Page 99 of Who Cries for the Lost

Paul Gibson was in the stone outbuilding at the base of his garden, about to begin the autopsy of the half-decomposed body of a woman lying on the stone slab before him, when he looked up to see Alexi coming down the garden path toward him. A bird was singing sweetly from someplace out of sight, the morning sun bright and warm on her glorious hair, and she cradled a suspiciously shaped bundle of rags in her arms.

“What’s this, then?” he said as she drew up just outside the open door.

He watched in wonder as her face broke into a wide smile that stole his heart all over again. “Meet Miss Amelia Cox,” she said, shifting her hold on the bundle so that he could see the babe’s blithely sleeping face.

“Lord love us,” said Gibson, setting aside his knife with a clatter as he came from behind the granite slab. “However did you find her?”

“I kept thinking about what Devlin had said, about Miles going to Seven Dials after he saw Phoebe. So I went to the Haymarket and started walking to the northeast. The churchyard of St. Anne is right there. Turns out the vicar heard her screaming her head off while he was preparing for the funeral of one of his more important parishioners, and sent his housekeeper to see what the racket was. The woman’s daughter had just lost her own babe, so she was able to nurse Amelia.”

“Are you telling me Sedgewick abandoned his own child in a graveyard?”

“Yes.”

“Who would do something like that?” Reaching out, Gibson took the babe from her arms and held her close. Miss Amelia pursed her lips and cooed. Gibson laughed, but sobered quickly. “You had a real bounder for a da, little one,” he told her. “But everything is going to be all right now—for you and your poor mother both. I promise.”

“Sometimes miracles do happen,” said Alexi softly. “If we’re willing to try hard enough.”

He looked up to meet her gaze and saw there all her worry and hope and fear and, yes, love, glazing her beautiful brown eyes with unshed tears. And he felt humbled and shamed and, oddly, strong.

“You still willing to give your box-and-mirror trick a try with me?” he asked, his voice suddenly hoarse.

She sucked in a quick breath, her lips parting, her expression wary, as if she were afraid to believe what he was saying. “You mean it? Truly?”

Balancing the babe in the crook of one arm, he reached to loop his free elbow around the back of Alexi’s neck and draw her close enough that he could press his forehead against hers. “I mean it.” And then he said it again in case she still couldn’t quite believe him.

“I mean it.”