“I, on the other hand, prefer lackeys.” His voice was gravelly, with an edge to the cadence. The hint of a previous accent unsuccessfully removed. A street accent not quite covered by the polish of his clothing. “Much less mess.”
Charlotte’s moist fingers slipped over the dove’s sharp beak in her white-knuckled terror.
“You killed Noakes.” The shopkeeper looked frantic.
More
frantic. She didn’t know how she was able to follow the conversation, both what was said and what wasn’t, when everything in her was screaming dire warnings, terror, and escape, but it all set out for her like words on a page. Hunsden must have known Noakes was there, biding his time, his ace in the hole.
At his words—
killed,
in particular—hands suddenly gripped Charlotte and started pulling her violently. Anna, in obvious—though fortunately silent—hysterics behind her, madly tugged.
“You’ll be arrested,” Hunsden said feverishly. “Hanged! And Cornelius, he’ll come after you. Send assassins. Unless I help you. Help you dispose of the body. I—I know just the spot.”
“Well, that’s bloody accommodating of you. Because I’m shaking in my boots at the thought of Cornelius’s
assassins.
” The blond man twirled the knife on his palm and addressed the tall, dark man, who had maintained a crushing grip on Hunsden. “Anything interesting left in him, Andreas? Or has the piece of goat shit dried to chips?”
“My—my wife . . .” Hunsden stuttered before the darker man, Andreas, could answer.
“Whom you beat,” the blond man said, almost pleasantly.
“ . . . she will tell someone. She will . . .”
“Rejoice in her widow’s weeds?”
Charlotte gave up on trying to unclasp the pin, Anna’s violent tugging wouldn’t let her get her sweaty fingers around it again. She pulled on the fabric once more, trying to rip it from the embedded dagger.
“I—I . . . you can have her.”
“Did you hear that, Andreas? Hunsden’s wife is all ours. All we have to do is, what was it? Let the goat go? And he’ll help us dump the body? But there are so many choices for
where
to do the dumping.” The blond man affected a look of studied indecision, tapping the heel of the blade against his palm. It should have made him look less dangerous, but instead his expression seemed to glow with a demonic light, relishing the game. “Should we really leave it to Hunsden here to decide?”
Charlotte sent up a prayer, hoping that Mrs. Hunsden was safe, somewhere else. There was nothing Charlotte could do for her but to escape, to call the watch, to get help.
“I’m not in the mood for theatrics, Roman,” Andreas said. His hand twisted the fabric near Hunsden’s throat a little further.
Odd and fleeting recognition that these were the two men she had seen briefly on the street struck her.
The blond threw out his blood-smeared knuckles, and one drop flung to the floor as he carelessly motioned. “I never get to enjoy these things anymore.”
The pin suddenly came loose, and she caught it in her hand, staring at the little metal body in shock for a moment. Dear God. She was free.
She pushed back to run. Anna pushed forward to more insistently get a grip and the force of the two propelled Charlotte’s chest and hand into the edge of the door. The pin lifted into the air, flying free for a few suspended moments, then dropped sharply, the weight of it too much, and clattered across the floor like the opening shots at Waterloo.
It stopped, almost gently, against the fallen angel’s foot.
All heads turned, eyes looking between or around the crates. Charlotte met the pair of icy blue ones. The pair that so far had proved the most deadly.
“And what have we here?”
Run.
Run.
But Anna was pressed up behind her, quaking. With seemingly no self-preservation to be had.
Her maid gave a sharp squeak, and Charlotte half turned to see a man had come up behind them, a grisly smile on his face, a patch over one eye. Blocking their only escape.
Charlotte turned back and lifted her chin, eyes meeting iced blue once more, running through her options.
“Hunsden doesn’t have a daughter.” The man’s—Roman’s—voice was pleasant, but she wasn’t fooled. “And you are showing far too much spine to be his downtrodden wife.” He regarded her, looking her up and down somewhat lazily with his fallen-angel eyes. “And far too expensively dressed. With a maid hiding behind your skirts. A beautiful customer experiencing her first taste of darkness?”
“Run! Get help! They killed Noakes!”
A sharp shove pushed Hunsden farther up the wall. The darker man, Andreas, looked as if he might finish the double murder right there. Charlotte tried to still her shaking hands, pinned as she and Anna were between the one-eyed man and the murderer.
Roman smiled at her with a too-charming grin. “Don’t mind One-eye.” He motioned lazily to the man hovering behind her maid. “He’s reformed. He now only harms those who require it.”
Roman spoke over his shoulder to the other two men, without looking away from her. “Unfortunately, Hunsden, your dear Noakes is alive. I
should
kill him though. Trying to put a knife—rather fond of knives, isn’t he?—in my brother’s back?” His expression grew barbaric again as he swung to look at the shopkeeper, who was already purpled and mute. “Perhaps I will dispatch him still.”
Her eyes went unwillingly to the dark-haired man, Andreas, who was watching her as well, but in a far colder manner. Brothers? They looked nothing alike. Not their coloring, their features, nor the expressions on their faces. They both wore their expensive clothing well though. Too fitted to be stolen or tailored for anyone but the person whose frames the garments graced.
But even if she had spied them walking into the most expensive tailor on Savile Row, she knew her heart would have jerked. A need suddenly pressing against her to cross the street, some deep survival instinct kicking in, as it had to the people they had passed earlier. There was something about both of them that was unnerving. Their eyes far too quick. A dangerous lethality coating the air around them.
They had
passed
her fleetingly, coming from behind on the street, and even then she had felt it.
“Hmm? No?” Roman turned back to Charlotte, face easing again. “Too many witnesses now, I think.” He flashed her another charming smile. “And I’d never harm a lady.”
