Dancing With Danger (Goode Girls #3) - Kerrigan Byrne Page 0,61
Mercy from her stupor better than anything else she could imagine might do. Felicity. Her guileless sister was a stranger to violence. So sweet-natured and timid was she, no one ever even entertained the notion of striking her.
They hurried by torchlight through the thousand-year-old tunnel toward the sound of water lapping at the stone docks. Voices ahead of them advertised that others had come this way in search of their boats, and what that meant for her sister, Mercy couldn’t imagine.
A strange birdlike whistle from the dark caused Raphael to tense and freeze beside her.
Veering to the left, Raphael went toward an alcove that branched off the main causeway; Mercy and the Duchesse followed quickly on his heels.
They found Gabriel sitting with his back against the stones, hood pulled low over his face, those startling, abysmal shadows swallowing the horror of his features from view.
Cradled in his massive arms, Felicity looked like a child rather than a woman of twenty.
His fingers hovered over the place above her cheekbone where a raw mark formed.
Pale lashes cast shadows over her cheeks, and Mercy made a raw sound of relief to see them tremble.
She rushed to her sister, sinking down next to the giant of a man to take her cold, limp hand. “Felicity, can you hear me?”
“She woke.” The graveled voice came from the void behind the hood. “She opened her eyes, said your name, and...and looked at me...”
A bleak note underscored his words with abject desolation.
“She faints when she’s...” Mercy cut off, realizing the man had spoken in perfect English.
“When she’s terrified,” he finished.
Raphael had mentioned before that Gabriel did not speak English. No doubt, it was a truth they hid from the world.
“I don’t have her smelling salts.” She tapped Felicity on the uninjured cheek. “Darling, can you come around? Do you hear me?”
“Some cold water from the canal, maybe?” the Duchesse suggested, tearing the hem of her dress. “I’ll soak this and put it against her neck, that might do the trick.”
A resourceful woman, the Duchesse.
Raphael loomed over them, both a comforting presence and a frightening specter of wrath splattered by the blood of his enemy.
He glared daggers down at his brother. “Why are you not being carved into by Dr. Conleith right now?”
The face in the shadow of the hood didn’t lift, but shifted away from her, answering in French. “Because, mon frere, I went to the surgeon’s table thinking of what you said when we parted. The precise words you used when you spoke of the future. Never once did you refer to us. Only to me. Then I realized, you were making the biggest mistake of your life. Sacrificing yourself for a monster like me.”
“You wouldn’t be a monster anymore, you bastard, that’s what we paid a fucking fortune to Conleith for!”
“Changing my face doesn’t change who I am. What I’ve done...”
“I wanted you to have a fucking chance!” Raphael exploded, snatching a rock from the ground and hurling it into the darkness. “And after this debacle they’ll hunt us to the ends of the earth.”
“No, they won’t.” Morley melted from the shadows as if they gave way for him.
Mercy had never been so conflicted to see someone in her entire life. On one hand, she was so utterly glad he had come.
On the other, she feared what he might do.
As usual, his chiseled face was cast in stone. Imperturbable. Inaccessible.
Only Pru seemed to be able to read him. To reach him.
“I’m prepared to say you were both lost in the fire,” Morley offered crisply. “Consider your deaths official. That is less paperwork for me, anyhow. But may God help you if you’re caught in London again, for I won’t.”
Raphael turned to him, attempting to wipe some of the blood from his cheek with his sleeve. “Why do this, when our capture would be a boon?”
“Because,” Morley’s pale gaze snapped to Mercy, and she might have read fondness beneath the censure. “Because you were right about the boots, Detective Goode, and had I listened to you earlier, so much of this might have been avoided.”
The Duchesse rejoined them, a wet cloth in her hand. She regarded the addition of the Chief Inspector with a dubious look.
Morley did little but nod, saying for her benefit, “I highly doubt the coroner will be able to determine which killed Inspector Trout. The wounds to his face or to his neck. In my opinion, he can be added to this rubbish heap of a night. I should like to avoid