“This man was shadow and night.

He was Darkness.”

Homeless Aliette is saved from punishment for stealing by a mysterious knight. To stay alive, she’s informed by this stranger that she must claim his child as her own. She should fear the dark knight’s power, yet it’s clear there’s more good to this man than he’s prepared to show. Can she break down the barriers of the tortured knight she calls Darkness?

NICOLE LOCKE discovered her first romance novels in her grandmother’s closet, where they were secretly hidden. Convinced that books that were hidden must be better than those that weren’t, Nicole greedily read them. It was only natural for her to start writing them—but now not so secretly!

Also by Nicole Locke

Secrets of a Highland Warrior

Lovers and Legends miniseries

The Knight’s Broken Promise

Her Enemy Highlander

The Highland Laird’s Bride

In Debt to the Enemy Lord

The Knight’s Scarred Maiden

Her Christmas Knight

Reclaimed by the Knight

Her Dark Knight’s Redemption

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.

Her Dark Knight’s Redemption

Nicole Locke

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-0-008-90120-2

HER DARK KNIGHT’S REDEMPTION

© 2019 Nicole Locke

Published in Great Britain 2019

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

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Version: 2020-03-02

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There are some readers who just keep you going.

And I owe two such readers my great thanks

for cheering me on through this book.

Diane, our chats have been such a joy

when I was writing the darkest parts of this story.

Especially special? Your messages of

‘How’s it going?’ I must admit those kept me writing

on days I feared the keyboard!

Karine, it has been a serendipitous gift

meeting you through your wonderful blog

https://songedunenuitdete.com. Those pictures you sent me of beautiful Troyes were a brilliant inspiration! Thank you!

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Epilogue

Extract

About the Publisher

Chapter One
France—1297

‘I can assure you, monsieur, the child is yours.’

Reynold didn’t bother to turn for the woman who was standing behind him. He rarely acknowledged anyone unless it suited him. The woman’s guttural accent and well-aged sweat stench ensured that she was most definitely beneath him in every way.

In truth, almost everyone was. If Reynold was forced to entertain among the parasites who clung to the teat of court, he would say, but for the King of England, he was beneath no man.

In the privacy of his own home, he barely acknowledged he was beneath God.

He was a knight, highly skilled and deadly with almost every sword and blade man had ever made. Yet what no one knew was the fact that he was deadlier with the games he played. Those who did discover this hidden talent didn’t survive to spread the tale.

He was also fortunate enough to possess wealth that rivalled King Edward’s. Some of it was amply displayed in his private chambers, where he and the peasant behind him stood. Cascading silks, intricate gold-threaded embroidery in colours resembling precious gemstones and volumes of books. He owned many homes and travelled more than any man he knew, and the books always travelled with him.

The only matter that irked him was his wealth didn’t rival the church’s. But he consoled himself that they had had a thousand years in their plundering and he had years ahead of him to bridge the difference.

He was all of this, yet what set him above others was his family name: Warstone. Through that title, he gained unimaginable power and unparalleled fear. Though he wanted only to obliterate every last relation, tear down every monument and shred all scrolls bearing the name he was born into, for now, he used it for his purposes. In the end, it suited the games he played. And he looked forward to the time when the name wouldn’t matter anymore. Then he wouldn’t acknowledge the Warstone legacy just as he didn’t acknowledge the commoner shifting warily behind him.

Commoners always shifted when in his presence, often readied their little feet to make a dash for safety. It never did them any good. They could run to beyond the edge of existence and, if he desired, they’d be dead. Nobles were too stupid or lazy to realise they should be warier in his presence. Instead, they often shared their pitiful lives or confessed...as if he’d have pity.

Wondering if the wench behind him needed to die, he shifted his gaze from the sights beyond his window, to the reflection in the glass which revealed a distorted reflection of her...and a child she held.

