A Kiss In The Dark (36 page)

“You knew and you didn’t tell me?”

This time his voice was louder, full of incredulity and an underlying hurt that had her wincing.

“I’m so sorry, Tristan,” she whispered, reaching out to him in a supplicating gesture. “I was going to tell you. Emily only wanted a little time to say good-bye to the Rag-Tags, so I promised her a few hours, that’s all.”

But it was as if he didn’t hear her. Raking a hand through his hair, he began to pace. “You knew how worried about her I was, how much I wanted to find her. How could you not tell me?”

She shook her head, at a loss as to what to say to make things right. “I wanted to. I would have within a few hours.”

He stopped and whirled to face her so abruptly that she started. “So that’s where you were this morning,” he gritted out. “Is that what the parlor was all about? Were you trying to distract me?”

Stunned and wounded that he would think such a thing, she felt the accusation like a blow. “No!” She glanced at Peter, who still stood quietly observing them, before she continued in a softer tone. “I would never do something like that.”

“How can I believe you?” His expression was so confused, so full of pain that it tore at Deirdre’s heart. “After everything we’ve been through together, I thought I could trust you. Now, I … I just don’t know.”

She had to make him understand, had to make him see she was still on his side. Laying a hand on his arm, she ignored his flinch and held his eyes with hers. “You
can
trust me, Tristan. All I’ve ever wanted is to find Emily. I delayed telling you I’d done so, yes. But at the time I was certain she would be safe where she was.”

“Safe?” He sounded disbelieving. “In the hideout of a band of pickpockets?”

Before she could answer, he started to turn away again, but Peter suddenly planted himself firmly in his path.

“She would have been safe if it weren’t for Jack, m’lord,” the boy said with quiet conviction. “I would ’ave done anything to keep Em—er, Lady Emily out of Flynt’s ’ands.”

“And yet he has her.” Tristan scrubbed a hand over his face and shook his head, unable to hide his anguish. “My God, that monster could have done anything to her by now!”

“I don’t think ’e’ll ’urt ’er, m’lord. At least, not right away. Once ’e found out you were an earl, ’is plans changed. Or so Jack says.”

Deirdre’s breath caught. “He wants money,” she concluded, wringing her hands together in front of her. Knowing Barnaby, she should have guessed.

“And lots of it.” Peter named a sum that had Deirdre’s jaw dropping, then he faced Tristan again. “’E says you’re to bring it back to our ’ideout by six o’clock, and you’re to come on your own or he
will
kill ’er.”

“He’ll kill her anyway,” Tristan said hoarsely. “And I don’t have that kind of money. Father went through almost everything before he died. I’ve had to struggle not to sell things off to pay his debts, and I’ve only just started to gain back some of what he lost.”

Deirdre bit her lip. “I might be able to get it, but it would take a while. I’d have to pay a visit to Nigel’s solicitor and—”

“Even if I would take money from you, Deirdre, we don’t have time.” Tristan glanced at the grandfather clock on the far wall. “It’s already almost three.”

Looking at him with anxious eyes, Deirdre struggled to come up with a solution. She couldn’t believe the suggestion she was about to make, but right now she could see no other alternative.

“Perhaps,” she ventured in a timid voice, “it might be time to try Bow Street again.”

“And have them turn me away like they did last time?” Tristan shook his head. “No. I’m going to handle this myself. I’m going to make Flynt sorry he ever thought to threaten the people I care about.” His eyes glowed with determination. “I’ll just have to surprise the fox in his den. When Dan stopped by this morning, it was to tell me some of his men had managed to track Barnaby’s boys back to their lair. An abandoned building next to a tavern called The Rook.” He looked at Peter. “Do you know it?”

The lad nodded.

“Good. I want you to show me where it is.”

As he started for the door, closely followed by Peter, Deirdre raced after him, determined to make him see reason. “Tristan, please. You can’t do this. At least wait until I can get a message to Dan so he and his men can go with you.”

“I told you, Deirdre, I don’t have time!”

“But if you go in there alone and unarmed, Barnaby will kill you.”

“So be it, then.” His jaw was set at a stubborn angle she recognized all too well. “As long as I get Emily out of there safely, that’s all that matters.”

He began to turn away once more, but she clutched at his arm, her gaze beseeching as she looked up at him. “Please, you have to listen. You don’t know how ruthless Barnaby can be. I do.”

“And just how is that, Deirdre?” He looked down at her, studying her with hooded eyes. “I’ve been wondering that for quite some time, and now I’m thinking I should have asked sooner. Just exactly how would you know anything about a man like Flynt?”

God, it was the one question she’d dreaded, one she could no longer avoid answering. He deserved the truth, especially when her previous omission might cost him his sister’s life. Once she told him everything, she had no doubt he would be lost to her forever.

Mentally saying good-bye to the only man she would ever love, she took a quavering breath and began to speak. “You asked me once what I did after my father abandoned me and Dan turned me away. Well, the truth is, I spent my days scavenging through trash heaps for food, stealing from street vendors and stall owners. It wasn’t enough to keep me alive, though, and I was very close to starving when Barnaby found me.”

She wrapped her arms about herself, as if trying to ward off the chill of her memories. “He caught me stealing one day and must have realized he could make use of my talent. He took me back to his hideout, gave me a place with his band of pickpockets.”

Tristan’s expression was unreadable. “You stole for him.”

