Lord of Darkness (18 page)

Godric raised an eyebrow behind his mask. “Sad as your tale of woe is, Digger, I can’t find it in myself to pity you when you’re in the very act of exhuming some poor corpse.”

Digger pulled himself up to his full height of something under five foot two. “Man’s got to make a livin’, Ghost. ’Sides,” he continued, narrowing his eyes spitefully, “leastwise I’m not a murderer.”

“Oh, let’s not start a game of name-calling.”

The other man made a rude noise.

“Digger,” Godric said low, his patience at an end, “I’m not here for your opinion of me.”

The grave robber licked his lips nervously, his eyes sliding away from Godric’s. “What yer want, then?”

“What do you know about the lassie snatchers?”

Digger’s bony shoulders lifted. “Just talk ’ere and there.”

“Tell me.”

Digger’s hard little face contorted as the man thought. “Word is, they’re back.”

Godric sighed. “Yes, I know.”

“Uh …” Digger toed absently at the edge of his half-excavated grave. Clods of earth tumbled down, making no sound. “Some say as ’ow they’ve taken near on two dozen girls.”

Four and twenty girls missing?
In any other corner of London, there would’ve been a public outcry. News sheets would’ve printed
outraged articles, lords would’ve thundered their ire in Parliament. Here, no one had bothered to even
notice
, it seemed.

“Where are they taken to?”

“I dunno.” Digger shook his head. “But it’s not a regular bawdy house, like. Don’t no one ’ear from ’em again.”

Godric’s eyes narrowed. Digger didn’t appear to know that the girls were used in a workshop. The place must be well hidden. A secret kept very close.

“There’s a wench, though,” Digger said as if remembering, “’oo ’elps to catch the lassies.”

“Do you know what she looks like?”

“I knows better’n that,” Digger said with a hint of pride. “I knows ’er name.”

Godric cocked his head, waiting.

“Mistress Cook is what she goes by—or so I’ve ’eard.”

It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing. Godric produced a silver coin and pressed it into Digger’s grimy palm. “Thank you.”

Digger perked up at the sight of money, although his tone was still a bit surly when he answered, “Anytime.”

Godric turned to go, but hesitated as a thought struck him. “One more thing.”

The grave robber heaved a heavy sigh. “What?”

“Two years ago, an aristo was murdered in St. Giles. His name was Roger Fraser-Burnsby. Do you know anything about the matter?”

If Godric hadn’t spent years questioning informants of dubious reputation, he’d have missed the slight stiffening of Digger’s body.

“Never ’eard of ’im,” Digger said carelessly. “Now, if’n ye don’t mind, I ’as me work to finish afore sunup.”

Godric leaned
into the smaller man until the crooked nose of his black leather mask nearly touched Digger’s face. “But I do mind.”

Digger gulped, his eyes flaring wide in alarm. “I … I don’t know nothin’, ’onest!”

“Jack,” Godric rasped quietly. “You’re a liar.”

“All right, all right.” Digger held up his hands as if warding off a physical attack. “There was rumors about when it ’appened. Talk that it ’adn’t been the Ghost at all ’oo killed that aristo.”

Godric raised his brows. “Did you hear who the real murderer was?”

Digger glanced over his shoulder as if searching for eavesdroppers. “Word was, it were another toff.”

“Anything else?”

The grave robber threw up his hands. “Ain’t that enough? You could get me killed, if’n this is toff business and they ’ear I been flappin’ me mouth.”

“No one will hear,” Godric said softly. “You won’t tell and I certainly don’t plan to.”

Digger’s only reply was a derisive snort.

Godric tipped his hat ironically to his informant and made his escape from the graveyard, loping on foot toward the river and Saint House. The thought of Megs seeking bloody revenge troubled him. She was a woman of light and laughter. She wasn’t made for grim retribution and death.

That was his job.

He couldn’t let her do it. Even if it were safe for a lady to seek a murderer in St. Giles, he couldn’t let her risk dimming her light, tarnishing her laughter. That kind of revenge would scar her forever.

There was
only one way he could think of to distract her from her mission immediately and get her out of London.

Twenty minutes later, Godric neared Saint House, and as he always did, he slowed and ducked into the shadows of a doorway to watch and make sure he was unobserved. In all his years of acting the role of the Ghost of St. Giles, he could count on one hand the times when someone had been outside his house in the middle of the night. The times when his caution paid off.

This was one of those times.

It took him less than a minute to find the dark figure lurking by the corner of his house. A shadow so immobile, so silent, that had Godric not long ago memorized the monotone lines of his home by moonlight, he would have never seen him.

Godric stilled. He could flush the watcher, challenge him, and run him off. Or he could wait and see who had such interest in Saint House. His left shoulder throbbed, but he made himself breathe, deep and even, for he had a feeling this might be a long vigil.

As it turned out, it was three hours. Three hours of standing still, leaning against the doorway. Three hours of wishing he were asleep in his own bed. But at the end of those three hours he knew who was keeping watch over his house.

As the first gray-pink light began to dawn in the east, Captain James Trevillion stepped from the shadows. Without a backward glance to the house he’d guarded all night, he walked calmly away.

Godric waited until he could no longer hear the dragoon officer’s footfalls—and then he waited five minutes more.

