her salmon ball gown and a white and gold short cape tied close at her throat.
Apparently one couldn’t tell just by looking if a woman had learned one’s deepest secret.
Margaret climbed into the carriage and the driver touched the horses with his whip. The convenience rumbled off, but because of the nature of London’s narrow streets, Godric could easily keep up. Jogging behind the carriage, staying in the shadows, he was mostly hidden from others on foot.
Well, except for the night-soil man, who gave a strangled shout and dropped one of his odiferous buckets.
Godric winced as he ran by.
He breathed a sigh of relief when the driver finally pulled the horses to a stop outside Saint House. He should run around back. Be sure to be in his study when she came inside—assuming she went looking for him.
Something made him pause, watching the carriage, waiting like a lovesick schoolboy for the sight of his wife again. The footman descended the carriage and placed the step, opening the door for Margaret. But instead of her emerging, the footman leaned forward as if to catch murmured words from inside. He stepped back and called something to the driver, and then he was remounting the carriage.
Damn it! What was she about?
He watched helplessly as the driver turned the carriage around and rolled away from Saint House.
Godric cursed under his breath and followed, glad now that he was in his Ghost costume. If she were going to meet a lover …
His chest squeezed at the thought. He might be a dog in a manger, as she’d accused him, but he couldn’t let her go to another man. He’d kill the bastard first.
The carriage rumbled through London, heading north and a bit to the west. Toward St. Giles, in fact.
Surely she wouldn’t? Not after being accosted that first night?
God’s balls. She would. The carriage turned into St. Giles like a calf fattened for market, all but bawling its vulnerability and rich, succulent meat.
Godric drew both swords and followed.
MEGS GAZED OUT the window of her carriage. St. Giles was dark and quiet—almost peaceful-looking, though she knew that was deceptive. This was the most violent area of London.
This was where Roger had been stabbed to death two years before. He’d lain here on a cold early spring night and his life had bled away into the filthy channel in the middle of the lane, his precious life’s blood mingling with excrement and worse.
She blinked back the tears in her eyes and inhaled, opening the carriage door.
Oliver started to climb down from the footboard of the carriage, but Megs waved him back. “Stay here.”
“Best ye take him, m’lady,” Tom rumbled worriedly from the high driver’s seat.
“I … I need a moment alone. Please.”
Megs leaned back into the carriage and withdrew one of the pistols from underneath the seat. She hesitated a moment and then took out a small dagger and carefully shoved it up her sleeve. It was mostly ornamental, but it might deter a robber long enough to call Tom and Oliver.
Not that she intended to be waylaid. She wouldn’t go far from the carriage, but she’d been honest with Tom.
She needed a moment alone … with her memories of Roger.
Perhaps it was all the male stubbornness she’d dealt with tonight: Griffin and Godric and even Lord d’Arque in a way—the man had been more interested in flirting with her than wondering why she’d sought him out in the first place. She felt blocked at every turn. Nothing she’d come to London for was working out as she’d hoped.
Especially, in a way, this.
She felt farther from Roger than she ever had before—even as she walked the streets where he’d lived his last moments.
She stopped and looked up and down the empty lane. It was darker than most London streets. The St. Giles merchants and residents either couldn’t afford to light their homes, or they didn’t care to. In either case, the area was dim and shadowed, tall buildings leaning ominously overhead. The sound of something breaking and the clatter of footfalls came from … somewhere. Megs shivered and drew her short cape closer, even though it wasn’t especially cold out tonight. Sound was hard to estimate here. The buildings and small, crooked passageways seemed to echo back whispers and swallow shouts.
This place was haunted by more than Roger’s memory.
Megs turned in a circle. Her carriage was only yards away, a lighted, reassuring presence, but she felt isolated nonetheless.
Why had Roger come here that night?
He didn’t live nearby,