“Sweet Jesus, what have I done?” Pip screamed. “Father, are you alive? Speak to me, please.”
Nellie shouted through her gag, stamped her feet and yanked against her bonds, but all her efforts appeared to be for naught. Pip was clearly too distraught to notice anything besides his fallen father, his weeping and keening from the other room drowning out all other sound.
“I’ll get you home, Father,” he wailed. “I won’t leave you here, I promise.”
The shuffling sounds told Nellie that Pip was dragging his father out of the apartment, leaving her and Julian alone, tied up in a burning kitchen. She fought against the cloth stuffed in her mouth, but only choking noises stuttered past her arid, aching throat. In a desperate attempt to make any sort of noise, she pulled at the table but it was too solid, the grime-encrusted legs looking like they’d never been shifted in years.
By now she knew Pip had gone, and it was futile trying to attract his attention. The oil from the lamp burned, licking at the residue of drippings and tallow left on the kitchen floor. A rivulet of fire trickled slowly across the uneven floorboards towards a pile of greasy rags and newspapers mouldering in a far corner. Even as she looked on, the lit stream reached the pile of rubbish, and seconds later a thin trail of smoke spiralled up.
Her heart thumped with growing fear. Suddenly it hit her. Her claws. She could use her claws to cut through the rope tying her hands. Why hadn’t she thought of that earlier? She set to work, but it was not as easy as she’d anticipated. Time and again, instead of rope her claws found her own flesh. After several botched attempts, her wrists were stinging and blood oozed through her fingers, but she could not afford to give up.
On the other side of the kitchen, Julian stirred and groaned. He lifted his head to peer groggily around him, stiffening when he caught sight of her. She tried to give him a reassuring countenance, but his face filled with rage. Struggling to an upright position, he started to shuffle towards her.
At that moment, the pile of rags and newspaper burst into flame. Thick smoke billowed out and swamped the kitchen in seconds. The fire roared and spat like a furious beast. Heat and noxious fumes buffeted Nellie’s face and scorched her lungs. Tamping down her fears, she concentrated on her bonds. Her claws snagged the twine once more, finally sliced through the fibres, and her hands pulled free.
At last. Within seconds she’d wrenched the reeking cloth from her mouth. Out of the acrid smoke, Julian crawled towards her. She cut through his bonds, and together they surveyed the burning kitchen. By now the fire had engulfed a dresser laden with crockery and pots. Flames leaped higher and licked at the crumbling ceiling hungrily. There were no brooms or rakes or any other means of fighting the fire, so by mute accord they turned and stumbled from the smoke.
“My God,” Julian exclaimed as they burst past the curtain into the front room. “Who did that?”
Kray’s mountainous body lay sprawled across the centre of the room. A bloody hole gaped where his face used to be, and he was very dead.
Nausea roiled in the pit of Nellie’s stomach. She stared down at the man who had mutilated her, and she could find not one scrap of pity for him. He’d died instantly, a mercy he hadn’t afforded his own victims. But there was no satisfaction in her, only a deep relief that he would never walk this earth again.
“Pip,” she said to Julian. “He returned, and when he saw his father here, confronted him about my disappearance and the death of his mother. He had a gun.”
Julian grunted. “I didn’t think he had it in him.”
“He shot his father and then Kray.” She shivered at the memory. “I think Thaddeus is still alive, as Pip took him away.”
Julian gazed down grimly at Kray’s corpse as if he regretted not being the one to mete out justice, but the roaring fire behind them left them no time to linger. They ran out and hammered on the doors of the other apartments to rouse the inhabitants. Soon a huddle of anxious people gathered out in the street while others ran to alert the fire brigade.
Julian and Nellie slipped away from the commotion and made their way to the back of the house where their horses were pawing restlessly, made uneasy by the fire. Working swiftly, Julian untied the horses, helped Nellie into her saddle, mounted his own horse, then led them down the alley and away from the house at a swift pace. Half a mile later, he reached for her reins and pulled them both to a halt.
“Wait, you’re bleeding,” he said as he manoeuvred his horse closer. Frowning, he held up her hands for inspection.
“’Tis my own clumsiness when cutting my bonds,” she said ruefully. “I haven’t fully mastered my claws yet.”
Still frowning, he tore off a strip of his shirt and bound her cuts. “My loathing for Thaddeus put you in terrible danger, Nellie. I could have easily overpowered both him and Kray if I’d only held my temper and not attacked so rashly. It is a deep flaw of mine, to charge in recklessly without due consideration.”
“Oh, but to me it is not a flaw at all. Quite the opposite.” She gazed at his dirty, smoke-streaked face. Bruises and swellings had begun to make their mark on him, but all she could see was valour and strength. “You are worth ten generations of Ormonds. Why you would want Sir Thaddeus’s acknowledgement is a mystery to me.”
He smiled a little. “I’m also a stubborn cove. It’s not recognition from Thaddeus I want, only the details surrounding my birth.”
“If he dies of his wounds, you may never get your wish.”
His smile faded. A biting breeze blew down the street, sifting the piles of refuse across the gutters. “And you, Nellie? Tonight did not exactly go according to plan. Did you still get your wish?”
Tonight something otherworldly had happened to her, something beyond the realms of rational explanation. The memory of her acting as though possessed by Pip’s dead mother brought a deathly shiver to her. She couldn’t explain her behaviour and did not even want to discuss it, so she merely replied, “I’m satisfied that Pip knew nothing about his father’s plot.”
She paused, and Julian added, “But?”
“But there are other questions unanswered.”
His expression grew withdrawn. “You wish to speak with him face to face,” he said flatly.
For the first time she became aware she was not wearing her veil. She’d not worn it while she and Julian were rousing the neighbours, nor when they’d gathered in the street. Darkness and urgency had distracted attention from her face, though she recalled a few askance looks directed her way. But she would not be deterred. She had worn that veil for the last time. She had nothing to be ashamed of, and she was tired of hiding in the shadows. It was time to step out into the daylight.
“Yes,” she said. “I’m afraid I do.”
By the time they returned to Monksbane, the moon had set, and the night was old and sour. As soon as they dismounted, Julian told Nellie to go retire.
“But your injuries need tending. I must clean them,” she insisted, though her face was pinched with fatigue.
The thought of Nellie bathing his wounds sent a shiver through his bruised and battered muscles. If only he could be sure of her feelings. But he wasn’t, and she wasn’t, and after everything that had happened this night, he had no strength left to fortify himself against her touch. “No need. I can fend for myself.”
At his rebuff she pressed her lips. “Julian…” she began uncertainly.
Silence and doubt hung between them. Tonight he’d hoped to draw Nellie away from Pip, but perhaps he’d only succeeded in bringing them closer. Melancholy settled into his aching bones. He was about to wave her away when hurried footsteps crunched on the gravel as a young boy ran up to them. Between panting breaths, he delivered his urgent message. A woman in childbirth needed medical attention immediately.