Chapter 3 #2
Isadore bit back a gasp. The man had the face of a fallen angel, a dark and terrible beauty she'd only seen in the works of the masters.
Perhaps a trick of the moonlight made him appear so.
Must be. He spoke to the coachman on the box.
Without another thought or any inkling of a plan, Isadore waited until he climbed into the coach.
She raced to the tiger's bench at the back of the carriage and crawled into the footboard below that seat.
She barely had time to draw her feet up before the conveyance lurched into motion.
If her brother-in-law found out about her impulsive attempt to save two ragged urchins from the clutches of a despicable thief, he'd have her packed off to Bedlam in a thrice.
She had no idea what had possessed her to do something so foolish.
Thoughts of Jeremy came to mind. She knew not where he was or how he fared.
If she could save these two poor waifs.. .
"Pay attention," she muttered to herself, not that she could hear her words above the noise of the horses' hooves and the carriage wheels.
Isadore raised her head enough to watch the various streets and buildings go by.
Her mother had despaired of her ability to remember everything she saw, everything she read, every conversation word for word.
Mama called her memory witchcraft and the product of too much reading in turns.
Still, she would at least be able to find her way home once she discovered where the children were kept.
They wound through the streets of Mayfair and the heart of London.
Soon, she realized they were on the notorious East Side of Town, heading in the direction of White Chapel if she was not mistaken.
The carriage slowed, and she made a note in her mind of the various street signs as they passed.
They turned onto Chick Lane and drew to a halt behind a large, rather shabby house that had the look of a former tavern of some sort.
She curled into a ball and prayed the thief and his coachman would not come to the back of the carriage.
Her luck held. The thief and the children went to a door lit by a single torch in an old iron sconce.
As the dark-haired man pushed the door open the carriage pulled forward and Isadore managed to scramble from her spot under the tiger's bench and hide behind a horse trough.
As the carriage drove away, she sidled against the back of the house and slid slowly to the door.
She slipped inside just in time to see the tail of the thief's coat turn the corner at the top of a short wooden staircase.
In for a penny... Thankful for the muffling of her steps provided by the wool mules she wore, Isadore started after the thief and his young accomplices.
She stayed close enough to follow but far enough back not to be seen or heard.
Her every instinct came to the fore as she traversed the rabbit warren into which the user of those two innocents led her.
She watched as he lifted the children over trap doors and narrow plank walkways that looked down into what appeared to be endless underground levels of this thieves' lair.
One misstep and she'd end up at the bottom of some cellar pit.
The house smelled of damp earth and old fabrics.
The corridors twisted and turned--one brightly lit with lamps, the next nearly completely dark.
Countless doors dotted the walls. Some so close together they surely only served to open into the same room.
Every now and again voices carried up from the lower levels or down from the level above her.
Long stretches of cloying silence alternated with periodic spaces behind doors that sounded as if a tavern or a gaming hell might be found if she but opened the door.
A lesser person would have become hopelessly lost or perhaps fallen victim to the various traps and tricks she watched the man in the long coat avoid with a child perched on each of his hips.
Isadore honed her mind on committing every twist, trick, and turn to memory.
Finally, after a trip up one more rickety staircase, they came to a set of double doors.
The thief kicked one of the doors open and strode inside, slamming the heavy oak slab behind him.
With a careful glance up and down the narrow hallway that ran before those double doors, Isadore pulled her pistol from the pocket of her cloak, lifted the latch of the door the thief had used and stepped inside the room.
She blinked once or twice as she took in the scene before her.
The room had the appearance of any gentleman's study in one of the finest houses in Mayfair.
From the leather and mahogany furnishings to the rich blue and gold brocade drapes to the table set with fine china and silver before the fireplace with the gorgeous pink marble mantelpiece, everything looked completely out of place in this tumble-down den of thieves.
The children sat at the table gobbling down the contents of bowls of what might be stew and tearing off bites of bread from a plate of slices piled high between them.
The dark-haired gentleman stood with his back to her and shrugged out of his coat which he hung on a hook behind a veritable ship of a desk.
Isadore thumbed back the hammer on her pistol as he turned to face her.
"What the bloody fuck?"
The moon had not lied. His was the face of an angel to be sure. The highest of heaven's fallen angels. Isadore was staring at the very visage of the Devil himself. She thumbed back the second hammer on her pistol.