Tangled Webs (10 page)

The fire had eaten away half the room already and spread out into other parts of the house. The heat became unbearable. The dry wood was quickly consumed by the hungry fire.

“Becky?” Each breath took more effort than the last as smoke filled Arista’s lungs. The searing temperature of the fire singed her wig, and sparks rained down around them. The
old, dry wood crackled so loudly that she couldn’t hear her own voice.

Becky did not respond when Arista grabbed her arm and dragged her across the floor to the doorway. Smoke was pouring out of the room and filling the hall. Heavy thumps sounded at the second
door, followed by a burst of splintering wood. New voices shouted into the space. Bones’s men had broken through.

Arista stood, then bent over to drag Becky toward the door that led out to the street. The pain grew so bad that she almost vomited, but she knew if she didn’t keep going, they were dead.
The men were battling the fire and didn’t notice them in the darkness.

When Arista finally felt the wood of the door against her back, she sank down to the floor, exhausted. They’d made it. The sweet taste of relief overpowered the acrid taste of smoke. She
reached to where Becky always kept the key—on a string around her neck—and found nothing. Icy panic raced up her back while the heat of the fire pressed down against them. She
couldn’t go back to look for it. Fire crawled across the ceiling of the hall, getting closer with each swirling orange finger.

Arista pushed to her feet and jammed her shoulder against the door. Stars danced in her vision. Pain radiated down her arm, but she tried again. And again. The street door could only be unlocked
from the inside. It needed a key.

While the townhouse may have been in deplorable shape, the door had been reinforced to prevent anyone from stumbling in on them. Frustration turned to terror as the roar of the fire grew closer,
all around them now. She dug at the lock with her knife, but the blade felt heavy and awkward in her grip and took too much effort to hold steady. The weight of it dragged her hand down until it
rested on the rough floor. When she tried to lift it again, she had nothing left. Her strength was gone. They were trapped.

Arista turned and leaned her back against the door, gasping for air. The smoke billowed down the hallway, almost beautiful in its white, writhing dance. She watched with a sort of detached
fascination. Each breath filled her lungs with more and more smoke.

Would death hurt? Could it hurt any more than being alive? Some days, she had ached almost too much to bear. And just when a chance of escape had presented itself, and given her hope for a
future she’d never dared dream of, it too had been snatched away. Bones’s final act of treachery.

As her head grew hazy, Arista thought of the highwayman, of the kiss they’d shared earlier, and she had a moment of regret. She would never know that feeling again. She would never find
the love she craved. Never see the shores of distant lands, or feel the wind of an open sea brush over her face. Never taste true freedom.

The fire seemed to retreat behind them, holding its breath expectantly, but only for a second. It gathered itself, then reared back and roared. The thick smoke made it impossible to breathe, and
the oblivion that had been threatening to overtake her finally won out.

Arista threaded her fingers through Becky’s and closed her eyes as the darkness rose up to claim her.

S
omewhere in the hazy glow inside her head, Arista heard voices; wood splintered; arms lifted her. The brush of cool night air over her skin made
her shiver, and each breath caused excruciating spasms in her lungs. If this was death, she must be in hell. Faces floated in and out of her clouded vision.

Then the dark was a blissfully quiet and pain-free place.

When she opened her eyes, bright sunlight streamed in through a lace-covered window. Softness cocooned her body, enveloped her in the most exquisite warmth. Hell was a strange place indeed.

There was a movement to her right, and she distantly watched an unfamiliar girl set a tray down on the small table next to the bed. Arista blinked several times, trying to chase the sleep from
her eyes. The girl had on a filmy dressing robe and kohl smeared under one eye, making her seem less exotic and more like a nightmarish creature. In fact, it looked like the woman had just stumbled
out of bed herself.

“Where am I?” The words scraped across her raw throat and came out barely audible. The girl glanced at her, then at someone just out of Arista’s view. A new figure stood in the
doorway: a man. Her vision cleared. Not just any man; Wild.

Panic sizzled under her skin. She’d heard stories of girls being drugged and sold into the cruelest brothels. Had he lied about not forcing her to work with him?

“What am I doing here?” Arista tried to push herself up, but a slice of pain cut through her middle. With a gasp, she lay back down. What had he done to her?

“Relax, my dear,” Wild said. “You’re quite safe here. If I may come in, I’ll try and explain everything.”

Arista glanced at the girl, who now stood off to the side with her hands clasped over her stomach.

“Justine will stay if it makes you more comfortable,” Wild said. He waited patiently at the threshold of the room for her to grant him access: a consideration she would not have
expected from one such as him. She motioned for him to enter and he made his way to the bed, standing close but not so close that it made her uncomfortable. Justine stood still, though she seemed
more like a half-asleep girl than a guard.

“How did I get here?” Arista asked, and winced at the pain in her throat.

Wild picked up a glass and filled it with water from a matching pitcher. “May I?” he asked, indicating that he would help her to sit up. When she nodded, he carefully lifted the
glass to her lips and tilted it just enough so a few precious drops of water fell into her mouth.

It felt as if she were drinking liquid fire. Water dribbled down her chin when she turned her head away from the pain. “Thank you,” she whispered. The pain receded and her throat did
feel a little better. “Where am I?”

“I brought you somewhere safe to recover,” Wild said, setting the glass on a small table next to the bed. “No one saw you arrive, and aside from a few of my girls, no one knows
you’re here.” Was that a warning? No, though her mind was muddled, she saw no ill intent in his eyes. Only concern—the way his lips turned down at the corners.

