“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 breathstutter in her throat. A strange reaction, not the fearful behavior he was used to seeing.
“Youarehim,” 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 throughmywindow and go throughmythings? 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. YouareOrion.”
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, aposition 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.
Shewaspretty, 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. Shewasa 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.