Distorted, but enough to know from her dark hair to her tattered clothing that the babe in her arms couldn’t be his...if that was to be her claim. It was visual information that didn’t surprise or please him and he waited for what her fear should be telling her. Run.

Perhaps she had some noble blood and didn’t know her life was about to end. Not here, in this particular undisclosed home in the heart of Paris, however. He wouldn’t sully this sanctuary with her spilled blood.

But die she must. He didn’t abide by liars or cheats and, by her clothes and the colour of her hair, she displayed both these traits.

For now, he waited. The night sky was black, but not still. All around were the twinkling of candles among the haphazard elegant buildings. If he strained his hearing, he could discern sounds of laughter and shouts. Paris never slept. It was one of the reasons he enjoyed coming here. There was a certain acceptance of all walks of life, both human and animal. And since the city housed everyone and everything, he enjoyed his anonymity. Because until his game was done, he didn’t want to be found.

‘Monsieur?’

‘Are you still there?’ he replied.

The woman’s small gasp reminded him why he allowed her access to his home in the first place. Vermin often provided distraction from the long winter nights. This was her sole purpose when his guards notified him that a woman requested to see him. The only difference between her and all the others insisting on his presence was that this one carried a child.

When he granted her access, he hadn’t exactly felt curiosity. That would have implied some emotion and, as usual, he felt absolutely nothing. After all, she wouldn’t be the only woman to claim a child was his. There had been many such claims since he was old enough to procreate. So many false claims carved out his longing for a child and buried it along with his heart somewhere along the darkened paths he had been forced to take. Still, he craved what he read in a book: about a home and hearth after a long journey. What he had never experienced in life—a family, a true family—and so he granted her access.

But now that he saw her reflection, he regretted his impromptu decision.

Now he had to suffer through her denials, perhaps pay her some coin. Most likely he’d order her killed. Disappointing.

Returning his gaze to her reflection, he continued, ‘The child isn’t mine, but the coin you’ll receive when you leave could be yours.’ Temporarily. ‘But only if you leave now without another word.’

He prayed she’d keep quiet, even though he knew she wouldn’t. A waste of a life and his time. He had never lain with this woman. It wasn’t her poverty giving her away, it was the colour of her hair.

He never laid with a dark-haired woman when his own was as black as his soul. He wanted no babe to be called his. Oh, he knew it held no certainty—however, he was a master at bending the odds in his favour.

Thus, he never lay with the same woman twice, never left a trace of him in her bed or semen in her body. Never lay with a dark-haired, or a grey-eyed, woman. If she had a babe, then the babe had a possibility to be fair like the mother and he could deny his responsibility.

‘The child’s yours, if you’d only look.’ The woman took a step forward, her foot soft on the wood planking. She wasn’t properly shod for winter. Another desperate wench trying to survive the last months of winter. Too bad she spoke and ensured she wouldn’t survive this evening.

‘Words you give me,’ he said. ‘It appears you don’t want the coin. I’d have my guards take you from this room, but I’m aware of the child in your arms. For its sake, I will give you until the count of three to leave. After that, whatever harm comes your—’

A coarse laugh erupted from the woman. ‘I knew you’d be like this. Cold and unforgiving. But I don’t care, it suits my purposes, it does.’

This woman had...purposes. Intriguing. If this commoner had purposes, she knew something about him. If so, his need for anonymity had been compromised, which didn’t suit his games at all.

His survival depended on his obscurity. This woman would die, but he had questions first. Deliberately, Reynold turned and swept his eyes from her feet to her features.

The woman was far coarser than her reflection revealed. From the roughness of her skin to the mud staining the bottom of her gown, the very air she held was one of servitude, and something else he recognised...greed.

Avarice. It was that emotion prompting him to look at the babe in her arms. If she had financial purposes, they weren’t well planned. The child was small and he hadn’t been in Paris for almost two years. This one looked puny and, despite the icy winter wind, the babe was scarcely covered. The cheeks and hands red though they’d waited inside his heated home.

