“I should have known better,” the man’s deep voice sliced through the silence, “than to underestimate Lady Mariana Montfort Asquith.”
He turned his head and faced her square.
The rotten plank fell from her suddenly slack hand as context hit her with the intensity of a gale force wind coming off the North Sea. Her brain refused to accept what her eyes and ears were telling her. It couldn’t be. That voice and that face, although both much altered, were long dead.
“Percy?” She had difficulty comprehending the name even as it passed her lips.
Percy was her sister’s long-deceased husband. Percy was an impetuous young man who had sped off to war and his death at the first opportunity. Percy was buried in a field in Spain. Percy was dead.
“Percy?” She repeated herself like a simpleton when the proof stood clear before her eyes: Percy was alive.
He straightened and pushed off the wall, and she stepped backward. “Captain Lord Percival Bretagne”—He performed a bow worthy of a ballroom—“at your service.”
Was that irony she detected in his tone and in his manner? When had Percy developed irony? “Youare not Percy,” she whispered.
He was Percy . . . But he wasn’t.
His eyes went hard and unreadable. It struck her that she didn’t know a thing about this man standing before her in a dark alleyway. She longed for her rotten plank of wood. She might need it.
“Follow me,” he said and added over his shoulder, “or don’t.” In a few long strides, he ducked around the corner and out of sight.
Drat. Before she could consider the foolishness of her actions, she scrambled to follow him. It was an opportunity she couldn’t afford to squander. Her gaze swept the crowded street and finally located his swift-moving back half a block ahead. He was zigzagging through the streets at such a fast clip that she had to trot to keep pace.
After several blocks and street crossings, he hooked a sharp right into a dingy and disreputable building. By the time Mariana reached the entrance, she was out of breath, and Percy was already at the top of a decrepit staircase that didn’t look fit to hold the weight of a child, much less that of a full-grown man. She glanced about the wretched pile and placed a tentative foot on the bottom step. When she looked up for confirmation from Percy, he was already gone.
It was her choice.
Well, she hadn’t much of a choice. She must follow. Her skirts hitched up to her calves, she allowed her breath to catch up with her and began her ascent, fleet feet springing up the steps in his wake. He wouldn’t get away so easily.
At last, she arrived at the very top landing and stood before a cracked door. Once she entered this room, nothing would be the same. Uncertain footsteps stuttered forward as she reached out and pushed wide the door. Three steps later, she found herself at the center of a dim, attic room the size of a garden shed.
The door clicked shut behind her, and she swiveled around to find Percy watching her, his stony expression inscrutable. She resisted the urge to reach out and touch him, to confirm the reality of his corporeal form. Instead, she clenched her hands into fists and kept them at her side.
Her eyes locked fast onto his, she spoke first. “Aren’t you supposed to be dead?”
An unreadable emotion flickered across his face, but he remained silent. It was too big a question. This conversation couldn’t be swallowed whole. It must be taken in small bites.
“What happened to your hair?” she asked, beginning anew. “It was gray when I saw you in the brothel. I truly didn’t recognize you.” It seemed a simple enough opening.
“I’m not recognizable when it suits me.” He crossed the room and poured them each a measure of amber liquid.
This man didn’t move like Percy. The Percy she remembered moved with an upright bearing, like the horses he’d so loved displaying on Rotten Row. This Percy slipped and slid like a shadow, never taking the straightforward path.
He set one glass on the tiny table below the room’s lone window and silently toasted her with the other. She reached for her glass and followed his lead, downing the whiskey in one fiery gulp. A gusty, “Oof,” escaped her.
He indicated with a flick of his wrist that she sit. She moved to the proffered chair, but stood behind it. She wasn’t ready to make herself comfortable for a civilized discussion of,And how have you been faring? It’s been a dreadfully long time since we last spoke. My, oh my, how time does fly!
That wouldn’t do.
“What happened to you?”
“Is that a general or specific inquiry?” he asked before settling back into a creaky chair.
“Either.” She glanced at the thin, silvery scar running the length of his right cheekbone. “Both.”
“The Battle of Maya.”
A seed of frustration cracked open within her. “The Battle of Maya ended eleven years ago.”
