If You Deceive - Cole Kresley. Страница 15

Criedall night ? Had it beenthat bad? "Aye, Quin, something dire happened. She made a play to get me to marry her. One that failed."

"A play to wedyou ?" Quin gave a harsh laugh. "You've some nerve. The girl is utterly lovely. Yes, that's clearly what she wanted, as evidenced by the fact that she fled London this morning."

Ethan froze. "What did you say?"

"She's gone, couldn't get out of here fast enough."

Goddamn it!Ethan would have to kill Grey before he could go after her. "Tell me the chit's name and how to find her." He stalked around the desk, and Quin shot to his feet.

"Throw her to the wolf? I don't know why you've suddenly taken an interest in a well-bred girl, much less someone who's a friend of my sister's, but you won't get the information from me."

"She does no' get much say in the matter, no' after I relieved her of her virtue last night."

Quin's eyes widened, and he lunged at Ethan, throwing a punch. Ethan caught his fist, crushing it with his hand. "Doona fuck with me, Quin. My patience wears thin."

Quin gritted his teeth in pain. "Ethan, I know you're not a man concerned with morals. But I didn't think you'd despoil an innocent more than a decade younger than you are." When Ethan released Quin, he sank to his chair, shaking feeling back into his hand. "My God, she's ruined. I know you will never do the honorable thing, and her betrothed won't want her now. I must go offer for her at once."

"Stay away from her," Ethan grated. "She'smine ." When Quin still looked to argue, Ethan made things simple. "Marry her, and I'll kill you."

"You don't even know who she is!" Quin snapped. "And you won't marry her yourself."

"No, I will no'."

"Then why are you here? What had you planned to do with her?"

"After I've taken care of Grey, I'll bloody figure it out then. I'm going off to save your cousin's life, so you ken why there's a time element here." Ethan couldn't care less about Jane, other than the fact that his brother was in love with her to an unspeakable degree and would be devastated if she died. "The sooner I get my mind on killing, the better for everyone. So tell me the girl's name. Then we'll talk about her betrothed."

Quin got an analytical air about him, studying Ethan for a long moment. Then he flashed an expression of realization. "Little Madeleine got under your skin, didn't she? She has that way about her. I knew to be on guard, but you…you were probably blindsided." He nodded, giving Ethan a smug grin. "I'm going to give you her information because Grey must be stopped at all costs—and unfortunately, you are the best hope we have. But I'm also assisting you because in this kind of arena, you're no match for her. She'll have you not knowing up from down."

Ethan gave a humorless laugh. "That so?"

Quin met his eyes. "Ethan, I could almost feel sorry for you."

"Just tell me her bloody name."

"Very well. Her name is Madeleine Van Rowen."

Chapter Nine

Sharp pops of gunfire, screams, and the sound of breaking glass.

Maddy sighed as she finally reached La Marais.Ah, home sweet home….

Though the distance across the Channel from Dover to Calais was only twenty miles, the crossing usually proved grueling. Her return had been no exception. For the better part of a day, the small steamer—a floating tub awash in vomit and choking coal smoke—had labored against treacherous currents and boiling gales.

Then, in the third-class train car from Calais to Paris, miners and garishly dressed confidence men had leered at her—and very nearly fleeced her. For some reason, every time she rode in a train she dropped off, asleep in seconds if she didn't battle it.

Even knowing her fellow travelers would steal from her, she'd begun her familiar cycle of blinking her lids, then jerking awake, as though one of those mesmerists fromle theatre whispered in her ear, luring her down. Luckily, she'd escaped unscathed, but as usual, she was in a torpor for hours after the train, groggy and lethargic.

And after she'd completed those arduous travels, she was rewarded with…La Marais.

Her cab rolled to a jerky stop in front of her ancient tenement building. Centuries ago, this area had been the playground of kings, and her building, with its slate roof and high Gothic style, had probably been a lord's mansion in the sixteen hundreds. Yet it had since been sectioned off into cheap boarding rooms, and like the entire area, it had been ravaged by time and marked by decay.

As soon as she stepped from the cab, Maddy heard the unmistakable, heavily accented English of her two nemeses, the sisters Odette and Berthe Crenate.

"Miss High-and-Mighty Madeleine's returned," Odette called from their stoop across the street, fluffing her titian-dyed hair. "And in a cab, too. No omnibus for her."

When the driver lugged Maddy's trunk from the rear boot, Berthe added, "Careful, driver, she'll try to get you to take her trunk up—and she'sau sixieme ."

Maddy swung a glare at the sisters. They loved to ridicule her sixth-floor home. In Paris, the highest floors were reserved for the poorest—her building only went to six.

"Au sixieme?" the man asked with raised eyebrows and an outstretched palm. After Maddy paid him, he drove off without a backward glance.

Fantastic. Somehow she had to get the trunk up one hundred and two stairs. In an unlit stairwell.

"La gaminehas her work cut out for her," Odette added, snickering.

Maddy stilled, balling her hands into fists.Gamine meant "imp" or "urchin," but it also meant "street child." She loathed it when they called her that.

Just as she was about to wade into the fray, Maddy heard from behind her, "Berthe, Odette,fermez vos bouches ." Maddy turned to find her friend Corrine emerging from the dark building, descending the front steps. Corrine, a fellow expatriate Englishwoman, was like a mother to her. Years before, when Maddy had had nowhere else to go, Corrine had taken her in.

Grabbing one end of the trunk, Corrine raised her eyebrows and waved Maddy on to pick up the other. With a sigh, Maddy did, and together they wound around the harmless drunks snoozing on the stoop. Inside, they entered the tunnel-like stairwell. Maddy had climbed the rickety steps to her room in the pitch blackness so often that she didn't even have to use the rope that acted as a banister.

Once they reached her landing and dropped the trunk, Blue-Eyed Beatrix swung open her apartment door directly across from Maddy's. Whenever Bea heard the board at the stair-head groan, she hurried out, hoping either Maddy or Corrine was leaving the building and would fetch her goods from outside—any of the three Cs she lived on: coffee, croissants, and cigarettes—so she wouldn't have to make the journey down the stairs more than twice a day.

Bea was a prostitute, known in La Marais as Bea the Whore. Maddy found the name offensive; moreover, it really was useless in a definitive sense, considering that most of the females here—like Berthe and Odette—were prostitutes as well.

Maddy had begun to call her Blue-Eyed Bea because of her pretty eyes, but this had proved eerily prophetic. Maurice, the man Bea had fallen in love with, had a nasty habit of giving her black eyes—or "blue eyes" as the people in La Marais called them. She had one right now.

"How did you fare, Maddee?" Bea asked breathlessly. "Was the trip a success?"

Maddy was bedraggled, exhausted—and back here. A good wager saidno . Bea was a bit simple sometimes. "I failed. I told you both he was out of my league." She removed the key ribbon she usually wore around her neck and unlocked the door to her colorful apartment. Scuffing directly to the bed, she fell forward on it. "It was a debacle, all the way around," she muttered against her threadbare cover.