The head, however, was completely exposed, revealing a shocking amount of black hair. Black hair similar to that of the woman in front of him. But she wasn’t claiming the child was hers...only his.

With hair that dark, he could not immediately dismiss it. ‘Who is your mistress?’

‘Not my mistress, though I pretend she is. Paid me nicely to keep quiet, but I knew you’d return so I waited. I waited, because as much money as she had, you have more.’

The woman shrewdly perused the room, her eyes resting on a gold enamelled box. ‘I’d say you have plenty more.’

‘You say the babe is mine and the mother paid you to keep quiet about me? You’re quite the confidante.’

‘I’m no confidant or friend. I hate her. She believes I am only fit to empty her chamber pot. No one looks at the servant cleaning their piss. But I was there the night she left to visit you and I was there the months after you left. When the time came, I let her know I was noticing.’

The woman smirked. ‘Thought she was the clever widow, passing off the child as another gentleman’s. So when I said I knew it wasn’t his, she paid me exactly what I asked her to. She begged me not to tell her current lover because he paid her more because of it.

‘But I got wise, ʼcause she loves this child, and she paid me quick. This woman is cold, like you. She wasn’t afraid I’d tell that listless braggart who moaned between her spread legs. Oh, no, she was scared I would tell the true father.

‘That’s when I knew you were important. That’s when I knew you’d have the hefty coin. Something to set me up real nice.’

His memory flashed of a wealthy blonde widow who took coin for her favours. Though he couldn’t remember her name or exactly what she looked like, there was such a widow here and he had lain with her a year ago.

An emotion scraped across his heart. One he hadn’t felt since he overheard his parents’ machinations to break him. It was now slinking across his insides as if it had merely been waiting. It was faint, but even so, familiar.

Fear.

Because though there was enough evidence before him to question this commoner’s truth, there was enough plausibility for it to be true. A greedy servant, a black-haired child and a wealthy mistress, who loved her child enough to protect it against him. The widow he thought of had been a courtier, but had fallen on hard times, thus, an exception to his rules. She was a noble who knew how to run.

But on the heels of that fear was something bright and piercing. If this child was his...he couldn’t think that way. Mustn’t despite everything, but already he could feel the need to hold her in his arms, to see for himself. As he had done so many times before. Would the need never stop haunting him?

And how could a true mother let this child into the arms of the vile creature before him? ‘What did you do to her?’

‘I’ve done nothing to the mother.’ The woman shifted the child in her arms. ‘She’s at her home, she is.’

‘You’d have me believe you stole a child from its mother? It’s more likely the child’s yours.’

‘It has black hair.’

‘You have dark hair.’

The woman made an impatient sound. More warnings went off in his head.

‘She won’t want to see you. Why don’t you pay me and I’ll hand it over? Don’t you want your own child?’

She held it like an offering and the child opened its eyes. He couldn’t see their colour, but he could see this child was a plausible age. Small, underfed, but old enough to be his.

He risked all, listening to this woman. He risked more if he didn’t. He could kill this wench and the babe, but a mother with a missing child would put more players in his game than he was willing to manoeuvre. His board was already full.

Unfortunately, he didn’t know where the mother lived for they had met at another location. A flaw in his clever plan for anonymity.

So his only option was to follow this wench and step outside. He might as well be stepping into a trap. Now this was a distraction worthy of his attention. ‘Prove to me you’re not the mother and you’ll get what you came for.’

The woman’s eyes narrowed. ‘I take you and you’ll pay me?’

If this mother wasn’t the woman he lain with, he’d give one clean swipe of his blade across her neck to silence her for ever. Then he’d stab and twist the knife into the heart of this traitor, so she’d feel it. Liars every one.

If the child was his, it had no place in his life. His brothers would kill it, but only after torture. If the child was truly his, and he cared at all, he’d turn around and abandon it all over again.

He had enough players on the board and more moves to make. He might not have started this particular game, but he was determined to finish it. A child had no place in his life. As for the servant, she’d be lucky to survive his blade.

