Chapter 2
The two intruders looked suitably terrified. Stephen decided not to make any sudden movements, lest they drop dead from fright.
Well, the younger of the two—the bespectacled girl—might well drop dead from fright.
Not so much the older. She met his gaze with a fierceness he suspected she did not intend.
Tall for a woman, pretty, with rich red-gold hair and large brown eyes, she was the sort of woman he might once have approached in a ballroom.
That was then, of course, and this was now. In their current predicament, the women were trespassing, at the very least.
“Robbing?” the older woman managed to squeak.
She straightened her spine, squaring her narrow shoulders. She seemed to be dragging herself to her full height.
With an ordinary-sized fellow, that might have been impressive, since she was surely only one or two inches shy of six feet tall. For Stephen, however, it was merely amusing.
“Yes, robbing,” he responded coolly. “What else would you call it? I heard a disturbance, wandered back here, and what do I find? That you have smashed the lock off the window and crawled inside, and are now going through my possessions.”
“I did not smash the lock!” the bespectacled girl cried. “It was already mostly broken. It only required a little shove to open.”
“Marjory!” hissed the woman. “Pay her no mind, sir. We truly did not intend to trespass. The truth is rather ridiculous, but here it is. My sister accidentally dropped a notebook through the window. She was peering, rather nosily, and I daresay this serves her right for her curiosity. I climbed in to retrieve it, and the dust made me cough, and she thought I was choking…” She was babbling.
Stephen held up a hand to forestall any further chatter and took one step forward.
The color drained from her face. She flinched, as though wanting to step back, but did not allow herself to do so.
Clever, he thought, slightly pleased for some reason. Never back away. It displays weakness. A hard lesson to learn.
“So, where is the notebook in question?” he asked, meeting the woman’s gaze and holding it.
He noticed her eyes were curious. They were brown, a fairly ordinary color, but there was a translucency to them that made them appear amber, even gold, in certain lighting. He tilted his head and took a step forward to appreciate them better, and this time the woman leaned back warily.
“Forgive me,” he responded, leaning back. “Guests are a rarity.”
“Well, which are we? Guests, or robbers?”
He hadn’t expected that retort and let out a short laugh.
“You might be both. The notebook, then. Where is it?”
“We were searching. I believe it has slipped underneath something. The only place I have not searched is around that chest of drawers,” the woman responded, lifting her chin.
She watched him carefully, like a deer at the water’s edge might regard a wolf.
“Well then, by all means,” Stephen murmured, gesturing. “It seems that this notebook is the crux of your story. We shall use it to confirm whether you are telling the truth.”
The woman swallowed hard. Glancing briefly over her shoulder, a flicker of understanding passed between them.
They are sisters.
That would explain the woman’s protectiveness toward the girl. He thought the gap between them had to be wider than between most siblings. The woman appeared to be a little over twenty, while the girl was no older than fifteen.
He watched both women carefully. If this was some sort of scheme—and women were often underestimated when it came to criminal endeavors—then they would likely have an escape plan in mind.
Perhaps the younger one would dive out of the window, and the older would try something silly, such as tackling him and trying to drive him out of the room.
If that was indeed their plan, he hoped they had abandoned it. The woman was tall and not weak-looking, but she had no hope of wrestling him out of the way.
“What is your name, then?” he asked as the woman scrabbled around the chest of drawers, peering underneath and squinting through the dust.
She didn’t answer, and he let out a huff of amusement.
“Come, my dear, you are hardly in a position to ignore my questions. I could summon the constables at once and have you both thrown into gaol.”
The woman stiffened, sitting back on her heels. She fixed him with a surprisingly direct look. “And are you going to do that?”
“No,” he answered, honestly enough. “I do not think I am.”
To his surprise, the bespectacled girl—Marjory, her sister had called her—stepped forward, clearing her throat.
“Are you him?” she whispered, equal parts horrified and entranced.
Her sister went back to searching for the notebook, patting the ground with increasing panic.
Stephen frowned. “Who?”
“You know. Him. Orion.”
Now, that was unexpected.
Stephen flinched, rocking back on his heels.
“If I am,” he responded, missing a beat, “then you should know better than to ask me such a thing.”