“I did what I had to do. At first, I was grateful. Barnaby made sure we were kept well fed, and being around other children was wonderful. For the first time, I had a family of sorts. It was like manna from heaven for a little girl who’d never really had anyone.”

She bowed her head. “But as I got older, Barnaby pushed me to be more daring, to steal more than just handkerchiefs and wallets. Some of the older boys were burglarizing stores, breaking into houses, and he was using the girls and younger children to lure victims into the back alleys to be beaten and robbed.”

She could practically feel Tristan tense, but she blocked it out and pushed forward. “I hated it, but I was too afraid of Barnaby to refuse. I can’t tell you how many people I watched him brutalize.” Pausing, she took a deep breath and had to force the words out from between stiff lips. “Oh, Tristan, I’m so sorry, but one of them was your mother.”

He went dead still, his face paling. He even seemed to have stopped breathing as he stared at her. “What are you saying?”

She couldn’t believe she was going to tell him, but there was no other choice. She couldn’t let him walk into this situation blind, without knowing who he would be facing. The shock of it would be enough to give Flynt the advantage, when he already had too much in his favor as it was. Yes, by doing so she would be revealing her part in what had happened that day, but what else could she do?

Fighting an overwhelming feeling of loss, she stumbled onward. “Barnaby Flynt is the man who killed your mother.”

“And how could you possibly know that?”

“Because I was there, Tristan. I was the one Barnaby used to lure her into that alley.”

He looked stunned, as if unable to accept what he was hearing. “That’s not possible. I would have remembered you. There was no little girl there that day.” He stopped, the light of realization dawning. “But there was a little boy.”

“Not a little boy. Me.” She closed her eyes, her heart aching at the agony suffusing his features. All she wanted to do was to reach out to him, but she was too afraid he would push her away. “I felt so guilty by the time I got her back there, I … I couldn’t go through with it. I tried to warn her, but it was too late.”

Tristan backed away from Deirdre, shaking his head, his gaze rife with disbelief. “I can’t deal with this right now. I don’t have time for this. I have to save Emily.”

“Tristan, please—”

“No, Deirdre. I can’t.” He was out the door before she could say anything else. Peter paused long enough to give her a sympathetic look, then followed.

Oh, God. All she wanted to do was sink into a corner and cry, but she couldn’t. She had to do something. She couldn’t let Tristan face that devil alone.

“Mrs. Godfrey!” she cried urgently, hurrying back down the hallway.

The housekeeper appeared with a stack of clean cloths piled high in her arms. “Cullen is heating the water, my lady. I—”

“Never mind that now. If Jenna is still here, send her to me at once. I have something for her to do, and we don’t have much time.”

T
ristan and Peter crouched behind a stack of crates a few feet away from the entrance to Barnaby Flynt’s hideout. They’d been watching the comings and goings of the gang leader’s lackeys for quite some time, waiting for an opening to slip past the guards, but so far an opportunity hadn’t presented itself.

As the sun lowered in the sky and the shadows of late afternoon lengthened, a low fog started to creep in from off the fields, and a slight chill pervaded the air. Peter was shivering, but he didn’t complain of the cold. Tristan had his rage to keep him warm. All he could think about was Emily, alone and scared in Flynt’s clutches.

Barnaby Flynt is the man who killed your mother
.

The words echoed in his head, and he felt his pulse speed up in response. At first his mind had refused to process the revelation. Then he’d wanted to deny the possibility, but he couldn’t imagine why Deirdre would make up such a story, and he had to admit that Peter’s description of Flynt fit what he remembered of his mother’s murderer.

I was there
.

Once again he heard Deirdre’s voice, sounding so lost and fragile when she’d made her confession. Never before had his emotions been such a jumble of confusion. Anger, pain, shock. In truth, he wasn’t certain what he felt about her deception. That, added to her not having told him of Emily’s whereabouts right away, gave him plenty of reason to be furious with her. He’d known she was keeping something from him, of course, but never could he have guessed at the sheer magnitude of it.

For a brief moment, he allowed his mind to travel back in time to that painful day as he struggled to picture the child Deirdre must have been. He had a vague recollection of a small, ragged waif with straggly hair sticking out from a dirty cap and tattered, overlarge boy’s clothing that hung on a too-thin frame. It was no wonder he’d mistaken her for a lad. However, he couldn’t remember much else about her. Other than his mother’s death and her killer’s face, the rest of the incident was understandably a blur of pain and grief.

And right now he simply didn’t have the time to assimilate it all. He had to concentrate on freeing his sister. But one thing was certain. If he walked away from this confrontation alive, he and Deirdre were destined for a very serious talk.

“Look,” Peter suddenly hissed, pointing toward the building. “The other guard ’as gone in and Toby’s alone. If we’re going to go, we’d better go now.”

Tristan eyed the tall youth blocking the door for a moment, then he nodded. “All right. Here’s what we’re going to do.”

Standing in the middle of the Jolly Roger, Deirdre looked around at the crowd gathered about her, their faces suffused with varying degrees of anger and trepidation.

With Jenna and Lilah’s help, she’d been able to call together quite a number of people. Merchants and stall owners stood shoulder to shoulder with prostitutes and chimney sweeps, and even the Rag-Tag Bunch lurked at the edges of the crowd, their expressions rife with excitement.

She’d just finished telling them all about Tristan’s search for his sister and Barnaby Flynt’s subsequent snatching of the girl, making sure to mention her belief that the gang leader had also been involved in the recent death of Mouse. Outraged mutterings could be heard, and several people were indulging in heated discussions on the sidelines.