He kept his gaze on the wretched woman before him. ‘If this child is mine, I’ll reward you amply.’

Chapter Two

‘You could not have possibly done what I think you have done.’ Aliette pinched the bridge of her nose and clenched her eyes. A temporary solution to the very visible evidence she returned to after the morning’s work.

‘I didn’t,’ Gabriel said readily.

Ten years of age, his tuft of brown hair sticking up, his light brown eyes framed by eyelashes wasted on a boy. He looked innocent, but everything he said was a lie.

A good lie. She suspected he said it to ease her worries, but it was all too apparent he had indeed gone out and stolen four loaves of bread. She didn’t want it to be true.

It needed to not be true.

But it was. Just as it was true she was responsible for a ten-year-old boy whose parents have been sent to the gallows and an elderly couple, Vernon and Helewise, who were ripping into their bread as though they hadn’t eaten properly in a sennight...which they hadn’t.

She was failing them. At least Vernon and Helewise were used to it, they had been with her the longest. Before her, they had survived on their own. Aliette discovered them over a year ago, in another part of Paris, sitting on the ground in the filth of the streets. Helewise, whose bones were crooked from her ears to her toes, and Vernon, whose eyes were so clouded he couldn’t see more than shadows. They were too frail to move when slop was thrown on them.

Over the years since she’d been abandoned in Paris, she’d seen hundreds of street beggars. The old or frail were usually dead within a week either by starvation, assault or reckless carriages.

But not these two and they fascinated her. Over many weeks, she’d watched as Helewise, too crippled to walk, told Vernon where to find food. They made terrible thieves. Vernon, almost blind, was slow and Helewise’s loud verbal commands let any nimble, listening child to reach the prize first. There were no fresh loaves for them or animal-trough remains. In truth, what they scavenged was dropped by others or given by charity.

Filthy, starving, but nothing hardened their souls as it did the others, as it had done to her. They were kind to each other and shared food if they were fortuitous that day or the warmth of their bodies if they weren’t.

But her observing ended the day Vernon made Helewise laugh. It wasn’t the laugh of the privileged, full of conquering lightness. Nor was it the laughing sneer of the street. Her laugh was full of...she didn’t know. It lit up both of them and did something to her heart as well. Like warmth, only so much better.

That was the day she gave them every scrap of food she’d scavenged and they welcomed her to sit with them. Then they gave her stories. Of who they were and where they came from. Stories about legends and brave heroines and love. That was the word they used. Love.

Was love what kept their souls intact? Whatever it had been, something began that day she gave them food. At first, she thought the tightening in her chest was something foul she ate, but the feeling grew and wouldn’t let up. It was like that warmth which spread with Helewise’s laugh, but it had an achy longing about it as well.

A longing for something she knew she’d never possess. Her parents had abandoned her. No matter how much she wished for someone to love her, it wouldn’t happen. If she was capable of giving or receiving it, she certainly would have found someone in all the years since. Still, seeing love between Vernon and Helewise, she wouldn’t let it go either. Even if at times her longing filled her with sorrow and not just warmth.

She blamed that longing for moving them to where she had been living: under a small bridge. It was in an industrial area of Paris, with no private homes or residences where respectable people could potentially force them to leave because it was too near the tanners and stank.

When shelter and safety were tantamount, scents that made your eyes water mattered little. She couldn’t count the times she’d been accosted or had a weapon pointed at her. Sometimes it was to take something away from her like food or clothing. Most times, they looked at her as a threat and used a dagger, or a large blunt stick to ward her away.

Paris was a jumble of wealth and poverty and she’d learned to take advantage of the good within the bad. And there were drawbacks with the bridge, the lack of walls not much of one. The true drawback was it was far from any food and much too far for Helewise and Vernon to scavenge on their own. It was up to Aliette to feed them.