“Found it!” the woman cried triumphantly, whipping out a battered old notebook from underneath the chest. It was covered in dust, a ball of the stuff hanging from one corner.
A rather sad-looking spider’s corpse hung amongst the dust, but the woman did not seem to care in the slightest. “Here is the notebook my sister lost. See, it was not a lie!”
“No, indeed,” he responded with amusement, stretching out his hand.
She hesitated, still down on her knees, and eyed his hand warily. After a half-second’s consideration, she seemed to come to a decision, placing her hand in his.
Excellent.
Stephen’s fingers closed around hers, hauling her to her feet, and allowing him to seize the notebook from her other hand. She yelped in alarm, trying to grab it back, but he easily held it over his head and out of her reach.
“You have a genteel accent,” he observed mildly. “And you both look like ladies, despite your out-of-season clothing, but your hands are as rough and calloused as a seamstress’s. How odd.”
“Let go of me,” she snapped. “Give me back the notebook.”
Stephen tutted and deftly flipped open the notebook. It was full of almost unintelligible scribbles, which appeared to mostly detail pieces of gossip and other stories reported in the scandal sheets. And there—aha!—was a name written on the inside cover, just as he’d suspected.
“Marjory Holt,” he read aloud. “Well, that is you, Miss Spectacles. And what is your sister’s name, then?”
“I am Amelia,” the woman snapped, jerking her hand free. “Not that it is your concern. Give me back the notebook, if you please.”
He considered teasing her for a moment longer, but that really did seem unfair. It was all well and good to tease some silk-clad beauty in a ballroom, with her parents’ watchful eyes on them, but here, with the two of them cornered in the old storeroom? No, that was unfair.
He wordlessly handed back the notebook. The woman, Amelia, snatched it and backed away.
“Well, if you’re content that we are not here to rob you,” she gabbled, trying to put on a show of strength but not quite succeeding, “and you do not intend to summon the constables to throw us in gaol, we will be leaving.”
She was nervous, palpably so.
People were usually nervous around Stephen. Wasn’t it easier to keep your distance in respectful fear than to barge straight into someone’s life with heavy opinions and loud voices?
He took another step forward. Amelia held her ground, watching him carefully. Her pupils dilated, and he heard her breath stutter in her throat. A strange reaction, not the fearful behavior he was used to seeing.
“You are him,” Marjory whispered. The girl looked more thrilled than angry or afraid.
The notebook had found its way from her sister’s hand to hers, and she lifted it, pencil poised to take a note.
“What is your name, sir? You never did say. It’s only fair,” she added, as if this might sway him. “You know our names now.”
“Was it fair for you to climb through my window and go through my things? No, I think not,” he countered.
“But you’re him, I know you are,” Marjory said. “You’re Orion. You’re the ghost.”
“A ghost? I haunt my own house now?”
“So you admit it. You are Orion.”
Amelia cleared her throat nervously. “Enough, Marjory. We’ll have a long talk about today’s events once we’re safely gone. Rest assured, sir, I will scold her thoroughly.”
“I don’t doubt it,” he agreed. “Well then, you might as well go. Your presence is thoroughly tiring me now.”
Amelia nodded tightly, unable to suppress a sigh of relief. She kept looking at him with that strange, confused expression, as if he were baffling her. Stephen folded his arms across his chest, a position he knew would accentuate the powerful muscles in his arms and shoulders.
She dropped her gaze at once, hustling her sister toward the window. Marjory climbed out with surprising grace, leaping down into the filthy alleyway just beyond.
“I would run, if I were you,” Stephen advised, as an afterthought.
Amelia paused, one leg poking delicately through the window. “What?”
He flashed her a smile. Crocodiles again. He recalled seeing them on the banks of various rivers, lined up in a shimmering row, all mud and scales. They seemed impossibly lazy until something disturbed the water.
Then they went wild, flailing and writhing with the clumsiest grace he’d ever seen, sliding into the churning water with terrifying speed. A couple of sailors had been killed by crocodiles. They were worse than sharks, in Stephen’s experience.
He doubted that Miss Amelia Holt knew anything about either crocodiles or sharks, so he contented himself with the warning smile.
