The Virgin Who Ruined Lord Gray - Anna Bradley Page 0,3

lightly down onto the top step, and tugged her dark cap down over her face.

She’d been following this man for several weeks now, and knew far more about him than she ever cared to know about any man—which public houses he frequented, which Covent Garden prostitutes he preferred—all to no purpose.

But Sophia had been patient, knowing he’d return to the scene of his crime eventually.

They always did.

* * * *

The corpse had moved.

That is, the boy—he was very much alive, as it happened—was of an acrobatic turn. He’d rolled across the roof with the ease of a billiards ball across the baize, and now he hung over the edge of the pediment, his legs braced on the roof while his torso hung suspended in midair.

He might yet end up a corpse. An unexpected twitch of a muscle or a sudden breeze and he’d topple over the side like overripe fruit from a tree. Tristan might have put a stop to the business right then—thief or not, he didn’t care to see the boy plunge to his death—but before he could stir, Lord Everly’s door opened and a man emerged.

He closed the door behind him, snuffing out the faint light coming from the townhouse, but Tristan got enough of a glimpse of him to determine it wasn’t Everly. He was much smaller than his lordship, who was thick and squat, more spherical than otherwise. Tristan couldn’t see the man’s face, and given the number of people who went in and out of Everly’s townhouse on a given day, he didn’t bother to hazard a guess as to his identity.

The man paused to raise the pipe between his fingers to his lips, and then he was off down the street, his gait cocky. Too cocky, the fool. He hadn’t the least idea he was being watched.

Tristan didn’t bother to note his direction. His gaze darted back to the boy, who’d turned his head to follow the man’s progress. He hadn’t moved, but Tristan sensed a sudden tension in that slight frame, the taut stillness of a predator in the seconds before it burst into movement.

What were thieves, if not predators?

The familiar, restless energy Tristan had given up as lost was now rioting in his veins. A few minutes passed, then a few more, and then…quickly, but as cool as you please, the boy was on his feet and over the side of the pediment.

Tristan’s muscles tensed instinctively, as if preparing to catch the boy midfall, but he needn’t have worried. The lad made quick work of the column, scampering down like a monkey. In the next breath he’d dropped onto the street and was gliding after his prey, dark and silent as a shadow.

Not a phantom, then, and not a figment. Not a corpse, and not a thief. Oddly, it was this last that surprised Tristan the most, but it didn’t appear as if the boy had been there to steal.

At least, not from Everly. He might intend to pick the pocket of the man he’d followed, but there were plenty of pockets in London ripe for the picking, none of which required a rooftop adventure.

Why would this boy risk his neck for the privilege of picking the pocket of a man who, though small, was several heads taller than he was, and outweighed him by at least two stone? Tristan hadn’t the vaguest idea what the boy thought he’d do when he caught up to his victim, but he’d find out soon enough.

He was still wearing his boots, and didn’t bother with his greatcoat.

Ten seconds later he was on the street in front of his townhouse. By then there was no sign of the boy, but he couldn’t have gotten that far ahead. Damned if the little imp hadn’t perfected the art of disappearing, though, just like a proper phantom.

But phantom or not, in the end it wouldn’t matter.

Tristan could cross from one end of the city to the other as easily as strolling from his library to his study. He knew every road, every hidden alcove, and every filthy back alley in London.

The boy was clever and quick, but Tristan would catch him.

* * * *

He was going to make a fatal mistake tonight. Tonight, after tedious weeks of chasing this villain all over London, Sophia was going to catch him out at last.

She could smell it, feel it, as if it were a scent in the air, or the glide of a fingertip across her skin. She no longer