Page 87

Her boot scraped down the rough brick before settling on another quoin, the sound unnaturally loud in her ears.

How could they not hear her? The din of the new manufactories could not be more deafening.

She reached up higher, her numbing fingers curving around a clump of vines.

Her teeth clenched, and a quick prayer ran through her mind.

She allowed the vines to take her weight.

A popping, ripping sound heralded the give of the vines’ grip on rough brick and stone.

She panicked, and her other foot scraped frantically along the wall.

The vine sagged an inch. She threw her weight sideways, forcing the foot still resting on a quoin to retake her weight.

The scrambling foot found purchase on another jutting stone.

Her free hand caught the edge of the cornice.

Pain shot through her fingers and down her arms, a sharp, knifing pain.

She ignored it, fighting desperately against it.

Her tired muscles quivered, but she held on.

Slowly she pulled herself up until she could fling one arm and elbow onto the narrow ledge.

Straining to throw her weight forward, Leona moved her feet up the wall until one knee joined the arm and elbow.

Painfully she pulled herself up and rolled over, her back against the rough wall.

She sat for a moment on the narrow stonework ledge. She gulped cold air, her breathing ragged, her head tipped back.

She was oblivious for a moment to the icy sleet that struck her face. No matter what, she was not going back down the way she came up. She would find some other way—even if it meant revealing herself to the Norths.

Resolutely, she turned to kneel on the ledge.

Her stiff muscles screamed pain, and her chest ached.

She blinked and wiped her eyes again. Her gloved fingers felt like blocks of ice against her skin.

The supple leather was stiffening in the freezing air.

The fancy thin gloves offered little protection, but without them, her hands would have been scraped and bloodied.

She crawled stiffly toward the lighted window, vaguely wondering why the drapes were not yet closed against the night’s chill.

Carefully she crawled along the narrow ledge, her mind racing ahead with visions of what she would see when she looked into the room.

An ugly, misshapen form or an elfin sprite?

A wild-eyed individual with only the vestige of humanity, or a martyred saint?

What was the truth behind the rumors? Were the Norths innocent victims of malicious village tongues, or were they the stuff of bogeyman stories told by nurses to frighten their charges into obedience?

Carefully, ruthlessly, Leona stamped down her more wayward thoughts, shoving them into shadowed recesses of her mind.

At the window’s edge, she stretched her head and neck forward until the wavering light from a tallow candle spilled across her face.

Her attention diverted by the sight of the cheap, smoky candle, Leona wondered at the Norths’ affording Lion’s Gate if they needed to use tallow candles.

Of course, she wryly conceded, it may have been an economy forced by Howard North’s penchant for aping the London Town Tulips.

His padded and wasp-waisted jackets were not the work of a country tailor.

Leona’s eyes swept the room. It was devoid of most of its furniture. Where were the old highboy and the inlaid chessboard table? Curiouser still, where were the bed hangings and window drapes? On the bed, in place of the heavily embroidered counterpane, were fur throws.

At first, Leona thought the room empty; then, a tangled mat of drab brown hair lifted from one of the fur throws. The hair belonged to a young girl, a young girl praying with every fiber of her being. Her skin was sallow and, where lashes brushed her cheeks, dark circles ringed her eyes.

Interesting—the eyelashes were as fair as were the eyebrows that framed her eyes.

They did not match the drab brown hair for they were red-gold.

The child’s lips moved in a silent “amen.” She straightened, one finger swiping a stray tear from her cheek.

Her countenance bore the saddest expression Leona had ever seen on a human being.

It was a look of utter hopelessness and defeat that wrung Leona’s heart

Was this a mad child, a child so far gone to humanity that she must be shut away from servants or God’s minister?

The bone-chilling cold forgotten, Leona studied the small, lithe figure.

She watched the child slowly rise from her knees and approach the bedside table nearest the window.

Leona caught glimpses of red in the girl’s hair when she leaned forward to blow out the candle.

Startled, Leona realized the child’s hair was dyed—and poorly at that.

Without a second thought, Leona rapped on the window.

The child looked up. There was no immediate fear in her expression. Instead, curiously, there was hope.

