PROLOGUE Painswick, The Cotswolds, England, April, 1817 Vicar Clive Pomfret remembered the smell of blood in the Sunnyledge tower that night . . . He had gagged as he descended the dank stone stairs to inform Edward St. Yves, Earl of Barrington, of his wife's passing. At the salon door, Clive stopped at the sight of his sister, Thea, kneeling before the Earl. Thea--a Vicar's sister, a devil's mistress--displacing a wife about to give birth, shaming her brother before his flock. "Poor Clive," Thea drawled, her smile spiteful. "Papa always said you had a mean scowl." "He said you would be a whore, and he was right." The Earl cursed with impatience. "What about my heir?" "Your wife is dead." Barrington shrugged. "See to the burial. The child?" Clive fisted his hands. "Twin boys." Barrington grinned, and Clive knew that the devil would raise those boys to be just like him. "Both dead," Clive said, the justice of his pronouncement confirmed by Barrington's vulgar oath. Upon returning to the tower, Clive ordered a maid, big with child, to follow him. He could not save his sister's soul, but he would save those boys, body and soul, and if Barrington suffered in the saving, so much the better. To the maid, Clive presented the languid twin, with eyes as dull as a gray English sky. To the midwife, he gave the boy suckling a fist, his eyes as bright as hellfire--devil's eyes. Clive fixed the serving women with his gaze. "Name and raise the boy you hold as your own. Tell them nothing of their roots or of the other's existence. If you leave Sunnyledge tonight, and go your separate ways, there will be a fat purse for each of you now, and another yearly until they are grown." The maid's eyes had widened at the mention of money. "It is the will of God," Clive intoned, calling upon a righteous Vicar's fire," that the events of this night remain forever sealed. His wrath upon you and yours for eternity should you reveal them!" * * * "Thea? Thea?" Thea heard her brother call as if from afar, tearing her from his deathbed revelation, and her first shocking glimpse of the thirty-year-old scene. Edward's sons had lived! She remembered a babe's cry that night--an omen, she thought, that the Barrington line must continue through her. But Edward had never married her. "Right my wrong," Clive begged, now, with hellfire so near, it singed his brows. "Tell them who they are." "No one will believe their father's whore, Clive." "I have proof," he said, fighting for every breath. Thea rose so fast, she knocked over a ewer of water, grasped his suddenly-sodden shoulders and shook him. "Where? damn you." At the shock of cold water, he began to cough. "Book." He coughed up blood. "Cask--" Thea stepped from his entreaty and watched, unaffected, as he gasped, gurgled, and slumped over . . . finally. "If you do not go straight to hell," she said, turning to rifle through his desk, "then the place does not exist." She found their names and directions, and there beside her brother's dead body, Thea Pomfret wrote identical, anonymous notes to Reed Gilbride, Essex, England, and William Somers, Beaupre, France. April 4, 1817. You are the missing St. Yves, Earl of Barrington, heir to Sunnyledge. See Everard Sennett, Executor, Gloucester, England. Beware there is one who would steal your heritage.
CHAPTER ONE Gloucester, England, May 1817 "Are you stealing those children?" Caught beside a second-story workhouse window, Chastity Somers swallowed her scream and gathered the little ones close. The moonless night, perfect for her scheme, became her foe. She could discern nothing, no one, save darkness in the alley below. The owner of the deep, disembodied voice seemed to linger, but she dare not. She must get her new and unexpected brood to safety, or fail her husband's young cousins the way she had failed William, himself. With no choice but to brazen it out, Chastity nodded her hood further forward and readied her best English accent. "Do not be ridiculous. You cannot steal what is already yours." The intruder made no reply, so she lifted the last of the four children out the window and shut the sash. "Kitty?" Luke's version of her name echoed loud and alarming as he tugged her sleeve. "You are stealing us." "Hush, Luke." "It's all right, sir," Matthew called down. "We wanted stealing." Galvanized by the boy's defense, Chastity shook herself. "Mark, take Bekah's hand. Stay by the window, all of you, and hold the sill." They would not be taken away from her, again, Chastity vowed as she lowered herself from the attached shed's eaves and dropped the remaining distance to land on her bottom in the dirt. Amid a discord of giggles, a hand grasped her upper arm, racing Chastity's heart, trapping her scream inside her throat, but her captor must have sensed her fear, for he gentled her, somehow, with the very touch that alarmed her in the first place. His nearness, his very scent--horse, leather, and man--put her in mind of . . . rescue and . . . sanctuary, as William had once done, except that her sense of well-being was stronger now than it had ever been with . . . Chastity shook off her foolishness. "I did not hear your horse approach," she said, seeking the ordinary in an extraordinary situation. "I call him Stealth," the man said, sounding every bit as safe as she hoped. "He served me well at Waterloo." Relieved by her growing fancy that the military man meant them no harm, Chastity allowed him to help her stand. She should be afraid, she supposed. He had fought her people at Waterloo, but her sheltered convent background, which was hardly conducive to a judicious caution, had taught her that they were all God’s children. Equal. Besides, she sensed a hint of the trustworthy even in the tone of his voice. "The children are not afraid of you," he said, reflecting her wonder over her own lack of fear. "Of course they are not. How do you know?" "Frightened children rarely laugh." Neither lonely ones, Chastity remembered from her own childhood, hoping she was employing the same, faultless instincts as the children, where this man was concerned. Reassured, but unnerved all the same, by his hand on her arm, Chastity nevertheless regretted the loss of human contact when he released her. But she had no time to