“Is that so?” She somehow managed to say it calmly. Long practice with her father and the dour matrons of the
ton
helping.
“Especially not one as lovely as you are.” He grinned. It was almost boyish under his far-too-seasoned, penetrating gaze, and there was something about the curve of his lips that made her frozen heart skip a beat. She wondered if there was something wrong with him. Or with her.
He bent to the floor, crouching, his eyes not losing contact with hers. Two fingers curled around the pin, red knuckles enclosing it. He lifted and examined the dove for a moment before looking back to her.
He held it up between two fingers, his other hand upon his knee, half sitting, balanced on the balls of his feet.
She would need to cross five paces to retrieve the pin. Five paces that would give her a lead should she need to run.
She needed to run
now.
Even with the one-eyed man blocking freedom.
“Come now.” Those lips—it was hard to look away from them—curved slowly this time. “I’ll be a good boy.”
She broke her gaze and concentrated on the cool blue of his eyes. “I have no assurance of such, sir. You haven’t been particularly hospitable so far.”
He twisted the pin, the tail touching his forefinger, the head kissing his thumb. Back and forth. Back and forth. “I blame Hunsden.” Back and forth. “You should too. Inhospitable cuss.”
“Mr. Hunsden hardly seems in a state to open his larder,” she said, trying to pretend he was just a man at a rout, and she was simply exchanging pleasantries with him in order to pass the time. Not a ruthless killer, unusually charismatic and crouched before her. “Or his liquor cabinet.”
He might not have killed the man on the ground. Yet. But none of his words or actions indicated a lack of knowledge of the art.
The smooth, cold metal of the dove kept a steady circuit between his long, capable-looking fingers—roughened digits protruding from the black and white of his tailored cuff. Not the lily-white fingers of a pianist at a musicale but of a man who could fell another with a single blow.
“His liquor cabinet? A grand idea.”
“Would you care for a drink? I believe Mr. Hunsden would be willing to fetch you a dram if you release him. Or I will send back some spruce beer if you give me a minute to cross the street.”
“Mmmm . . . One of my favorites.” His quick eyes seemed to miss nothing, and she couldn’t hide the motion of her fingers squeezing the fabric of her skirts. His gaze rose back to her face, lingering on her lips, then meeting her eyes. Even giving away her nerves with the telltale sign of her pinched fingers, she refused to look away.
“Andreas, I think I’ve fallen in love.”
“Roman.” There was a wealth of unspoken meaning in that one word, so darkly uttered. But Roman’s too-beautiful mouth crooked, head cocked, eyes watching.
Heads and tails. Touching his finger, kissing his thumb. The choice before her.
“I think you are making the lady’s maid nervous, Bill,” Roman said to the one-eyed man near them though he kept his eyes on Charlotte. “Perhaps you might back up a bit.”
Bill moved. Charlotte wondered what game his master played.
“Come.” Roman smiled at her, a lovely lift of his lips. “Take your pin.”
It was a dare. A test to see if she would cross to him, retrieve the pin from his bloodstained hand.
“It would be a shame to lose something so valuable. Unless you care little about its loss?”
There was something in his eyes that said he knew the piece was precious to her. But that was silly. This man, who held all the power at present, didn’t know her at all. And he could do anything to her he wished should she decide to retrieve the pin or not.
And yet, something about the look in his eyes and his instruction to Bill to move gave her pause. If she chose to run, she had the odd notion that he would not stop her.
Which bled into the thought that she wouldn’t be harmed if she retrieved the pin. She didn’t know why or what made her think that when nothing about the situation should reassure her. Perhaps it was the way he sat, or the absence of any physical menace toward her or action against her. Easily able to rise and overpower her if he chose to or to step into her space and intimidate her mentally and physically.
Her left foot stepped forward. She paused, her weight switching.
But there was also something in his eyes that said her actions might be irreversible if she went to him. That it would change her life.
A ridiculous thought.
She swallowed, lifted her chin, and took another step toward him. The edges of his eyes tapered, satisfaction and anticipation deepening the blue. She took three more measured steps until she stood in front of him. Kneeling before her, he seemed at a disadvantage, but for the way he commanded the space.
He twisted the pin so it rested in the palm of his bare hand.
She slowly reached forward and touched the pin, gripping the small metal body, the bare tips of her fingers brushing the strong, worn skin of his palm.
The blue of his eyes held hers. His fingers curled up as she lifted the pin, his tan knuckles speckled with red, the edges of his own bare fingertips caressing hers as she lifted the dove, and he slowly relinquished his hold.
The beat within her jerked and began drumming more insistently. His eyes dropped to the curve of her bare throat, then lifted, his smile growing, the creases at the edges of his eyes deepening further.
She quickly stepped backward, clutching the pin against her thigh, then stepped again. “Thank you, sir. I believe we should be on our way now.”
He tilted his head, smile still in place, eyes dropping again to the thumping beat at her throat, down to the torn fabric at her chest that had been damaged by the jerking pin, back to her lips, then up farther.
A feeling close to panic but without the cold edge—warmer somehow—pulsed through her. She took two harsh steps backward and, feeling Anna’s dress, pushed her maid so she stayed behind her, backing them roughly through the frame between the rear and the shop proper. Anna clutched her, pulling Charlotte’s dress in her terror-filled grip, forcing Charlotte to make an extra effort to stand tall.
Roman rose and followed them, his eyes never leaving hers, even as he motioned lazily to his left, then over his shoulder with his thumb. The one-eyed man appeared at their side in the shop proper, then promptly disappeared into the back of the shop, into the belly of the crime. Her internal pounding remained.
Charlotte continued walking backward, pin clutched in one set of fingers, the skirt of Anna’s dress bunched in the other.