It was the sudden shift from despair to hope that decided Leona. The child was a prisoner—but not because she was mad. And if she wasn’t mad, what was she?

Leona beckoned to the child, smiling as warmly as her stiff features would allow.

She pantomimed the child opening the window.

She was halfway through her dumb show when the child rushed forward to work the stiff latch.

Furtively she glanced toward the door before pushing the window open.

Without waiting for Leona to come in, she ran back toward the candlestick to blow out the candle.

The room went dark just as Leona’s leg settled over the windowsill.

“What?!” Her jacket caught on a splinter in the casement. In the dark, she ripped it free.

“Sh-shh! Oh, please, sh-shh! The clock’s struck ten! She’ll be here at any moment! I’m supposed to be asleep!”

Leona climbed into the room, latching the window shut behind her. “They check on you at ten?”

A vigorous nod.

“And you’re supposed to be asleep?”

Again, the nod.

Leona tiptoed over to the bed. “Then in you go,” she whispered, pulling aside one of the animal pelts. Her lips pursed when she noted that the entire bed was made up of pelts. There was not a sheet on it.

The child obediently crawled up on the big bed.

Leona tucked the pelts snugly about her, her gloved hand lingering on the child’s hair where she pushed it away from her face.

A sound from the hall caught her attention.

She looked toward the door and saw a sliver of light coming from beneath it.

Someone was indeed coming to check on this sad-eyed waif.

Leona dropped to the floor and slithered underneath the bed.

Dust boles attacked her nose, sending tickling shivers into her head.

She fought the urge to sneeze as she scrambled deeper underneath toward the darker shadows at the head of the bed.

She clamped a hand over her nose, pressing hard to stifle the incipient sneeze.

Her eyes watered with the effort. Then she heard the scraping sound of a key in a lock, and the door swung open with a grating squeal.

Leona watched dark skirts swish across the room toward the bed.

The skirts stopped not three feet from her face.

She could have reached out and touched them.

The figure stood silently for a long moment.

Leona felt the resurgence of tickling in her nose and pressed harder, her face screwing up in her effort to thwart the sneeze.

Finally, the figure turned and left the room, squealing the door closed and turning the key in the lock.

The room was still. Mentally Leona reached the count of fifty-eight when she heard rustling above her.

A curtain of dark hair tumbled over the edge of the bed followed by a childishly round-shaped face.

“She’s gone. You can come out now,” the child whispered, then pulled her head up to be quickly replaced by bare feet.

Leona slowly released the hard pressure on her nose and deeply inhaled as she crawled out from under the bed.

The waiting sneeze exploded from her, throwing her head hard against the bed frame.

Bright colors swam in Leona’s head, and her eyes teared.

She reached up to tenderly touch the top of her head as if to protect it from further mishap as she dragged the rest of her body out from beneath the bed.

The child stood by the fireplace where dying embers glowed.

She was coaxing a punk to burn. Carefully she carried it to the candle, lighting the sputtering wick.

She shook the punk out, then conscientiously touched the end to see that all sparks were out, her tongue caught carefully between her teeth, the tip curving up to touch her upper lip. It was an endearing gesture.

Leona led her back to the bed and tucked the pelts around her for warmth.

“Now,” Leona said, sitting at the end of the bed facing the child, “I suppose I had best introduce myself. My name is Leona Leonard. And yours is?—?”

“Chrissy—I mean, Lady Christiana Deveraux, daughter of the sixth Earl of Nevin,” she amended, drawing herself up straight and proud.

Leona repressed a smile at the child’s unconscious formality.

That formality also lent credence to the child’s words.

Leona was sure that no child, unless she were of the aristocracy, would automatically assume such an attitude.

“I’m delighted to meet you, Lady Christiana, even if it is under somewhat unusual circumstances. ”

“Please, call me Chrissy.” The child blushed and looked down, nervously twisting her fingers together. “They always called me Lady Christiana,” she explained with unconcealed dislike.

“I see.” Leona paused, searching for ways to discern the truth. “The Norths say you’re one of their relatives . . .” she began slowly.