Only then
did he creep to the back of his house and into his study. Godric doffed his costume slowly, weariness and pain making him clumsy. His sword belt slipped from his fingers and clattered to the floor. He stood staring at it. His hasty subterfuge the night Megs had stabbed him must not have fooled the dragoon captain entirely. Trevillion suspected he was in truth the Ghost. Why else keep vigil all night but to catch him as he returned from his wanderings? Godric had the feeling the man wouldn’t care overmuch for rank should he obtain clear proof that a member of the aristocracy were the Ghost. The captain was dogged, a man who appeared to have no life outside of the chase. A corner of Godric’s mouth kicked up in sardonic amusement. Perhaps his nemesis was only truly alive when he was hunting.

If so, they had more in common than the dragoon would ever suspect. Godric had long ago made peace with the knowledge that what small part of himself had survived Clara’s passing dwelt behind the mask.

He heaved a sigh. The captain must be dealt with, the lassie snatchers and Mistress Cook found, and Megs kept safe even against her will.

All this he must do, but right now he needed sleep.

Godric put away the accouterments of the Ghost and donned his nightshirt and banyan before leaving his study. As he climbed the stairs to his bedroom, he remembered once again Megs’s question:
Why was he still the Ghost of St. Giles?
and the answer he’d not spoken:

It was the only way he had left to know he yet breathed.

Megs stood late the next morning in the garden of Saint House, staring hard at the gnarled old fruit tree. It looked exactly the same as the last time she’d seen it a couple of days ago.

Dead.

Higgins wanted permission to cut it down, but Megs couldn’t find it in her heart to do so. Ugly and gnarled as the tree was, it seemed a lonely thing out here in the garden by itself. Silly, of course, to give human feelings to a tree, but there it was. Megs pitied the old, twisted tree.

“That tree is dead,” came a dark voice from behind her.

She turned, trying to still the fluttering in her breast. Godric stood
on the garden path, clad in his habitual somber suit—gray this morning. He regarded her with clear, crystal eyes, searching it seemed for something in her face.

Megs smiled. “That’s what my gardener, Higgins, said as well.”

“I can have it cut down for you.”

“He also offered.”

He looked at her oddly. “You won’t have it cut down, though, will you?”

She wrinkled her nose and placed a hand protectively on the rough bark. “No.”

“Naturally not,” he murmured to himself.

She clasped her hands before her. “I’m glad to see you’ve risen. When I heard you were still abed this morning, I feared you’d suffered a setback.”

His eyes flickered away from hers for a moment, and she had the oddest notion that he was about to tell her a falsehood, but all he said was, “I was tired and thought it best to sleep a little more before I rose.”

She nodded absently, trying to think of something to say. How could this be the same man who had torn the clothes from her breasts and kissed her as if he would die if he couldn’t taste her skin?

“We’ve been invited to attend a pleasure garden tonight,” she said. “My sister-in-law, Lady Hero, is quite fond of Harte’s Folly and wishes to go to the theater there tonight. Will you come?”

His lips thinned. “Your brother Griffin will be there as well?”

“Yes.”

Megs half expected dissent, but Godric’s mouth relaxed into a
rueful smile. “I suppose I’ll have to see him sometime—after all, I am married to his sister.”

She shouldn’t feel this excited at the possibility of his attending a play with her, but she did. Just to make sure, she asked, “Then you’ll come?”

He inclined his head gravely. “Yes.”

She nodded absently, turning to run a finger down a crease in one of the old apple tree’s branches. “Godric?”

“Yes?” He’d stepped closer. She had the feeling that if she turned, she might be in his arms.

Megs shivered and concentrated on tracing patterns in the bark. “How did my brother know you were the Ghost of St. Giles?”

He was silent and she could almost hear him thinking. “I was careless. He followed me back from St. Giles one night.”

She knit her brows. “St. Giles? Whyever would Griffin have been in St. Giles at night?”

“You don’t know?”

Well, no one could withstand
that
kind of line. She turned and found she
was
nearly in his arms. He was looking down at her with his now-familiar puzzled half-frown.

“Know what?” she asked, breathless. Silly, of course. He wouldn’t tell her, would fob her off with some transparent excuse as gentlemen always did to the ladies in their care.

But he surprised her. “Your brother Griffin used to have a business in St. Giles.”

She blinked, stunned by both his honesty and the information. “But … Griffin has never been in business. He’s never had to …” She trailed off at the expression on Godric’s face. “Has he?”

Her husband
shrugged his shoulders uncomfortably. “I don’t know the state of your brother’s finances. I only know that before he married Lady Hero, he ran a business in St. Giles.”

Her brows knit. “What type of business?”

He watched her for what seemed almost a minute, and she waited to see if he’d answer.

Finally, he sighed. “A gin still.”

“What?”

Her mouth fell open. Of all the things for her brother—the son of a
marquess
—to be doing, running an illegal—and immoral—gin still was the last thing she’d guess. Why would he? Griffin had skirted the edge of impropriety before his marriage, had had rather a terrible reputation as a rake, but she knew him. Deep down he was a good man, a man who wouldn’t be doing such a horrible thing unless he were truly hard up for money, and why would he be? Their family was landed, had plenty of funds—

Her thoughts abruptly ran aground because she realized that she didn’t actually know the state of her family’s finances. She was a lady. Ladies didn’t inquire about such things—it was considered vulgar. When she’d wanted a dress, when she’d come out and needed an entirely new wardrobe, she’d never asked if they could afford it, because they could.

Couldn’t they?

Except now she remembered small things. The time Mama had suggested the less expensive striped silk rather than the embroidered. Megs had liked the color of the stripe better anyway—a lovely rose—so she hadn’t thought much about it at the time. And then there had been the
time the modiste had become quite snippy, insisting she hadn’t been paid yet. Mama had said it was a mistake, but what if it hadn’t been?