Samuel went after her, drawing closer, then closer still. He expected her to turn and see him at every moment, alerted by the sound of his footsteps, but she kept on with single-minded purpose, neverglancing back.
It wasn’t until she was nearly on top of it that Samuel noticed the carriage. It was waiting halfway down a narrow lane, several blocks east of the Pink Pearl, and beside it stood a hulking figure Samuel recognized at once as Lady Crosby’s coachman.
The man was strangely menacing for a coachman, and not the sort one wanted to tangle with on a dark London street, but the threat of him didn’t deter Samuel. He crept forward, hidden in the shadows of a tall hedge, but just as he drew close enough to hear the low murmur of their voices,he went still.
Lady Emma was standing at the open carriage door, her hand resting on the edge of it as she spoke earnestly to the coachman. A faint glimmer of moonlight fell across the side of her face and overher hands, and—
Samuel stared, his breath catching with a painful hitchin his throat.
A complex web of thin, silvery scars covered her knuckles and crisscrossed in a crazed pattern over her fingers and the back of her hands. They were long since healed now, remnants of wounds that must once have been ugly indeed, to have left such deeply etched scars in that fine, white skin.
Those scars…how could he not have noticed them before, how could he—
She keeps them hidden.
He’d never once seen her bare hands. She kept that secret, marred flesh concealed under layers of silk or fine white kid, as if it were something shameful, a terrible thingshe’ddone, rather than a violence that had been done to her.
Samuel raised his gaze to her face, her profile limned in the muted glow, then lowered it again to her hands, a strange, hollow ache tugging at his heart for his dainty wraith, with her pale, ruined hands.
Chapter Eleven
“Caroline Francis is missing.”
Emma was standing in front of the pier glass in the drawing room attempting to smooth a wayward curl before she and Lady Crosby left for the theater, but her fingers stilled atDaniel’s words.
Her eyes met his in the glass. “Missing?”
“Aye, lass.” Daniel paused in front of Lady Crosby’s elegant marble fireplace, his massive shoulders dwarfing the dainty mantel. “She never came back to the Pink Pearl last night.”
“Oh, dear.” Lady Crosby looked from Emma to Daniel, the color draining from her cheeks. “But what could have become ofthe poor girl?”
“Nothing good.” Daniel’svoice was hard.
Emma turned from the glass to face him, her heart crowding into her throat. “Are you certain, Daniel? Is there a chance you might have missed her, or—”
“No, lass. I waited all night for ’er, and spent most of today searching. No one’s seen or heard a word from the girl since she left the Pink Pearl the day before yesterday. She’s gone.”
Gone.Disappeared, just like Amy and Kitty—seemingly dissolved into thin air without a trace, as if they’d never been there at all.
“But…how can she be gone?” Emma asked dumbly. This was London, not a country village in Kent. People didn’t vanish without a single person having seen a thing. “Someone must have seen something.”
“Of course, they must have, dear.” Lady Crosby said, but she looked uncertain. “Someone must have some idea of where she’s gone, mustn’tthey, Daniel?”
“No one who’s willing to talk.” Daniel’s somber eyes met Emma’s. “No one could tell me anything other than the lass went off in a black carriage, and never came back to the Pink Pearl.”
“Perhaps she went with him willingly?” Lady Crosby asked hopefully. “Perhaps there’s nothing so sinister init, after all.”
“Perhaps.” But Emma’s throat had gone tight with dread.
“I can’t speak to that.” Daniel’s voice was grim. “All we know is ’e sent a carriage to fetch her, she got inside, and no one knows another cursed thing about him.”
Emma’s hand shook as it crept to her throat. “What of Helena, Daniel?Where is she?”
As soon as Emma saw the expression on Daniel’s face, she knew she wasn’t going to like the answer. She reached out to grip the back of the settee, bracing herself.
“She’s at the Pink Pearl still. I couldn’t get a message to her because I couldn’t find that little kitchen lad.”
“Charles is missing, too?” Emma dropped down onto the settee, stunned.