“If you don’t run, Miss Holt,” he answered coolly, “I shall have to chase you.”
That did the trick. She paled properly and all but flung herself through the window, catching the hem of her dress as she went. There was a loud tearing sound, but it did not slow her progress.
He stayed where he was, the angle letting him watch her and her sister run down the alley, where they took a sharp left. The alleyways in this part of London were like a rat’s nest, a mazelike puzzle that could easily trap the unsuspecting.
So, Amelia Holt and her sister are well-versed in moving around in this world.
Miss Holt glanced back several times. Whether she could see him watching them remained to be seen, but no doubt a clever woman like her had worked it out.
She was pretty, with an excellent figure that her shapeless, old-fashioned gown could not quite hide.
If she were put in a fine silk or satin gown and paraded through Almack’s, nobody would ever guess that she was anything other than a lady.
The short, sour-faced gentlemen might dislike her for her height, but men less vertically challenged would appreciate her beauty more.
Men like me, I suppose, he thought, allowing himself a quick, wry smile.
Her hands had intrigued him. She was a seamstress, or something like it, he was sure of it. The state of a person’s hands could explain exactly who they were and how they lived, if one was ready to pay attention.
Society ladies had smooth, white hands. Governesses or lady’s maids had fairly soft hands, if they cared for them, but there was always a roughness about the palms and the knuckles. A laundrywoman’s hands were obviously red and cracked and deceptively strong.
Miss Holt’s hands were soft in places, but rough in others, as though she had only recently taken up her work. No doubt she and her family had been relatively well-off, only to fall on hard times. Holt was a common enough name, and he would have heard of another Holt amongst the ton.
They were long gone now, of course.
With a sigh, Stephen wandered over to the chest of drawers, squinting down at it. The dust was pitted with finger marks and scrapes, and a great swathe of dust had been swiped away altogether where she’d knelt down and peered underneath.
A thought occurred to him, a worrying kernel at the back of his mind. Curling a finger around the tarnished brass handle, he pulled open the topmost drawer.
There, shoved to the side of the drawer, where he’d left them last, were his boxing gloves, his old ones with the cracked leather. And on the other side of the drawer…
His thoughts trailed off, ending in wordless fury.
There was a layer of dust even inside the drawer. A circular, clear patch showed where an object had lain not too long ago. It looked as if it had been recently removed, with small finger marks on either side of the patch.
“Thieves, after all,” he muttered to himself, swallowing down an acrid surge of anger. “I should have known better.”
He strode to the window, nimbly ducking out and leaping into the alley. He took an instant to glance at the latch. Sure enough, it had not been smashed. They’d told the truth about getting in easily.
He jogged to the end of the alley and peered out. There, just at the end of the moderately wider road, he could see Miss Holt and her sister, Miss Marjory, walking close together, heads leaning toward each other.
“Discussing their successful crime, no doubt,” he muttered.
The anger was sharper than he’d expected. Robbing a storeroom like that was a foolish choice. Could they have known what they would find in his chest of drawers? It was possible. Miss Marjory already knew that he was Orion.
No, she doesn’t know it. She suspects it. That is not the same thing.
That hopeful thought did not quite stick, however. There was a sharp intelligence in Miss Marjory’s eyes that warned him that she would sniff out a story like a bloodhound on the scent.
“Looks like I will have to hunt tonight, after all,” he muttered to himself, straightening his waistcoat and tossing his hair back from his eyes. A haircut was sorely needed.
Breaking into a run, he sped toward them. Surprise was key. He could outrun the women, but these alleyways were treacherous. If he lost them, finding them again could be tricky.
Or I could ask around for a seamstress named Amelia Holt.
He made no noise as he ran, or very little. Perhaps instinct made Miss Holt turn around. Her face paled at the sight of him rushing toward her. She shouted something quick and unintelligible to her sister, and both of them broke into a run, each veering into a different alley.
Swearing, Stephen skidded to a halt. He hesitated only for the briefest of seconds before he realized what he had known all along.
Miss Holt was the one he had to pursue.
Grimly, he turned and raced down the alleyway toward her.