“What happened?” For the life of her, she could not remember at all. Images were jumbled together in her head. Everything remained fuzzy, as if she might still be dreaming. She had a
vague recollection of shouting, and then…nothing. A dull throb radiated from the side of her jaw. When she raised her hand to feel along the bone, Wild scowled, though he didn’t seem
angry at her.

“I imagine it feels about as bad as it looks. I had my physician check on you the first night, and he said nothing appeared broken. Your ribs are quite bruised, though, and will be
uncomfortable for some time.”

Arista blinked. Her eyelids were suddenly so heavy. It wouldn’t hurt to close them, just for a minute, would it? Wild pulled the quilt up around her neck and patted her head as if she were
a child.

“Rest now, my dear. There will be plenty of time to discuss other matters when you’ve recovered.” Wild followed Justine out of the room, and the door closed. The unmistakable
click of a lock registered somewhere in the fog inside her head, but Arista barely had time to acknowledge it before the darkness swept her under again.

When she awoke once more her head had finally cleared. Night sat heavy outside the window now, and from somewhere below her, the sounds of music and laughter drifted through the floor. A lantern
flickered from across the room, casting the room in soft light. The warm glow of a fire in the hearth made the room’s temperature quite comfortable. As one used to waking up in a cold, dark
room, it took Arista a moment to get her bearings and remember the conversation with Wild.

Gingerly she sat up, cradling her bruised ribs. The pain was at least manageable now. Her legs wobbled when she stood, but they held her upright. A demure white nightgown hung to her ankles,
buttoned just under her neck. Who had put this on her? Heat burned her cheeks. Hopefully the girl she saw earlier.

The room was small but well furnished. A wardrobe sat in one corner, and next to it a dressing table. The floor was wood, but a colorful rug filled most of the room, keeping her bare feet warm.
It was by far the nicest place she’d ever slept, but she still didn’t understand how she’d gotten there. She could not separate dream from reality.

Arista moved to the window and pulled the curtain back. Her window looked out onto a small garden three stories below. It was too dark to make out anything that might tell her where she was.
Reluctantly, she let the lace fall back into place. There were no answers in the dark.

A soft click sounded behind her. Arista swung around and reached for her knife instinctively. It wasn’t there. She had just enough time to reach the side of the bed before the door swung
open. She grabbed the quilt and threw it around her shoulders, just as a maid entered. She was not the same girl as before. This one looked much younger, and had on a simple blue gown with an apron
over the front. Wild came in right behind her.

“So glad to see you awake, my dear.” He met Arista’s stare openly, then directed the girl to set her tray on the table next to the bed. The girl curtsied, not meeting their
eyes, then stood silently against the wall.

Arista tugged the quilt tighter around her body. “Where are my clothes?” Her voice came out low and raspy. She swallowed against the rawness still in her throat. Wild poured water
from a new crystal pitcher and handed it to her. With shaking fingers, she took it and downed the contents in two mouthfuls.

“Your dress was quite ruined from the smoke, so I took the liberty of having one of the girls—about your size—find something appropriate for you to wear. It’s in the
wardrobe when you’re ready.” The glass wobbled as she handed it back to Wild, and he gestured for her to sit. She sank to the edge of the bed gratefully. She hated appearing weak, but
Wild made no mention of her state. For that she gave silent thanks.

“I’ve brought you some things to eat. I didn’t know your preferences, so I had the cook include a few choices. Your weapon is there, next to the tray.” Arista glanced to
where he pointed. Her knife handle poked out from behind the tray, cleaned of Bones’s blood. Some of the tension eased from her shoulders. If she were a prisoner, he would have hidden it
away.

“What happened? How did I get here?” she asked again.

“What do you remember?” he asked, instead of answering her question.

An image popped into her head. “A fire?” Wild nodded. At his confirmation, more images rushed to fill her head, as if the first had opened a door for the rest. The room swam. Bones.
His fists. The dark room. And, oh God, the fire.

Becky.

“Where is Becky? Is she…” Arista couldn’t say the word. She now remembered the cold, limp feel of Becky’s hand as she’d held it in the final moments before
everything disappeared.

“Your friend is quite safe, though we weren’t sure for a few days whether she would regain consciousness or not. She didn’t have the fever you did. The physician did what he
could, tended to her wounds, but left the rest up to the girl. She woke yesterday.”

Fever? Days? In her own mind, only a day at most had passed. “How long have we been here?”

“Four days.”

No matter how hard she tried, Arista could not reconcile that over half a week had passed. “How did you find me? You
were
the one who saved me?” Vague dreamlike recollections
filtered in and out of her mind. Wild had been there at one point. Only it had not been a dream at all.

“I was,” he said.

When he didn’t elaborate, she filled in the blanks on her own. “You were following me?”

“It wasn’t so much following, as going in the same direction. I had business to tend to in that particular area of London. When you left the party and I noticed your usual companion
absent, I did what any gentleman would do. I saw you home safely.”

“You followed me,” she said again. How could he have followed her all that way without her sensing him there?

As if he knew what she thought, he smiled. “I can be quite invisible when I want to. And I know those alleyways as well as you.”

One did not earn a reputation like Wild’s without the ability to disappear, of course.

“I had concluded my business, and that’s when I saw smoke coming from the building into which you had vanished. The door was locked, but I heard pounding. With my associate’s
help, we broke the door in. I brought you here, to one of my establishments, to recover. The rest…well, you know.” He waved his hand around the room.

“Is Bones…?” She could still hear the echoes of his furious howling; still feel his heavy hand slamming into her over and over again. Wild’s eyes narrowed.

“No one else got out. The fire had consumed almost everything by the time my men broke through the door. We were almost too late to save you and your friend. The entire block is gone
now.”