Her no-nonsense, very-adult tone made him smile. “Come in, Miss Meekins.” He stepped back so she might enter the building. She crossed the threshold as regally as a queen and walked directly up to Luke, who was easily a full foot taller than she.
Betsey offered her hand, which Luke took, a vaguely amused expression replacing his scowl. “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss Meekins. What is the message?”
She glanced over her shoulder at Alastair. “They didn’t say anything about having an audience, my lord.”
“I assure you Lord Wolfred is trustworthy, and he can be privy to anything you wish to tell me.”
She shrugged as she turned back to him. “So long as you’ll take responsibility for him. I’m to tell you that a Miss Claire Brooks from America is in the infirmary and will speak only to you.”
Color leached from Luke’s lean cheeks. “Claire Brooks. Are you certain?”
The girl nodded. “I’m never uncertain, sir.”
Alastair would have chuckled at her youthful arrogance were it not for the expression on his friend’s face. Luke looked as though he’d seen a ghost.
“Tell the acting director, Ashford, I’ll be there shortly.” Luke took a coin from his pocket and handed it to the girl. “Run along now. There’s a good girl.”
Betsey curtsied to them both and quickly took her leave. Alastair waited until the door had shut and she would have to be out of earshot before he asked, “Now it’s my turn to ask whether or not you are fine.”
Luke chuckled with little humor. “I don’t think so, my friend. Not at all. I’m off to the Wardens, and you are coming with me.”
“Good lord, man. What the Lon. Whatdevil for?” Luke had never asked for him to accompany him anywhere that he could remember.
“So you can plead my case to Arden when my past bites me on the arse.”
Understanding dawned. “So Claire Brooks . . . ?” Alastair raised his brow suggestively.
His friend rubbed a hand over his brow. “Is a Company agent. And my former lover.”
Chapter 2
If she could lure the guard to her bedside, Claire might be able to overpower him long enough to use his own weapon against him. Unfortunately, she was wearing nothing but a flimsy chemise, and her injuries would make escape a slow and arduous task.
“You wouldn’t make it out of the ward, let alone the building.”
She looked up. Dr. Stone stood above her. She hadn’t even noticed the woman approach. Either she was still foggy from the opiates she’d been given or she was losing her focus. Neither was acceptable. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“No, of course not.” It might have been her imagination, but Claire thought the other woman rolled her eyes. “I need to check your wounds.”
“Aren’t you afraid I’ll try to overpower you?”
Wooden legs scraped the floor as Dr. Stone pulled a chair to her bedside. “Are you afraid I’ll give you enough laudanum to ensure you never wake up?”
“No,” she scoffed. “That wouldn’t be in your best interest.” She was useful to the Wardens. She just had to make certain she remained so until she’d recovered enough to make an attempt at freedom.
“And trying to escape wouldn’t be in yours.” The doctor hitched her dark brown trousers and sat down. “I’m going to lift your gown. Let me know if anything hurts.”
She already hurt—all over. The carriage might have broken her fall, but she felt as though it had broken a few bones at the same time. Claire gritted her teeth in anticipation of the pain to come. “Go ahead.”
Dr. Stone lifted the gown and peeled back the bloodstained muslin over Claire’s side. Claire sucked in a breath as the fabric pulled at her skin, her dried blood acting as a kind of glue.
“Care to dump some salt on it while you’re at it?” she demanded. “Maybe poke it with a stick?”
“You’re very lucky,” the doctor said. “The shot missed anything vital; elsewise you’d really have something to whine about.”
Whining? The woman accused her of whining when she’d just been shot and fallen off a roof. Claire gave her a grim look. “So lucky I ended up in Warden custody and your charming care.”
The darker woman shot her a surprised glance. Then her lips twitched. “Better than dead.”
“That depends on your view of the world.”
Dr. Stone’s dark gaze went back to heze=r work as she applied salve to Claire’s side. “Dead is dead, Miss Brooks. Anything else means there’s still hope.”
“And what exactly do you think I should have hope for?”
Clean bandages were smoothed over her ravaged flesh by gentle hands. “That the Earl of Huntley is inclined to plead your case.”
Claire shrugged. The movement pulled at her stitches and made her wince. “Either he will or he won’t.” Inside, she wasn’t nearly so disinterested. If Luke couldn’t do anything for her, she would have to try to escape on her own. The longer she was held in Warden custody, the farther ahead of her Howard would get, and she wasn’t going to give him much of a chase in her current condition. “What do you care?”
The doctor stood. “I believe in the sanctity of life. Occupational hazard, I suppose. Get some rest. They’ll be moving you to a cell as soon as you’re ready. You’ll be more comfortable there.”
Her brows rose. “I doubt that.”
“Suit yourself. I’ll check on you later. Rest now.”
Claire closed her eyes, but sleep eluded her. Her mind insisted on worrying, working over every detail of her pursuit of Howard. How could she have been so stupid as to let him get away? It was the mistake of a green agent, which she was not. She’d been with the Company since she was fifteen. Thirteen years of experience should have at least kept her out of Warden hands. Instead, she’d allowed her emotions to rule her and got herself not only shot, but captured.
Robert would be rolling in his grave right now—if he had one. She had his pocket watch and that was it. Even his signet ring, the one that had belonged to their father and grandfather, had been lost to the explosion that claimed her brother’s life.
She was completely alone in the world, and it was all Stanton Howard’s fault.
Tears threatened to slip from beneath her lashes, but she refused to let them go. She would cry for Robert once she had avenged him, and not a moment before. It was senseless, she knew, but if she cried now, she feared she might lose her memories of him, along with the rage that drove her. Grief was all she had, and she would not give it up. Not yet.
So she forced herself to think of happy times, of years long ago when her mother and father were still alive, and the four of them had been a family. Occasionally they’d been a happy one when she was a child, before her father began to drink more and more often, lost his job and became a mean, self-loathing creature. She thought of Christmases spent together, of birthdays, town picnics and dances when she got to wear her finest dress and hope that John Taylor would finally notice that she was no longer a little girl.
Sleep must have come for her after all, for when she heard the male voices above her, she opened her eyes to find her vision blurry and her head foggy. Her hand immediately went for her aether pistol, only to find nothing. Right. She was a prisoner. John Taylor had married Althea Bowers, and Robert was dead.
“Claire.”
Her heart rate slowed. She knew that voice. She’d heard it in her ear many a night. Her gaze lifted and locked with one of purest bath of purlue ice. “Five.”
He winced at the name, and Claire cursed herself for using it. But that was how she knew him. She hadn’t known he was an earl when she shared her bed with him. She hadn’t known he was a married man with a wife waiting for him at home.