On one of these travels, she’d spotted Gabriel outside the gaol making sounds she’d never heard in her life. On the streets, there was abuse and maiming. There were harsh words and harsher fists, but the street’s survivors were bitter or angry.

Gabriel’s helpless sobs were as if his heart was cracking. As though he only just realised life contained cruelty. He cried as an innocent would cry. A word Aliette knew, but had never truly understood. She tried to be good, but she stole and lied. Her life couldn’t afford anything pure. Gabriel’s clothes, though worn, were newish and clean. And he looked soft despite the bloodied mutilated mess where his right ear used to be. He had never been born and raised on the streets as she had.

As the guards had. Guards who chatted because the sounds of a weeping child near their feet was meaningless to them. For Aliette, Gabriel’s defenceless whimpers called to her.

A few gentle questions his way and he told her of his parents’ imprisonment and their hanging scheduled the next day. How he had no one and no home. He could tell her nothing of why they chopped his ear and not given him a simple flogging. Such an extreme punishment for one so young.

His eyes were so full of grief, so full of fear. Half-starved despite the cleanliness of his clothes. Despite his ear, his hands told her he wasn’t raised on the streets like her. She knew what happened to soft children. To thieve or be used. By the carving of his ear, he had failed at thieving. She refused for anything else to happen to him.

Slowly, coaxingly, she led him to their home under the bridge. His feet were laden down with exhaustion, hunger and loss. His eyes darting from her to every corner, looking for traps.

No matter her soft words, he remained wary until Vernon greeted him and Helewise opened her arms and, crumpling at Helewise’s feet, Gabriel laid his head on her knees and promptly fell asleep.

The longing to belong grew fiercely inside Aliette. The life she led with Helewise and Vernon wasn’t good enough for Gabriel. She could no longer steal a few turnips or potatoes. She needed proper food. They needed more than huddling under a bridge with one blanket. To achieve that she couldn’t only steal, she needed work.

Which wasn’t easy. Everyone needed to work. For an unskilled woman, no one was willing to pay her actual coin, but after a while of going from market stall to shop to farmer, she found people who paid her for work with extra food, day old bread, more threadbare blankets.

So much work, but eventually their supplies were noticed. Gabriel had gained strength, but not enough to defend against thieves or those with weapons. She needed to protect her acquired family.

She had searched abandoned homes, but more than once she returned to the bridge with bruises and cuts made by residents who guarded their territory. It forced her to venture into finer neighbourhoods, until she discovered one that had been once grand, but now lay neglected. Many of the homes were boarded, the owners waiting for years until the area became suitable again.

The house she found was boarded tightly up, secure against those too lazy or desperate to break in.

Over a period of weeks, she watched the property and worked the back boards on the servants’ entrance loose. When she walked through the dank rooms, she knew she’d found what they needed. The roof didn’t leak much, there was a space for a small fire and there was furniture for comfort. Chairs and tables. Beds.

They couldn’t have asked for a better home. With such fine furnishings, she suspected the owners might have left Paris for the winter and she didn’t imagine that they could live here indefinitely. Spring would soon be here, though there was no sign of it. And a few extra months until warmer weather would give them much reprieve and allow Gabriel to gain better health.

But Gabriel had stolen and jeopardised everything.

Without unclenching her eyes, she said, ‘At least tell me you didn’t steal them all from the same baker.’

‘Not at all,’ the boy quipped, not an ounce of guile in his words. To him, the words he said were the honest truth. Yet it was another lie since the remaining untouched loaves bore the same mark from the same bakery. He said the words to make her feel better.

Nothing about this could make her feel better. She had two options. She’d need to return the loaves or pay for them. Neither scenario would end well for them. If she returned the loaves, it was likely he wouldn’t accept them and she had no money to pay.

Easing her hand away from her stinging nose, she let out a breath and opened her eyes. Gabriel’s large brown eyes were more enormous than ever and sheened with tears.

