Page 53 of When the Sky Breaks

“Didn’t want no trouble,” the intruder gasped. “Just thought maybe the lady wanted a little company is all.”

“Oh,” Ansel said, voice steady and unwavering, digging his heel harder into the man’s chest and eliciting a yelp. “So you’re an imbecile then?”

I crouched down, pulling back the hammer on my pistol. “Talk.”

But the man on the floor just froze. There, with a boot on his chest, a gun to his head, and nowhere to run, he didn’t make a single sound.

“I said, talk,” I repeated, pressing the barrel of my pistol into the man’s temple. I was not, by nature, a confrontational person. You didn’t get into being a Steward if you wanted to hit things and start gunfights. But with Sorcha and the baby? I found that tendency to be quickly changing.

“It wasn’t my . . .” the man tried to plead with us.

“Don’t waste my time with excuses,” I repeated, letting my voice drop to a lower register, ready to pull the trigger and be done with it.

“Don’t kill him,” Sorcha said suddenly. “Let’s give him a choice.”

Ansel balked. “You’re certain you don’t want me to take care of it now, lass? I’ve plenty of ideas to make him squirm.”

Sorcha shook her head.

“You’re clearly not a criminal mastermind,” she said, gesturing at the man on the floor, “so enlighten us. Who sent you? And why?”

He swallowed hard but didn’t respond. Sorcha took a deep inhale, her eyes getting the same glazed look they’d had when she summoned the wolves back in Austin. And soon I heard a low, resonant growl vibrating through the room. Milkweed wriggled free of Sorcha’s grasp and tucked himself into her apron pocket.

“You tell us who sent you and why,” Sorcha repeated, “and we let you go out the front door.”

“Otherwise it’s back through the window,” Ansel added.

“I’ll talk!” the man yelped.

“Then talk.”

“I work for Madam Clarissa,” the man said. “I’m a finder when she needs new girls.”

“And so you decided a pregnant woman traveling with two older men was a viable target to recruit for a brothel?” I asked in utter disbelief.

“No,” he said quickly. “Didn’t pick her at all. Madam got a note in from some big gun over in Europe. Russian maybe? With money. And a picture of her—of your wife. Asking for her specifically.”

I froze. Russian nobility, soliciting Sorcha’s capture by brothels in Texas. Even after the abortifacient, even after the Outer Court soldier staked to the mission floor, this was a new low.

Sorcha shuddered, then said, “Out the window.”

“But I told you who . . .” the man protested.

“Can’t have you reporting back your failure and our location,” Sorcha snapped. “Ansel?”

“Happy to assist, lass,” Ansel replied as he grabbed the man by the collar and hauled him over the sill. The garbled scream was rapidly cut short by the snap of teeth.

“We’re going,” Sorcha said. “Now.”

It was eleven o’clock in the morning now and we’d all been up since four thirty, everyone too wired to sleep after the intruder and with nowhere to go at that hour even if we’d wanted to try. Walking seemed to ease Sorcha’s nausea, at least a bit. So she and I explored the town while Ansel sold off our mules, our horses, and our camping supplies and purchased new, clean, respectable clothes that weren’t liable to get us kicked out of first class. Wool-linen suits for him and me in light colors that would help with the heat. A lighter cotton calico for Sorcha, pink floral on an ivory field, more structured than what she’d worn on the road but with a high enough waistline to accommodate her belly. Ansel looked uncharacteristically sheepish as he sent us to go change into the clean clothes in an alley, especially as Sorcha had to use the window on an abandoned building as a mirror to pin up her hair.

The docks were loud and chaotic, but Ansel and I had spent enough time at sea to know the way. We boarded the steamer without incident. The steward, a pleasant, older man with a waxed black mustache and striped trousers, happily passed our larger parcels to a porter for storage in the hold. Ansel left the rest of our bags—and Milkweed—in our cabin before insisting we get something to eat.

“I don’t know if that’s such a good idea,” Sorcha protested. “We haven’t slept.”

“Didn’t you say you want a big healthy baby?” I countered, arm still around her shoulders. I’d hardly broken contact with her since we left the saloon almost seven hours earlier. Sorcha nodded, hand going to her belly.

“In order to achieve that you do have to at least try to eat,” I told her. “We’ll get something fast and then you can go sleep. Alright?”