Devilish Lord, Mysterious Miss. ANNIE BURROWS
A very high-class modiste with the name ‘Madame Pichot’ picked out in gold leaf on a signboard above the door.
His heart was hammering in his chest, which was still heaving with shortened breath. What was he to do now? Barge into the shop, which probably wasn’t even open to customers yet, and demand they let him speak to the ghost he’d just seen take refuge inside? They would call for the watch, and have him locked up. In an asylum for the insane, most like.
He bent over, his hands resting on his knees as he fought to get his breath back. And make some sense of what had just happened.
Why, for God’s sake, had Cora fled from him, the very moment she had finally deigned to let him see her? And what was the significance of bringing him here?
He straightened up, staring at the shop front as though it might provide him with some answer to this unholy muddle.
‘Evening gowns a speciality’, read a card prominently displayed in the window, underneath a sample of the fabulously intricate beadwork that had become all the rage amongst the fashionable this year.
And a cold thread of foreboding slithered down his spine.
The very night after Mr Winters had declared his intention to lay Cora’s ghost to rest for good, the first night he’d had a run of such spectacularly bad hands even he could do nothing with them, he had partnered a woman wearing a dress that came from this modiste. He had laid the blame for their defeat at whist at the feet of the woman wearing the expensive gown, a French chit, who had as little grasp of the game as she had of the English language. But in his heart he had known she had nothing to do with his wins or losses.
All gamblers were superstitious, but he supposed he must be the most superstitious of the lot. Knowing Cora’s influence to be the source of his success, he had taken great pains, from the first day he had sensed her presence, to avoid offending her. He never touched strong liquor, nor did he succumb to the lures cast out by women who were fascinated by his aura of dark menace. How could he have contemplated bedding anyone, even if any woman had ever stirred him on any level, knowing that Cora hovered not far away, watching his every move? Not that she would have watched for long. Her puritanical soul would have been so shocked, she would have fled, perhaps never to return.
He had been right to take care. Cora’s love was so strong it had reached out to him from beyond the grave. But a love strong enough to cheat death was not a force to be trifled with.
Miss Winters had kissed him, her father had begun to search for lawyers cunning enough to lay her spirit in the grave for good, and Cora had turned her back on him. And getting blind drunk, and shouting curses up at Miss Winters’s windows, had not done him any favours. That slamming door was a clear enough message that even he could read it.
She had put back the barrier that existed between the living and the dead. And she was on the other side.
He ran a shaky hand over his face, feeling sick to his stomach.
He had only survived the last seven years because she had been right there with him. More real to him than all the gibbering idiots who populated the hells he frequented.
Would she come back to him, he wondered frantically, if he proclaimed the truth about her? He would not care if they declared him insane, and locked him up. He could afford to pay for a nice, cosy cell. It would almost be a relief to stop pretending his life made any sense. To stop hiding the anguish that tortured him night and day. He could just lie in the dark, and rant and curse to his heart’s content.
Mr Winters would surely abandon his ambition to have his daughter marry a peer, if that peer was a raving lunatic! And even Robbie would reap some benefit. It would appease his quest for justice, to see the man he believed had murdered his sister finally locked away.
If that was what it took to appease Cora, he decided, his jaw firming, then it would be a small price to pay!
‘You wanter cross or not, mister?’a little voice piped up, jerking him out of his darkly disturbing thoughts.
‘Cross?’
A ragged boy with a dirty broom was standing, palm outstretched, gazing up at him expectantly.
A crossing sweeper.
‘No,’ he replied. There was no point.
No point to anything, any more. He had offended Cora. Driven her away.
‘Want me to see if I can get a message to her?’ the lad persisted.
‘Message?’
‘To the red-haired piece you chased up the street.’
‘You saw her?’ Lord Matthison stared at the boy in shock. He had assumed he was the only one who had been able to see her. Especially after the way she had melted through the crowds as though she and they existed on different planes.
The boy leaned closer, and took an experimental sniff, his perplexed face creasing into a grin.
‘Clearer than you, I reckon, by the smell of your breath. Had a heavy night, have yer?’
Lord Matthison grimaced as the lad’s words sank in.
He had not taken a drink in seven years. Had been astounded by what a tolerance for gin he seemed to have, marvelling at the fact he was still on his feet. Well, he might be on his feet, but he was sure as hell not sober.
The woman was real. He had not called some spirit up out of the pit. Cora had not deliberately turned her back on him, run from him, and slammed the door in his face. He had just seen some servant girl climb up the area steps from the servants’entrance, and go about her legitimate business.
Which had nothing to do with him.
The fact that she had looked uncannily like Cora was mere coincidence. Or…had she even born that much of a resemblance to his late fiancée? He frowned. He had not been close enough to see her face clearly. It had been her build, and the way she walked, that had convinced him he was seeing a ghost.
His head began to ache.
Typical!
He was getting a hangover before he was even sober.
He pressed the heels of his hands over his eyes, digging his fingers into his scalp. There was no point in trying to make sense of any of this until he had sobered up.
‘Is this your patch?’ he asked the crossing sweeper, running his fingers through his hair.
‘Yessir!’ said the lad, rather too loudly for Lord Matthison’s liking.
‘Then find out whatever you can about the red-head,’ he said, dipping into his pocket, and flipping the lad a coin, ‘and I shall give you another of these.’
The boy’s face lit up when he saw it was a crown piece. ‘Right you are! When will you be coming back?’
‘I shall not,’he replied with a grimace of distaste. He despised men who loitered on street corners, hoping to catch a glimpse of the hapless female that was currently the object of their prurient interest.
‘You will report to my lodgings. What is your name?’
‘Grit,’ said the boy, causing Lord Matthison to look at him sharply. And then press his fingers to his throbbing temples. It was all of a piece. The boy he was employing to spy on Cora’s ghost could not possibly have a sensible name like Tom, or Jack! Everything about this night bore all the hallmarks of a nightmare.
‘I will tell my manservant, then, that if a short, dirty person answering to the name of Grit comes knocking, that he is to admit you. Or, if I am not there, to extract what information you have, and reward you with another coachwheel.’
‘And who might you be?’
‘Lord Matthison.’
He watched the light die from the boy’s eyes. Saw him swallow. Saw him try to hide his consternation. But Grit was too young to quite manage to conceal the belief he had just agreed