“In a pig’s ear!” she returned inelegantly. “Either you tell me where you found Michael Granville, or I’ve a coach to catch at five o’clock on Finsbury Square.”
“Now, see here—”
“I won’t see here! All Devon needs to hear is that Granville made a threat to me to drive him to do—some desperate thing. He’s not himself on the subject of Michael Granville. For all I know, if Devon discovered Granville had made threats on my life, Devon would gun him down like a dog. Iwon’t let that happen, Raven. Do you think I’ll stand by and see my husband hanged for killing a man like Granville? And I don’t intend to let my brother die!”
“Damnation!” he said in a low tone. “Do you have to be so hot in the spur?”
“When it comes to protecting the people I love,” she said fiercely,“yes.”
The determined set of her small chin was beginning to give Raven a sinking feeling. “What you’ve got no business doing, lovey, is protecting two grown men.” Then, on a sudden note of inspiration: “I’ll tell you what. What d’you say we take things to Morgan? You can depend on him for a cool-headed judgment.”
“When pear trees bear peaches, I’ll go to Morgan!” she said bitterly. “If he found my brother, Morgan would probably turn him over to the Army and, if they hanged him, say that it was character-building. And don’t suggest we tell Will or Cat either. Telling them would be the same as telling Morgan because that’s just what they’d do.”
From that position she was not to be moved. She was plainly terrified, but she was no less stubborn for all that. When Raven threatened to carry her by force to Morgan, all she would do was give an angry laugh and invite him to try it. And while he was admitting to himself that the citizens of this civilized metropolis were hardly likely to allow him to waltz through the streets bearing off a struggling woman of her obvious beauty and youth, Merry told him that if he didn’t take her to the place he had followed Granville to, she would approach a constable and tell him Raven had tried to steal her purse, which would keep him in gaol until she arrived for her five o’clock appointment at Finsbury Square. Raven could see she meant it. Which was why half an hour later he found himself in a hackney carriage with Merry on the way to the dockside address where he had seen Granville disappear.
Raven was furiously angry with her—an emotion rare for him—and scared half-witless that she was going to get hurt and it would be his fault. It seemed that with all that emotion on his side he ought to have won the battle of wills. After he’d given the driver the correct address, he realized what he should have done was deliver her to a disreputable inn (how would she have known Granville wasn’t there?), locked her in a room, and gone to fetch Morgan. He knew Morgan, or even Cat, would have said even now it was his duty to knock her unconscious and carry her to one of them. But looking down at the proud blue eyes and harmless little nose, he couldn’t find in himself the resolution to harm her. Once, when she turned her head to catch her first glimpse of the Thames, he did raise his hand, but it faltered. In his mind he felt the impact of the blow and heard her soft cry of pain and saw her body crumple; and he knew no fist of his could cause that to happen. Raven lowered his hand and with a heavy sigh began to load his pistol.
Merry’s face and figure would have made her conspicuous even if she hadn’t been dressed at the height of fashion. When an attempt to talk her into stopping at the inn where he was lodged to change into men’s clothing failed, he had to direct the hack to a corner he considered to be dangerously close to their destination to avoid too long a tramp with her along the waterfront.
The door where he had seen Granville disappear and then, much later, reappear was located in a courtyard of muddy pink brick inside a quadrant of tall warehouses with granite portals. Yawning black entrances emitted the scent of molasses in quantity enough to grab Merry’s throat as she slid stealthily behind a row of cerecloth bales beside Raven. A handful of burly watermen were rattling barrels aboard a tilted carrier’s dray under the shouted direction of a warehouseman in a bent top hat.
She didn’t need Raven’s whispered admonition, “Have a care! They might be in Granville’s hire,” to make her dive obediently to his side and sit quietly trembling. Spilled sugar carpeted the yard so thickly in places that she saw men sink to the ankle in it, and the wind pranced off the river in damp gusts to throw the dirty grit in glittering patterns against the buildings. Beyond, the Thames was green, smelly, and busily absorbing greasy reflections. A mass of sails in different sizes made the river as crowded as the streets.
She felt Raven’s tension beside her and was sorry for it, though there wasn’t anything she could do about it. Her entreaties in the hackney carriage that he leave her (with the pistol) to take care of matters on her own had made up in nobility what they lacked in sincerity, and she was ashamed of the ignoble relief she had experienced at his shocked refusal. The remainder of the trip he had spent alternately glancing out the window trying without success to decide whether they were being followed and endeavoring with austere gentleness to convince her that the only existence her brother had in England was in Granville’s evil mind, and if Granville in fact did have her brother, and if he did know anything to Granville’s detriment, the lad would be long dead. It never occurred to her to guess that Raven was doing his best to talk himself into hitting her over the head, but if anyone had told her this, she wouldn’t have been surprised. She could see he was mad as fire. All she could say in her own defense was that she had a feeling, as real and keen as any truth, that her brother was alive and hidden nearby, and she was the best person to preserve his life, and not any of the men who cared much for her and nothing for him.