His gangly body shuddered when she embraced him. He did not put his arms around her, but she did not expect him to. Almost three months with him and he was still unused to a kind touch. Who had he been before his parents were sent to the gallows?

‘I was only trying to help.’ Gabriel wiped his nose with his sleeve. ‘Helewise and Vernon’s stomachs are growling and the potatoes are rotten.’

That was because she pinched them out of a hog’s trough and counted herself fortunate that she grabbed them before anyone else since they were only half-rotten. She was working, but it only accounted for some of their needs. More often, she depended on what she could scavenge.

All of them thieves, none of them good. Her, least of all. That was the reason her family left her in Paris when she was five. Fifteen years didn’t make a difference. She was still appalling at it.

Now this. Four loaves from the same baker meant they’d be noticed. She’d take back two of the loaves immediately while they were still fresh.

First though, she’d observe the baker interact with his customers. If he wasn’t kind or reasonable when she returned them, they’d be hunted the next time they walked the market. It was a risk she wasn’t willing to take. This was the best home they’d had and she knew they wouldn’t find another before the winter ended.

‘I need to go.’

‘Don’t,’ Gabriel begged. ‘Let me do it. I did the wrong.’

Was this how he had lost his parents? They went out, committed some crime and couldn’t return? These questions would never be answered, though she’d tried that first day and the next to see them privately. To this day, Gabriel said nothing of what he was stealing for the punishment of losing his ear. In fact, he didn’t talk about his childhood, ever.

She bent to bring her eyes level with his. ‘You did nothing wrong. Please don’t think that. But I need you to stay with Vernon and Helewise to keep them safe or help them escape. You know this.’

Gabriel clenched his jaw and she glimpsed the man he’d be. One didn’t stay a child long on the streets.

‘I’ll be back for you.’

Gabriel shook, sneezed and shook some more.

She wouldn’t be his parents. She wouldn’t leave any of them. They were a family now. One she’d found, one she protected, one she was giving her life for.

‘No matter what it takes, Gabriel. No matter what, I’ll return.’

Chapter Three

Down the winding pathways Reynold followed the woman carrying the child. She made one more offer for him to hold it, but he refused and she didn’t ask again.

Another turn in the muddied, roughly cobbled streets. This area had once been grand, but now held the musk of ages, the patina brushed away to show instead the mortar underneath.

He had picked this part of neglected Paris to reside in because it contained no lavish homes. No grand balls or people with influence. In every city he stayed in he avoided those parts of town.

It didn’t suit his games to be noticed and ostentatious wealth was always noticed. He made only one exception to the rule of absolute anonymity: his books. He had too many to hide and they were far too precious for him to leave behind. They travelled with him to every home. So, despite the many pains he took to blend into the fabric of every city he visited, his books were always seen. Only an individual with an obscene amount of wealth could own such luxury. But what could he do? They were his family, his sole comfort. At least they were quiet and could be kept at home.

As he should be doing now. Another turn and the woman stopped in front of a door.

This home was more derelict than the rest. Windows were cracked and curtains were scorched from the sun; from this distance, it was clear the silk was thin and frayed. Even the daub was crumbling into the street, forcing the wattle to look more like a skeleton than a house. He glanced down the street. Most of the other houses in this area were boarded up. This was the only one occupied.

If it was occupied.

‘She’s in there,’ the woman said, shifting the child again. It was awake and the angle she held it, with its head on her shoulder, showed the full length. Yes, this was a child who could be his.

His. A burgeoning warmth, hope, bloomed inside his chest and he crushed it. Cursed ever reading Odysseus’s tale and giving him ideas that there could be more for him. Nothing and no one ever was.

There would be no hearth and home at the end of his journey. There would be only death. His only hope was that he took his family down with him.

‘Let’s go in.’

She looked to the child, then him.

He had no intention of taking that child now or later. He was free to block attacks and to make one of his own. Unburdened, he was free to leave and continue his games.

