He blinked as if coming out of a dream state and nodded.
The other intruders, though greater in number, had fallen away from Michael’s attack. Now they were retreating with Bert and the coachman in pursuit.
Michael ignored the stragglers. He turned and tried the door to her rooms and when it didn’t open, backed a step and kicked it in.
The room was lit only by one candle. In the middle, Harry crouched over a body. Silence could hear Mary Darling crying, though, and she pushed past Michael.
“Silence!” he called behind her, but she was intent on the baby. She couldn’t see her. Where was Mary? A low whimper came from somewhere near her feet. Silence looked down and saw nothing.
Almost instinctively, she dropped to her knees and peered under the bed. Two pairs of eyes stared back at her. Lad gave a low growl, but Mary held out her arms. Sobbing.
“Oh, baby!” Silence cried.
Lad stopped growling as he recognized her voice. Silence reached under the bed and caught Mary Darling by the shoulders as the dog crawled out.
“Oh, sweetheart,” Silence murmured once she had the baby in her arms. Mary was sweaty and grimy from the dust under the bed, but she was entirely whole, entirely alive. Silence felt tears of relief flood her eyes as she buried her face in the baby’s curls.
“What a good dog you are, Lad,” she murmured wetly to the mongrel as he wagged his tail. “What a good guard dog.”
She rose and turned, smiling, only to freeze in confusion.
Michael still stood by the door, staring down at Harry and the figure on the floor. Now she saw that it was a woman—and her heart began to beat faster. “Who—?”
She stepped closer and then gasped and turned Mary’s face away. The body on the floor had no face. Or rather what had been a face was now a mass of blood and melted tissue. Silence squeezed her eyes shut. She knew who it was even before she felt Michael’s arms close around her and Mary.
“It’s Fionnula, I’m afraid,” he said into her hair. “I’m sorry, love. She’s dead.”
MICK FELT THE tremor that went through Silence’s body. He closed his eyes a moment and simply held her. The baby was bawling in his ear and he didn’t give a damn. She was alive. They both were alive and unhurt. They weren’t lying on the floor like Fionnula, her face a horrific mess. He grit his teeth at the thought and knew suddenly: this was fear. This terrible, cold hand clenching at his inner organs. This wild urge to scream at the awful thoughts running through his head.
What if—?
What if he’d delayed ten minutes longer at the opera? What if they’d thought to post an ambush by the front door? What if he’d been cut down as he’d entered? What if, at this very moment, Silence was in his hands?
Mick wanted to laugh. Doubts, worries, and fear of his mortality—those were all problems that other men had to deal with. He’d never bothered with them himself. Why should he? If he died, well, then he died. He’d led a good life—a fighting life. He’d leave no regrets behind.
But that was before. Now he had Silence to protect and worry over—and Jaysus a baby, as well. If he fell who would take his place to guard them? Who was as ruthless as he?
He looked up and his eyes met Harry’s.
Harry nodded soberly at Bert, standing in the doorway panting. “Bert says the Vicar’s men ’ave been run out o’ the ’ouse.”
“Good,” Mick said.
“What did that man d-do to her?” Silence asked, her face was still turned into his chest.
“Vitriol,” he said starkly. He didn’t have to look at Fionnula’s corpse again to see the effects.
He remembered the results of a vitriol attack well enough.
The caustic liquid was used in the production of gin and was in common enough supply in St. Giles. Vitriol burned any surface it touched except glass, and that included flesh and bone.
“Dear God,” Silence murmured. “I’d heard what vitriol could do, but this… it killed her?”
He stroked her hair. “It was quick,” he lied.
In fact Fionnula had probably suffocated as the terrible liquid ate into her nose and the tissues of her mouth and throat. Her death would’ve been agonizing.
“Poor, poor Fionnula,” Silence said. The baby had quieted into an exhausted slump against her shoulder. “Do you think Mary saw it?”
“Nah, she didn’t. Fionnula must’ve saved the babe,” Harry said somberly. He gently spread a handkerchief over the girl’s ruined face. “The baby was already under the bed wi’ Lad when I got ’ere.” He nodded to the connecting door to Michael’s room. “I came through there. Saw the Vicar’s man standing over ’er, jus’ lookin’. Then ’e turned tail and ran.”
“And why weren’t ye here afore the Vicar’s men to stop them from enterin’?” Mick asked coldly.
Harry flushed. “There were a fire in the kitchen. We went down to ’elp put it out afore it spread to the rest o’ the ’ouse.”
“A diversion,” Mick grunted.
“Aye,” Bert said. “A diversion right enough, Mick.”
Harry nodded. “The ’ole ’ouse was roused to carry the buckets. Weren’t until we ’eard a scream from above that we realized we was under attack. By that time they’d made the upper floors and ’twas ’ell to fight our way through.” He averted his eyes from Fionnula’s pathetic body as if he couldn’t stand the sight. “She were already dead by the time we made it ’ere.”
“How did the fire start?” Mick asked.
But at that moment Bran shoved past Bert in the doorway. Bran’s face was blackened, his hair straggling about his shoulders. He saw the still form on the floor and froze.
“No.”
Harry turned. “Aw, Bran—”
“No!” Bran batted aside the hand that Harry would’ve set on his arm. “No, no, no!”