regard it, for Bekah's cough urged their removal from this unhealthy place, and fast, lest the children be incarcerated again. Even if the man was a threat, Chastity thought, she would bargain with the devil to keep her little ones safe. "I have to get the children down," she said. "Thank you for your help, but we can manage on our own." The devil had the impertinence to laugh. "Be quiet," Chastity hissed. "You must be a few tuppence short a quid," said he, "and will get exactly what you deserve for this night's work. Children are nothing but trouble." "Children are gifts from above." "Hah! Vengeance, more like." Chastity perceived some vexation in the man, but no real threat. For all his curious notions, he seemed of a mind to let her and the children go. "We shall be fine. Truly. Thank you for stopping, but you may be on your way without further concern for our welfare." "'Tis not concern detains me, but astonishment. Why would anyone seek the encumbrance of children?" Shaking her head, Chastity turned toward the four waiting atop the workhouse shed. "All the world and his wife would step over a dead body in the middle of St. James's," she snapped. "But I do something the least . . . uncommon, and am observed by someone who investigates. Matthew, lower Bekah to me." Chastity hugged the littlest close as she received her. "Good. Now Mark, then Luke." "Kitty, I'm hungry," Luke said as she set him on his feet. "I know, darling. Hush, now." Deep within the bleak bowels of the parish workhouse, a bell began to toll. "Jump, Matt," Chastity ordered, thrusting Luke into the stranger's arms. "You'll have to help," she said, scooping Bekah into her own. "Hurry." Reed Gilbride heard, rather than saw, the woman hasten away, her stolen brood hard at her heels. Then he realized that if he failed to follow, he would be stuck with the urchin dangling before him. "Damn." Reed slung the lad under his arm like a sack of grain and gave chase, Stealth trotting behind. Despite being carted off by a stranger, the lad's giggles over his tumbling ride testified to the rare joy in his short life. Reed had to give the woman credit, pluck to the backbone, she was. Either that or daft, he thought, as he followed her through noisome village by-ways, dodging running steps and reeling vagrants, all the while wondering why he got involved. He had reached Sennett's office hours early, and gazed about, thinking to find a light at an inn, when in the alley across the way, a cloaked form in the window, silhouetted against the dim interior of the workhouse, caught his attention. A matron of the asylum, he thought, until he noticed the children's profiles atop the attached shed roof. A curious sight, yes, but he should never have intruded. What cared he for a flock of raggle-taggle street brats or their provoking protector? The bell from the workhouse faded in the distance, and when the woman slowed, Reed set the lad in her path. "Here, you snatched him, you take him. I'll not be left to foster somebody's brat. I've had enough of children to last forever." "You need to have that ice chipped away." Birds called their first good mornings. Too bad it was still an hour or more till full light, Reed thought, for he conceived an urge to see her face, discern her age and examine her features. Her words and manner contradicted his impression of her as a matron of any kind. "What did you say?" "The ice around your heart; you should have it removed." If he owned a heart, her honey-warm voice might complete the task on its own, Reed mused, before stifling the maggoty notion. "What the devil are you about?" "Watch your language around the children. We were running because . . . because of a--" "Fire?" To his surprise, she laughed, the sound a balm to his senses. "I was rescuing them." He damn near laughed, himself. "What a whisker." "Oh, no, not at all. Telling falsehoods would set a bad example." "And stealing children would not?" He winced at her gasp. "Pardon my lack of faith in your mothering," he added by way of reparation. "Kitty ain't our mother." "Hush, Luke." She ran a hand through the rag-mannered lad's hair and brought him close for a quick hug--not the action Reed expected of a reprimand. Even if he managed to peel away her hood, as he itched to do, dawn was still too far away to make a glimpse worthwhile. Yet something about her, with her odd accent, and odder notions, called to him, which he liked not a whit. "Where are you bound?" he asked. "What difference does that make?" "None, make no mistake, but it will matter to someone before long. You have money, of course." She hesitated a fraction too long. "Of course." Reed shook his head. "Of course not!" He took her hand and slapped a guinea into it. "Feed them. If you scuttle down back alleys, you'll get pinched, but if you stroll hand in hand, as if you haven't a care in the world, no one will notice you." They would not come looking, Chastity knew. Fewer mouths to feed would trouble no one, not in that hellhole. "Why should I take your advice, and why would you give a perfect stranger money?" "Perfect, no. Daft, more like, stealing children in the middle of the night. Damned if I know why I bother, or you should listen, except that you seem to care about them." "While you care about nothing." "I care if I get tossed into Newgate with you. Nevertheless, if you can keep from getting pinched, I think you might do right by the brats. Good-bye," he said, "and good luck." Reed saluted, grabbed Stealth's reins, and walked away. "Come along, children," he heard the daft woman say. That their footsteps kept time with his, Reed found alarming. He stopped. They stopped. Shaking his head, he turned. "Are you following me?" "Of course not." "Yes we are, Kitty." "Hush, Luke. Which way are you going?" she asked. "Toward Eastgate or the Island?" "Which way are you going?" he countered. "Eastgate." "Ah, well then, I am going toward The Island." In truth--as directed in his odd, anonymous note--he was returning to see Mr. Sennett, the solicitor whose office sat diagonally across from the workhouse. "Good day to you." "God go with you," the woman said, "whoever you are." Reed stopped and turned with a laugh. "Sorry, Kitten, God and I do not keep company." | 
