A Masquerade in the Moonlight - By Kasey Michaels Page 0,146
now. For tonight. Forever. This time it was for certain!
Later, several glorious hours later, just as a foggy dawn was creeping over the city, Donovan left her, pressing one last kiss against her forehead before tucking the covers around her chin and telling her to sleep—which he didn’t need to do, for she thought she could sleep forever. Or at least until it was dark once more and he came to her again.
Thomas felt his feet touch the flagway and let go of the drainpipe, sagging against the bricks for a few seconds as he took a deep breath of the early morning air. He was exhausted and had wanted nothing more than to curl up with Marguerite and sleep the day away.
His Marguerite. His aingeal. What a glorious woman! Each time he held her he felt her fire, was consumed by her heat, and then was born again, like the Phoenix rising from the ashes.
He smiled. All in all, it wasn’t a bad way to spend the next fifty or so years!
He located the knife where he’d left it behind a small bush, then, looking both up and down the street, he tapped his hat down more firmly on his head and began to walk, needing time to think before he met with Harewood at eight. Before he dealt with Harewood.
Thomas was not a killer, and he did not enjoy killing. But this was war—this was kill or be killed. Marco had understood immediately. Marguerite, Lord bless her and her inventive revenges, never would.
Thomas just wanted it to be over.
A closed coach passed by him in the Square, but he didn’t think about it more than to idly wonder how anyone would wish to stay out until dawn when he could be home, in bed with his loving wife.
More than an hour later, still munching on a pastry he’d bought from a hawker—he’d grown to appreciate the greasy delicacy—he turned onto the street where Harewood lived, and stopped. There was already a small carriage sitting outside Harewood’s lodgings, a rough-looking driver sitting up on the box.
Who could be visiting Harewood so early? Donovan walked slowly closer, watching as another rough looking fellow came out of the house, still talking to another man who could only be a servant.
They exchanged a few more words before the man who had to be a considerably weary night watchman mounted the coach beside the driver and drove off.
“You there,” Donovan called out quickly as the servant turned to reenter the house. “I’ve an appointment to see Sir Ralph. Is something wrong?”
The servant nodded, rubbing his hands together nervously. “Yer could say that, sir. ‘E be dead, sir, yer see.”
Thomas stood very still, his blood running cold. The man who would live forever was dead? Could he be so lucky that he would not be forced to carry Harewood’s death on his conscience? So much for the man’s coveted Shield of Invincibility. “Dead, is it? You don’t say? How?”
“Ah, it’s awful, that’s wot it is! Oi wasn’t apposed ta come back till later, but the young lady wot Oi walks out with whenever Oi has an evenin’ off—well, sir, we ‘ad us some words, and Oi ‘adn’t no other place ta go. So Oi brought m’self back ‘ere. An’ Oi found ‘im, swingin’ there, ‘is face all purple an’ all. Why ‘e did it, that’s wot Oi doesn’t ken. Seemed ‘happy enough ta me when Oi took m’self off last night.”
Thomas frowned, immediately discarding any faint notion that Harewood had been carried off by a sudden apoplexy, perhaps brought on by his delight over his supposed immortality. “Swinging there. Are you saying Sir Ralph hanged himself?”
The servant nodded furiously. “That’s ‘ow come ‘e sent us all off, or so the mort from the guardhouse said when Oi fetched ‘im ‘ere. So’s ‘e could do it all alone, with nobody botherin’ ‘im. But it’s up ta me now ta fetch ‘im down and lays ‘im out, an’ Oi gots ta tell yer, sir, Oi ain’t lookin’ forward ta it. Nary a bit!”
“If you’d like some assistance—” Donovan ventured, wanting to see Harewood’s body for himself. He remembered Harewood had hinted he might be able to assist him in removing something from his house when he arrived this morning, but Thomas was certain Harewood had not meant for him to remove a dead body. Or had he? Had the thieves fallen out to the point where an “immortal” Harewood had planned to eliminate Laleham? God! This