The woman eyed him, surprised he refused the child. ‘One look and you’ll know it’s her you spilled your seed in,’ she said. ‘You’ll know this burden’s yours.’

Even if it was...it didn’t matter. He was too close to what he’d been born to do: to take down his family.

‘Then we shouldn’t tarry much more,’ he said, fully intending for her to enter first. ‘One more look and you’ll be a rich woman. What’s keeping you?’

The indecision in her eyes turned to greed again, to cruelty. Ah, yes, he was familiar with people like her. They were easy to manipulate.

She pushed open the door. The sounds and the smells accosted him immediately.

Sobbing. A woman’s cries as if everything in her world was gone and missing. Deep racks of grief interrupted by coughs and wheezes. By wet gurgles, like a clogged brook.

Like blood that didn’t stay within the body, but came up through the lungs and out of mouths and noses, forced through tiny pores in the skin.

Which explained the smells. The dank smell of mould, a leaking roof allowing mildew to move along the walls. That smell fought for dominance over the acrid smell of piss and human waste.

But it was a deep cloying scent that permeated the entire house and settled against his very soul. Death. Human decay, as if they walked straight into a desecrated tomb of newly buried bodies.

It stopped him in his tracks.

‘Told you to stay at your fancy home, didn’t I?’ the woman sneered at his side. ‘I told you to stay and take the babe, but you had to come. Suits me fine, but I was only trying to be nice, to do you a favour. Had to make it difficult for me. Wasn’t as though I wanted to come back to this either. I’ve had to suffer enough these last months, waiting for you to return. Should make you pay me more for coming back when I thought I didn’t have to.’

What was wrong with him this evening? Why did he stop? He didn’t let boredom overcome his safety and allow strangers in his home, especially those he was soon to kill.

‘Cilla? Cilla, is that you?’ A woman’s thinned voice wafted from another room. Cultured and reedy with sickness. ‘Do you have her, Cilla? Did you bring her back to me?’

The wretch, Cilla, glanced his way, her eyes narrowing. He shook his head once which was enough for her to understand she needed to stay quiet about his presence. It didn’t hurt that it suited her purposes as well.

With a shrug, she swept into the other room. ‘I’m here with your bastard, my lady.’

‘Oh!’ Fresh tears, the sound of joy and gratefulness. ‘I thought you’d left. I thought you took her.’

Reynold held back. He needed a bit more exchange between these two to satisfy his purposes.

‘I merely took her for a walk,’ Cilla said. ‘She needed a bit of air.’

‘What would I do without you, Cilla? You’re so...good for her and me. Staying with me when everyone else left. Keeping her well, keeping her away from the sickness. Of course, she needed air. But...she needs me more. Bring her here, please.’

The tone of her voice, a cadence broken by hacking coughs, he did not recognise, and Reynold waited longer in the shadows. He liked waiting in the shadows.

A snapping of blankets, grunts from Cilla and wheezes from her mistress. Reynold envisioned Cilla giving the child back to its mother.

‘But you were wrong to take her without letting me know,’ the woman’s thin voice now containing some superiority. ‘You made me worry. You know how I cannot have any worry in my condition. Once I recover, your deeds will have to have some consequences.’

‘Of course, mistress,’ Cilla said. No doubting she had heard this argument before. The words held no threat. The woman in the other room was dying.

Dying, but cultured with a ring of privilege. Perhaps she was the noblewoman he had lain with those many months ago. There was only one way to discover that, by stepping into the other room.

Silently, a few paltry steps and everything was revealed to him. The room held scant pieces of furniture, no tables or niceties. The wooden floors highly polished where a rug once had been. The colours of rose and yellow in the broken bench hinting at what the room once must have been. A grand parlour.

Now it was a sick bed with a full chamber pot underneath, and various small linens flung around it like bloodied halos.

A few more moments lost as the woman spoke to Cilla, but kept her eyes on the child like a lifeline. The sickness had made harsh lines fan from her eyes, but as she gazed at the child, they softened.