He sank to his knees beside Fionnula and carefully lifted the handkerchief from her face. For a long moment he simply stared at the horror and then he abruptly jerked aside and vomited.
“She were a brave lass,” Bert said thickly, his eyes reddening. “Must’ve jus’ ’ad time to shove the babe under the bed afore they were in the rooms.”
Bran had his hands over his face and was simply rocking as if too stunned to move away from his position beside Fionnula. His reaction was stronger than Mick would’ve expected—he’d never thought the boy as in love with Fionnula as she’d been with him. Perhaps it was the shock of her terrible death.
Or perhaps Mick simply didn’t understand love.
Mick felt Silence shudder within his arms as she stifled a sob.
He stroked her hair. “A brave lass indeed. We’ll give her a proper burial, Bran, never ye fear.”
“Damn you!” Bran looked up, his face white and clear of tears. His eyes seemed to burn in the parchment of his face. “The Vicar had her killed because of your damned war, because of your damned pride! You whoreson! You should’ve killed him years ago, simply taken over his business and been done with him. But you’re too high in the instep for gin.” He spat, the glob of phlegm hitting the floor with a loud splat. “Damn you, her death is on your soul.”
Mick watched Bran throughout this tirade, not bothering to defend himself, though he did put his body between the grief-stricken boy and Silence. He glanced at Harry and nodded.
“Come on now.” Harry reached down and took Bran’s arm. “Times like these’s good for gettin’ roarin’ drunk.”
“Damn you!” Bran tried to wrench his arm from Harry’s grasp, but his heart didn’t seem to be in it anymore. The big man drew him up easily and hustled him to the door.
Mick glanced at Bert. “See that the room’s cleaned and Fionnula’s taken to the cellars until we can bury her.”
Bert nodded, his hangdog face heavy with sorrow.
Mick turned and left the room with Mary and Silence. He wanted them away from the scent of death and tragedy.
His own room hadn’t been touched. For a moment Mick narrowed his eyes, considering. The palace was a large and deliberately labyrinthine building. Finding a specific room was hard for those not initiated into its secrets. Yet the Vicar’s men had found Silence’s room very rapidly and without error, it seemed. How—?
“Why did they kill her with vitriol?” Silence whispered.
Mick looked down, his thoughts scattered. “Because o’ me.”
Her face was turned up toward his, pale and weary. She’d been fond of Fionnula. She’d be in mourning, too, along with Bran.
Her brows drew together in dazed puzzlement. “Because of you?”
He nodded. This was not the time or place, but he was all out of deceits and whiles. “A long time ago I attacked a man with vitriol. Threw it in his face.”
She recoiled. Well, and why wouldn’t she? It was a horrific act, the action of an animal. Naturally she’d be appalled.
“Why?”
He felt his own eyebrows arch in faint surprise. To question why an animal would act in an animalistic manner seemed absurd, but he humored her anyway.
“Because I wanted to kill him and the vitriol was at hand.”
She stared at him and blinked it seemed with an effort. “I’m very tired,” she said carefully, “but I know there must be more to the story than that…” She trailed off and shook her head as if too weary to go on. “I can’t ask the right questions tonight, but tell me this: Why should your attack so long ago lead to Fionnula’s death tonight?”
“Because,” he said, “the man I scarred with vitriol was Charlie Grady, the Vicar o’ Whitechapel.”
SILENCE STARED UP at Michael O’Connor, pirate, thief, admitted murderer. He’d confessed to a ghastly crime, one that led naturally to deserved retribution.
And yet…
And yet she refused to believe the worst of him—even if he believed it of himself. She knew him better now. All she saw at this moment, late at night in a dark room, was the sorrow in his eyes.
“Oh, Michael,” she said, and laid her palm against his cheek.
His black eyes flared wide in surprise and she almost laughed. Was compassion such a strange thing to him? Impulsively she stood on tiptoe and kissed him.
The heat of his mouth was a shock. She held the baby between their bodies and she’d meant only a quick, careless kiss, but somehow nothing was careless with this man.
He opened his mouth and took control of the kiss, bending over her, surrounding her and Mary in a circle of protection. He tasted of the wine they’d drunk at the opera—so long ago it seemed now—and the memory made her want to weep.
She broke away, intending to lay Mary down, to seek his arms with nothing between them, to find out what it was like to kiss him as a woman kisses a man.
But an arm wrapped around Michael’s throat and yanked him backward.
Silence opened her mouth to scream and a hand was clamped over her face.
“Hush,” Winter whispered close to her ear. “Don’t be frightened. We’re here to take you away from him.”
She stood still, her eyes wide over her brother’s hand. No! They couldn’t separate her from Michael now. She watched as Asa took the long knife from Michael’s sleeve. Michael stood unnaturally calm.
He met her panicked gaze. “Don’t let it worry ye, love. They’ll not hurt me.”
Beside her, Winter made the strangest sound—almost a growl.
Behind them, an aristocratic voice drawled from the bedroom door, “Oh, don’t be too confident of that, O’Connor. Not if you’ve harmed my sister-in-law.”
She turned her head within Winter’s grasp and saw Temperance’s new husband, Lord Caire. He was an intimidating man even under the best of circumstances—Lord Caire’s hair was stark white, long and clubbed back, and he nearly always wore black in dramatic contrast. Tonight, though, his face was as grim as Silence had ever seen it, and her chest tightened in sudden fear.