Or perhaps she was losing her mind. She was almost convinced of it in another moment. The men loading the dray had begun a good-naturedly bantering exchange of insulting jests about each other’s mothers. As she stole a glance aroundthe must-scented edge of her bale her eyes for some reason swept toward a far group of barrels, and while she watched, Henry Cork rose to the shoulders from one with a barrel lid on his head.
Merry sat back with her eyes tight shut, taking deep breaths.
“My mind’s snapping,” she breathed.
“Tell me something I don’t know,” Raven grated under the covering thunder of barrels. “Keep your head down, or we’re dead, lovey. If those rascals catch an eye of those feathers of yours, it’s all the world to a handsaw that they’ll know they’ve got either a female back here or an ostrich. And let me tell you, it’s more than probable they’ll want to explore out which.”
Pushing down her offending plumes, Merry peered again at the far barrels, saw nothing, blinked, and when a time passed with no further appearance, decided that the shadow of a soaring gull must have combined with some errant fancy of her imagination to serve her eyes such a trick.
It took a further half hour for the yard to clear. The heavily loaded dray rattled off into an alley; the warehouseman and his helpers disappeared into a near door speaking eagerly about sharing a flagon or two of porter.
Another opportunity might not come soon, and another wagon might arrive at any moment to gather cargo or discharge it, so there was nothing for Merry and Raven to do but dart across the yard, dodging heaps of discarded packaging fabric, frayed twine, and broken cooper’s hoops. The immense oak double door was locked, but it would have taken a gem of the locksmith’s art to resist the insistent mangling of Raven’s dagger. He dragged open one dark, dust-grouted panel of the door, glanced inside, thrust Merry within, and followed quickly. She had time for only a glimpse of a wide room lined in pitted stone, and a plunging staircase beyond before Ravendrew shut the doorway. The closed portal blocked out daylight with eerie efficiency. A bitter chill pervaded the atmosphere, its bite sharper than even the unheated stone and the autumnal briskness outside. She shivered, digging her hands deeper into her muff as she listened to Raven locate by touch the lantern and tinder on a small bench against the nether wall that he had marked on his first glance inside.
“Why is it so cold?” she whispered.
“I don’t know. It would seem to be coming from down the stairs.” His voice was muffled as he bent over the tinder. He added hopefully, “If you’re beginning to take fright, we can leave. No telling what’s down there, I’m sorry to say. Ghoulies, belike, and werefolk and devilkins that chew the flesh of ladies. I shouldn’t wonder if we’ll run in upon all manner of spookish things. We’d better give it up.”
“That’s not going to work!” she retorted with dignity, though her knees were no longer offering her firm support. The frigid air was crawling over her skin like the expelled breath of a winter cloud; her eyelashes were soft cold threads against her cheeks. As a thimble of flame grew inside the tin lantern her spirit for this adventure plummeted like the dipping shadows around her. But she said, “If you’re frightened, then I’ll go to the front.”
Pale light fell on Raven’s suddenly laughing eyes. “Are you all in a rush, then, to be et? Well, all right, paladin. To the stair! But side by side, if you please, and catch hold of my hand.Youmay be a lion, but I’m every bit aquiver.”
The steps led down a short tunnel that opened dramatically into a monstrous abysm. Raven’s tiny light left most of its great size undiscovered, but the giant stone walls dwarfed Merry and Raven. Immense sheer cliffs burgeoned from the floor. Their lamplight caught in thousands of glittering facets in these colossal structures of ice, giving them a fantastical grandeur. The motionless air was dry and arctic.
“An icehouse! Isn’t that what it is, Raven? A vault where they store commercial ice?”
“It looks like,” Raven said, tilting the lantern in a way that sent light spraying deeper into the pit. “I’d heard these places were big, but I didn’t realize the half of it. Cold enough to freeze two dry rags together, ain’t it? One thing’s sure—Michael Granville couldn’t’ve been making this his safe house from Devon, or the chill would have—Stay! Did you hear that? It sounded as if a man cried out. Merry! Lovey, no!”
But fear had clamped without mercy on her senses, and she had grabbed up her skirts in a rude arrangement, her running footsteps pattering on the shallow steps. Her blood was as cold as the air without. She arrived fighting for breath at the stair foot, with Raven just behind. He tried to catch her arm, but his care to keep the lantern intact hampered him, and she wrenched free, running forward around the thick retaining wall, the sand floor sucking at her boots.
Behind the wall a solitary figure lay in a frost-riven clearing. The stretching oval of light fell on red-gold hair, a dusty and torn buff coat. Sinking to her knees beside the shining head, Merry turned the still figure with hands that quavered. The face was young and marred by premature lining and a ragged growth of beard. Damp sand clung in a paste over the closed lids and parched, gasping lips. She could feel the man’s blazing fever through her gloves. Behind her shoulder she heard Raven speak.
“Is it your brother?”
