Mina went up the stairs slowly, keeping close to one of the walls and moving as quietly as she could. She wasn’t bad at that. She was no burglar, but she was a slim woman with a light step, and one who’d spent her life in crowded houses.
Nobody was waiting for her at the top of the stairs. No hand lunged out of the dark hallway to catch her wrist; no chloroform-soaked cloth descended over her nose and mouth.
Not yet, at least.
She snuck down the hallway, passing one closed door after another. No noise came from within any of them so Mina kept going, the poker heavy in her hand.
Then there was a thump at the end of the hall, from a room whose door had been left open just a crack. From what Mina knew about the house and what she’d seen from the servants’ routine, she thought that it was MacAlasdair’s bedroom.
She stepped closer, pressing herself against the wall.
“…anything in there?”
It was a male voice, and the accent was familiar. The speaker might have been any of the men she’d grown up with.
“Lot of fancy clothes,” said another similar voice. “You?”
“Nothing big enough. Couple sets of cuff links, though,” the first man added, clearly pleased by this unexpected development. “Look like gold, they do.”
“Well, don’t ’old out once we get clear of this place. ’E only cares for one thing, after all.”
Mina had heard enough.
Slowly, she put the poker down, then moved away and into the bedroom next door. Shuttered windows and dust cloths announced that nobody had slept there for some time, but the furniture still remained: a bed with a brass frame, a washstand, and most importantly for Mina’s purposes, a dark wooden desk and a chair to match.
Good thing she was a strong girl.
Even so, when she lifted the chair, she knew she’d pay for it later—and that she wouldn’t have managed it normally. Fear did wonders for the human body.
As she approached MacAlasdair’s room again, one of the men inside spoke.
“Nothing ’ere but papers. Bloody desk was the devil to open, and it’s just a lot of scrap.”
“Anything look valuable?”
“Damned if I know, Bill. Do you take me for a barrister?”
Mina set the chair down very slowly, wiped her sweating hands on her skirt, and then grasped the doorknob. The door closed very quietly so she wasn’t sure either man had noticed the click.
Then came the chair. Terror still fueling her muscles, she shoved it against the door and wedged the top under the doorknob.
“’Old up a tick, Fred,” said Bill. “Was that door closed before?”
Mina didn’t wait to hear the rest. She picked up her skirts in one hand, the poker in the other, and ran. Behind her, the doorknob rattled. Then the door itself thumped.
The chair was sturdy, but it wouldn’t hold forever, nor against all force. Mina didn’t know how strong the men in MacAlasdair’s room were. She went faster, taking the stairs down two at a time. She didn’t let herself look behind her because that wouldn’t help anything.
It had been getting dark before she went upstairs. Surely the first stars would be out by now!
At the bottom of the staircase she turned left, trying to remember her first mad flight through this house—and she did seem to be running for her life every time she came this way. She’d have to have a word with someone about that.
Another left, and then a right, and oh, there was that room again, down the hall ahead of her. She couldn’t see red light under the door this time. Maybe that was a good sign?
“Knocking” was an inadequate description for what Mina did next. She banged on the door with all her strength, rattled the doorknob as the men upstairs had done, and finally lifted her voice to shout. “MacAlasdair!”
Nothing.
“MacAlasdair!”
Had there been movement from within? She couldn’t tell. Were there footsteps in the hall behind her?
“Stephen!”
The door banged open. Stephen stood in the doorway, human, alert—and bare-chested. “Good God, Cerberus, what—”
“Burglars. In your bedroom.” Mina spoke as quickly as she could, gasping for breath between the words. “I think Ward sent them.”
A short Gaelic oath sprang from Stephen’s lips, and he turned his blazing eyes on her. “Are you all right?”
“Fine. They never even saw me.”
“Keep behind me, then,” he said and strode out into the hall.
Mina followed, though not too closely. Two people were better than one only as long as she didn’t end up a hostage. She’d be close enough to help but not to be in danger. She was also close enough to see the play of muscles in Stephen’s back as he walked. She hadn’t intended that, but it helped her morale.
Halfway up the stairs, they could hear loud, rhythmic thumping. When they reached the hall, Mina could see the door to Stephen’s bedroom shuddering under blows from the other side. The chair was still roughly where she’d left it, but the edge under the doorknob was beginning to slip.
Stephen turned his head and flashed her a smile: wide and white, and probably terrifying to anyone who’d come up against him on a battlefield. Then, in one quick and noisy motion, he hurled the chair away from the doorknob, yanked the door open, and burst through.
Caught in the process of striking the door, Fred and Bill stumbled back away. They recovered more quickly than Mina would have liked, finding their feet and realizing that they outnumbered the new arrival. After a quick glance, they rushed Stephen, one with a knife and one with a short club.
Stephen moved like a dancing flame, ducking away from the knife and letting the club glance harmlessly off his hip. With an elbow to the face, he sent the man with the club down to the floor. Then he spun around, and his fist smashed into the knife-wielder’s jaw just as his booted foot took out the thug’s legs.
It took maybe a minute. Mina wasn’t exactly a stranger to fights, having taken George home from the pub often enough before he’d left for the sea. Still, she was now left standing, opening and closing her mouth like a carp.
Stephen straightened himself up and rubbed absently at his side. “There’s one that could bruise a bit, I’m thinking,” he said. “Not too shocked, are you?”
“No!” Mina answered, pride putting force into the half-truth.
“Good. We’ll be needing to tie these up,” said Stephen, “and ask them a few questions before we bring in the police. Best make it quick—and it’ll go quicker with the two of us.”
Twelve
Once Stephen had a moment to look at the burglars without trying to hit one or the other, they proved to be unremarkable-looking enough. One was young enough to still be spotty; one was old enough to have lost most of his hair.
Bound with several of Stephen’s cravats—Baldwin was going to have a few things to say about this entire evening—the younger burglar shifted nervously, to the extent that he could, and looked between Stephen and Mina. “What’re you gonna do now?”
“That depends on you, I should think,” Mina said. Ice clinked in her voice. In her dark dress, with her hair loosened by her run through the house, she looked like the more attractive sort of avenging angel. “You got yourselves into this situation. I’d imagine you can get yourselves out, if you can be clever.”
The man looked from her to his still-unconscious companion, chewed on his lower lip, and then sighed. “What do you want,” he asked, “and what’ll you give me for it?”
“Who hired you and why and when and where.” Stephen crouched down beside the thief. “You tell us, and perhaps you won’t be seeing the inside of Newgate any time soon.”