his throat working convulsively.
She should have gone back to the crypt and left him alone. He was part of the world of the living, and she was all but a spirit herself now, a being that lived in shadows and forgotten memories. But he had such a kind face, and she was so starved for kindness, for human contact. Besides, he wasn’t an adult, not like her aunt and uncle and the others.
“Are y-you hurt?” It had been so long since she had used her voice that the words came out thin and cracked.
The boy’s eyes flew open, but he did not so much as move a muscle as he studied her. Then a slow, brilliant grin crept across his face.
It did something to her, that grin, warming her all the way from her empty stomach to her frozen toes. It made her feel as if someone had seen her for the first time after being invisible for her entire life.
“Be a love and help me, would you?” He gestured at his torn breeches, revealing an angry red gash that ran the length of his thigh. “It’s not much more than a scratch but damned if I can stand on it. Must have grazed the spikes scaling over the fence.”
She blinked at the exposed skin and swallowed. She’d never touched someone like him before. Once upon a time her mother must have bounced her on her knee, and her father must have playfully tugged on her braids. But since those forgotten days, the only touch Tabby knew was Alice pressed tight against her at night to keep warm, and the clammy hands of clients she was forced to hold in her aunt and uncle’s parlor.
When she realized that he was staring at her expectantly, she finally sprang into action, commandeering his neckcloth and tearing it into strips of bandaging. There was something in his smile, the easy openness of his demeanor that made Tabby absurdly eager to please him. He could have asked her to cut off her thick red hair, and she would have asked him how much he would have. Her head told her that she couldn’t trust him, not completely, but her heart wanted more than anything to earn another smile from him.
As she dabbed at the wound, the question of how he’d come by his black eye burned on the tip her tongue. As if reading her mind, he said, “Found myself a bit down on my luck after a night of cards, and without the snuff to pay my debt.” Then he cleared his throat and carefully shifted his gaze away. “There, uh, might also have been the matter of a kiss stolen from Big Jack Corden’s sister.”
Card debts! Stolen kisses! This boy—no, this young man—brought a sense of worldly danger and excitement into the cemetery with him. Tabby pressed her lips together, knowing that anything she might say would only give her away as a country bumpkin in his eyes.
Yet there was something in the way he kept clearing his throat, the downward shift of his gaze, that made her wonder if there wasn’t another explanation, something not nearly so dashing, that he wasn’t telling her. Tabby was well versed in the language of violence, and how adults visited it on the small bodies of children. She did not for one moment believe that his injuries were the result of an overprotective brother.
Tabby was silent as she wrapped the bandage around the cleaned cut, the shadowy images of the grave robbers receding in her mind as the sky continued to lighten. “Didn’t think I would meet an angel in the graveyard when I stumbled in here,” he said, giving her another grin.
Heat rushed to Tabby’s cheeks and she ducked her head, concentrating on tying off the knot. She should have been frightened of him, frightened that he might somehow know her aunt and uncle and toss her over his shoulder and deliver her back up to them, or tell the caretaker that there was a filthy girl living in the graveyard. But there was a warmth in his soft brown eyes and she felt a camaraderie with him.
“Well,” he said, inspecting her rather sloppy handiwork, “that will have to do.” He tested his weight on the leg, grunting a little as he righted himself. He cast a reluctant look at the brightening horizon and sighed. “I suppose I should be going.”
But he made no move to leave. He was gazing hard into the distance,