Another chuckle, his voice deep and low and merry. His eyes shifted from mirth to something else entirely as his gaze slid down the length of her body. “Aren’t your feet cold?”
Actually… they were. She covered one set of naked toes with the other. “What are you doing here?”
Nearby a cot squeaked, a child snorted and grumbled, and their bodies tilted toward one another, frozen on the same breath. When silence reigned once more, he shifted closer to her. Impossible that there was room to do so, but he’d found it, decimated it.
His gaze slid back up her body. “I come bearing gifts, Miss Dean.” He spoke so softly, she should not be able to hear him. She did. Each of his words caught fire along her skin, burnt deep into her bones. Funny notion… but she might be able to hear him, even if he never spoke out loud.
“What gifts?”
When he reached into the small sack he carried, she tensed, lifted her weapon, but he pulled his hand free from the bag just as quickly. Still, she kept the poker ready.
“See?” He held something out to her on his palm. “Merely a toy. An entire sack of toys. And eternal coal. For children who have little cause for joy.”
With her free hand, she took the lump of shining metal and held it up to the sparse light filtering through the open window. It was a smooth, metal doll with long braids and a child’s dress. It was finely carved, beautiful. She wished to see it in the daylight. There would be detail enough to delight the eye. She could feel the fine individual threads of carved hair with her fingertips.
“Here.” As he spoke, he covered her hand with his, swallowing the toy with the heat of their palms. She flinched. Wrong. Rule number one of being a peer’s by-blow—never let a man touch you if he’s not your husband. “Now open.” He stood so near, his breath was warm on her hair as he released her hand, and it fluttered open of its own accord.
The toy was changed. Gone the braids and child’s clothes. The tiny doll now wore a ball gown, her hair piled high upon her head. She seemed to be in the middle of a dance step.
Jane gasped.
“One for each child,” he whispered. “And something for you, too. If you’re a good girl and let me return to my task.” He winked, and he did not wait for her permission. He snapped up the toy from her palm, took his sack, and wandered off, returning to the rows of sleeping children.
Jane’s heart squeezed, as it often had in the three months she’d been here. None of these children expected gifts. Even during the long stretch of the Christmas holidays. Jane had received gifts as a child, had woken up warm in her lovely blue room on her father’s massive estate and opened a nicely wrapped doll or shawl or book as her father looked on indulgently.
The last indulgent smile she’d received from him four months ago, a handful of minutes before he’d drawn his last breath and a few weeks before her half brother, the new Duke of Morington, had told her to pack her bags. She’d been her father’s nurse for almost a decade, and with the old duke dead and the new duke’s friends unwilling to marry his bastard sister, she’d outlived her usefulness.
No. She. Had. Not. She could still brain the intruder with this fire poker.
But she couldn’t. He was no intruder. He was an angel, and she let him continue his business. He moved swiftly, carefully, between rows, tucking the children in, dropping tokens where they would not be lost. Almost done now. His bag hung limp over his shoulder, and he made for the iron stove in the corner, knelt, and emptied the bag into the coal scuttle. She heard the hard plinks all at once, like bullets in the dark silence of the dormitory. The man froze, seemed to curve in on himself. Shemuffled a chuckle with her palm, waiting for the children to wake. Surely one of them would. But no. And he flowed back into movement once more, carefully placing a small pile of the new coal into the stove. A flash of dying embers crackled, welcoming new fuel.
Jane’s heart fluttered and flew, frantic with thanks. Jameson had kept the fuel allowance the same despite the growing winter chill, an order from her uncharitable brother. And now this stranger, this intruder, this god of charity, would warm them. She could see the children’s smiles, hear their squeals of delight when they woke to find their gifts. Yes, an angel…
He turned toward her, began his long-legged journey in her direction. She wasn’t holding the fire poker up any longer. It had become a heavy, dragging weight at her side, an extension of her limp arm.
“You’re shivering,” he said when he stood toe to toe with her once more. “I have exactly what you need.” The sack lay limp across his shoulder. Surely nothing else remained in there.
“I need nothing. Thank you… for this.” What an inexplicable thing for anyone to do—breaking into a foundling hospital to weave a bit of magic for a group of lost, forgotten children. They lived in her brother’s magic, and it did them no good, possessed no substance. But this little trick, this angel’s tiny toys, the coal he’d unexpectedly heaped into the fireplace… He’d broken rules this night, broken the law, but he’d done something soul right, too. “Thank you. Forthem.”
His expression shifted. Even in the dark she could see. More like sense it, the falling away of easy flirtation in the tilt of his lips, the hardening of some resolution in the set of his jaw. “I never think of myself, you know. But perhaps… just this once…” He stepped closer, bowing over her. His hand, large and gloved, was on her chin before she knew it, and his nose brushing against her own. Then—oh!—she gasped because his lips settledon her own with the softness of winter’s first snowfall. Snow that was like the steam rising from a warm cup of mulled wine—spicy, invigorating. And over too soon.
He stepped away from her. “Thankyou, Miss Dean.” Hoarse, deep voice. It rippled a shiver through her. He reached into his sack and pressed something from it into her free hand. His lips rasping near her ear, he said, “Merry Christmas, brave beauty.” Then he turned in a flash, with a dramatic sweep of his greatcoat, and slipped out of the window more gracefully than he’d come. One leg, his torso, the other leg. Gone. Not even a parting wink for her to keep.
What the bloody hell had just happened?
An intruder who left things instead of stealing them. A kiss in the shadows. A gift. She stayed near the window for some interminable time, clutching the poker, clutching something softer, waiting for him to return, for another intruder. Simply waiting in case something else equally unbelievable occurred. But the children slept, and night wore on, and her legs gave out as sleep buzzed at the edges of her brain. Demanding. She climbed the stairs out of the dormitory and to her chilled, barren room.
She finally released the poker and lit a candle. Though her body yearned for the bed, her mind needed to know what she held, what the intruder had given her. Soft. Knit. Dark in color. Rolled into a small bundle. She held it up in the thin, flickering candlelight and let the length of fabric unroll. My. How… red. The stockings were finely made, though. They would be warm, too.
Red stockings. An outrage. Clearly. Had he simply had them lying about? Ready for anyone? Ready, specifically, forher? He did seem to know her, but she had not a clue who he could be.
A man did not give a womanstockings. She rolled them back up and hid them away in the back of a drawer. She’d thought him a miraculous benefactor.
More likely, he was mad. A rogue at the very least.
She climbed into her cold, narrow bed. Alone and discarded, she was like her charges now. An orphan. She possessed no power of any significance, no influence. But she knew how to survive, and she’d teach her charges how to do so as well: Follow the rules society set in stone.
One, know your place in the world—titled transcendents with the power of glamours ruled society, laboring alchemists with power over metals built society, sly potion mistresses with power over plants hovered on the fringes, and no ones, like Jane, with no talent whatsoever, simply did not matter. Pawns to be moved, they could not move themselves.
