. “It’s something no one else can. But you have the right to know about it. How I met Sal.”

Rachel stilled. Given his tone, she couldn’t imagine this would be good news. But a pulse of something—pain or longing, she wasn’t sure which—cut through her hesitation. She had room inside now. She could take more. “Please,” she said.

The Giant seemed uncomfortable; his boot-heels dug grooves into the dirt. His lips half-formed words, and then stilled. And then he tried again. “It was a long time ago. About eight years, I suppose. A night when I . . . well, when I couldn’t stand to be alone,” he said. “Something had happened that—” He broke off, agitated. “Well, it doesn’t matter why. But I had nowhere else, so I went to a place called Madame Jonas’s.”

“Madame Jonas’s?”

“A bawdy house, I’m afraid.” He wasn’t looking at her now, and there was a faint flush to his swarthy skin. “This story doesn’t flatter me.”

“You mean the place Sarah went after she escaped from that monster who locked her up?”

“From Murdoch? Yes. So you know that part already?”

“Sebastian told me.”

The Giant seemed surprised. “Did he? Well, yes, she got herself away from Murdoch, and came to work for Madame Jonas. It was a better place by far, but still.” He glanced up at her sideways through his veil of hair. Anguish was visible in the brightness of his eyes. “If you prefer, I can stop the story there.”

“No. Go on.”

“Forgive me, but it was either go to Madame Jonas’s or hang myself from London Bridge.” His legs gave a jerk, and he hooked his arms around his knees as if to restrain them.

“Nothing even happened that night, I swear to you. I asked for a girl who wouldn’t talk, who’d just let me . . .
be
there. I fell like a damned stone on the bed and didn’t move except to grab hold of her arm and cling to it. I’m sure I was terrifying.”

She glanced over his huge, rough frame and laughed despite herself. “I’m sure you were.”

“But I don’t think Sal could stand the silence, with this great stupid ugly lummox taking up most of her mattress and crushing the life out of her elbow. After a bit, she smacked me on the forehead and asked if I was planning to die in her bed—which, to be frank, was about as good a plan as I had in mind.”

“She
hit
you?” Sarah was even braver than she thought.

His mouth curved in the subtlest of smiles. “She did. And then she took it on herself to fill the silence, despite the quiet I’d asked for. Started talking.”

“About what?”

“I don’t remember. But, as it turned out, I liked listening to her. Her accent was a gentlewoman’s, and her vocabulary was astonishing—half chimney sweep, half Cambridge don. Filthy street cant mixed with learned references to Herodotus and Voltaire.”

“
Oh
.” Rachel squeezed shut her eyes. “I wish I could have heard her.”

“It was something to listen to, believe me. Her talking got me through till dawn. And through the next night as well. I came back, night after night, just to hear her. We went on like that for months. I’d be in Bedlam now if not for her.”

“I envy you. I’d have given anything for that chance.”

The Giant shifted his weight. “I think Sal
needed
to talk. I don’t imagine she had many
visitors
who’d bother to listen. It was impersonal at first: literature and politics. It turns out she read the papers every day when Madame Jonas finished with them, and spent half her wages at the booksellers. Knew every blasted thing going on in Europe.”

Pride welled fiercely. “Of course she did.”

“After awhile, I started asking questions, and she told me bits and pieces about her life.” He gave Rachel another furtive glance through his hair. “She talked a great deal about you.”

“Me?” Rachel’s heart stuttered. “Mawbry said she told no one of my existence except Sebastian.”

“I never told Mawbry what I knew. Sal made me keep her secret, too.” He drew in a breath of air so great it sounded like a roar. “She told me about the languages you studied with your tutor. Is it true your tutor Mr. Rapson could walk on water? Sal seemed to believe he could.”

Rachel laughed. “Very nearly. He was quite the miracle to us. I’m sure
we
’d have landed in Bedlam if he’d actually been the sort of tutor our great aunts believed they’d hired.”

His hand moved to hers again, brushed lightly over her knuckles before he withdrew it once more. “Sal—
Sarah
—missed you. Terribly.”

A little stab through the heart—not as sharp as it might have been a few days before, but sharp enough. “Did she? I had no sign of it.”

“She had no way of showing you.”

Rachel looked up into the fluttering leaves of the orange tree, so green against the shockingly blue sky.

Bit by bit, the blank spaces in Sarah’s story were being filled, taking on flesh and blood again, like a withered limb coming back to life. And like such a limb, it hurt. “Did she ever tell you about the night she ran away from home?” she asked. “The storm was so violent—the forest wolves could scarcely have survived it.”

“We both know she was tougher than any wolf.” The Giant broke out in a sudden grin he didn’t bother to hide, and it was startling how it transformed him. “She found her way to a farmhouse. Told the farmer a fine tale of getting separated from her widowed mother and younger brothers and sisters when the mail coach made a stop along the road. She was always a wonderful liar. The farmer drove her to the nearest posting inn the next day in his ox-cart, and paid her fare to London.”

“She
rode
to London, in a coach?” Rachel found herself laughing again, imagining Sarah thumbing her nose at Stone Cottage as she went. “Good Lord. We were never permitted wheeled conveyances—our aunts made us walk everywhere, as a sign of humility in the face of our mortal weakness. If they’d known she was being
driven
as she made her escape, they’d have fallen into apoplexy.”

“And on her lap,” said the Giant, “she had a big basket of meats and cheeses, courtesy of the farmer’s wife, and a nice wool cape they insisted she take against the cold. It took years till she was able, but she did eventually send them an envelope fat with bank notes to thank them for their kindness. It was probably enough to buy a whole new farm.”

“Thank you for telling me that.” Rachel wiped tears of laughter from her eyes. “It helps to know.”

The Giant ducked his head in what seemed to be acknowledgment.

“There’s one more thing you might be able to tell me,” she said. “Sebastian swears he doesn’t know the answer, and the rest of you seemed unwilling to speak of it when first we met. How did my sister go from working for Madame Jonas to working for Helm?”

He hesitated only a moment. “Ah. That has to do with Le Conte.”

“The French spy? The one Helm said she caught?”

He nodded. “Le Conte was an ass. He passed himself off as an Englishman named Connors, served as a clerk for a cabinet minister. Filched state secrets by day, celebrated by visiting Madame Jonas’s at night. I was called from town for a fortnight, and though I had already paid for Sal’s time, the house was so busy one night that Madame Jonas insisted that she accept him as a client.” He shot Rachel another look, to see how she took this information.

“Go on.”

“I don’t really know another way to say this, so I’ll just put it plain. Le Conte seemed to derive great satisfaction from boasting in French about all he was doing to England. About how he was, well . . . doing to England what he did to her.”

“Good Lord.”

“Forgive me for saying so,” said the Giant. “But Le Conte went on and on about all the people he was fooling, all the documents he was passing to the French. Went into considerable detail about his methods, his contacts, all in French, assuming Sal was some ignorant London harlot who could have no idea what he said. Of course, she understood every word. She could have corrected the fool’s grammar. She remembered every word, too.”

“Of course she did.”

“And she’d deduced enough about me and my occupation by that point that when I returned, she told me all of it. I’d begged her to leave Madame Jonas’s before that, to come with me, but she refused my help—she despised the idea of depending on anyone else to put a roof over her head. But when I told her Helm would pay her handsomely for her information, she came with me at last.” He blew out a heavy breath. “I thought I’d found a way to rescue her. But I’m the one who brought her into all this. Into what got her killed.”

His expression was heavy with sorrow.

Rachel laid her hand gently on his arm. “Don’t say that. The more I learn of the years Sarah and I were apart, the more I think the time she spent working for Helm was the best part of her life. I can’t imagine she’d regret it.”

“Maybe so,” answered the Giant darkly. “But given what much of her life was like, I’m not sure that’s saying much.”

Abruptly, he heaved himself to a standing position, and brushed the loose dirt from his trousers. “And that,” he said, “is about as much conversation as I can bear for one day. For a decade.”