Privileged. Entitled. But that gaze was of a mother to her child. Whether she was a fallen noble or whore, she loved the child who was trying to sit in her arms.

‘Did you bring any...?’ The woman’s voice drifted as her travelling gaze fell on Reynold and held there.

He didn’t recognise the house or the room because he had never been here before. But he did recognise the woman lying on the bench with blankets draped over her thin frame. The sickness had ravaged that frame and sucked the glow from her cheeks.

He didn’t remember her name, her station, or the night he found temporary relief within her body.

He didn’t remember the thick gold of her hair because every woman he’d lain with had a similar colour. However, he did remember the colour of her eyes. He remembered that all too well, for when he first saw her he calculated that colour against his own dark grey and wondered whether the dark blue was too close to his own. That if there was a babe, it would be mistaken for his.

No woman was worth any unnecessary risk. But he remembered her false haughtiness and her weakness. Traits that suited his purpose as well as the feminine parts of her body. So they shared a bed for an hour or two and he paid her well. He always paid them well.

‘You,’ the woman whispered.

‘Me,’ he answered.

Weak and dying, but at his appearance, she attempted some dignity. While holding her lips together didn’t cease the coughs from racking her body, she daintily held a blood-crusted cloth to her mouth instead. When they eased, she shifted her eyes from Reynold back to Cilla. ‘You brought him.’

‘You’re sick, mistress,’ Cilla said with oily concern. ‘The babe needs her father.’

A widening of blue eyes, a flash of fear that no tainted cloth could cover. ‘That’s not her father. I told you who her father was. I told you.’

Despite the mother clutching the child close to lay down with her, it sat up fully and crammed its mouth with its fist. A girl, but only because the mother had called it such. Black hair, but in this dim light and his distance he could not tell the colour of her eyes.

‘We both know you didn’t mean it,’ Cilla said. ‘This child has hair like her father’s, not that dandy you pointed out with his balding pate.’

The woman kept her eyes and her conversation solely with Cilla, as if ignoring him or pretending he wasn’t there would make him disappear.

He wouldn’t leave now that he heard her terrified protestations. This dying woman was frightened by his presence.

His family connection, and their ruthlessness, was enough for her to worry, but wasn’t enough for her horror, or the sense of helplessness in her gaze and the vulnerability straining her frail body.

He saw it all though she refused to look at him. Her body convulsed again, worse than before. Great racking contortions as her knees drew up and she curled around herself and the babe.

Reynold did not move, nor did the child. Whatever illness was taking its mother, it had been doing so for a long time. Long enough that it didn’t concern the child. To the babe, the stench, the decay, the coughing was what a mother smelled and sounded like.

‘I told you,’ the woman said, her voice gasping, the coughing, the illness too much for her. ‘I trusted you.’

‘You’re alive, you are, and so is your babe,’ Cilla said.

The woman tried to draw breath. Too weak to protect her child from the servant who could easily pluck her away again. Too ill to protect the child from him. But he watched her push the child across her stomach until it rolled behind her so that it was wedged between her and the bench’s back. As if her prone wasted body could be any sort of a shield against him.

It was possible this child was his. ‘Is it mine?’

The woman never opened her eyes. Her pretending he didn’t exist was her last and only defence against him.

‘Is it mine?’ he repeated.

‘Of course it’s yours,’ Cilla retorted. ‘Little demon’s a year if it’s a day. A year of me waiting in this filth and waiting on this corpse for you to return.’

‘How could you...?’ the noblewoman said.

‘I did what you wanted,’ Cilla said. ‘What you begged so prettily for. What was it again? Not to let anyone know you were sick. Mustn’t let anyone know such common illness affected your noble blood.’

The woman opened her eyes again, not to look at Reynold, but to the servant. ‘I beg you... Save her.’

With hot certainty, Reynold knew it was no longer a possibility. The child was his... For this mother asked not to save the babe from poverty or sickness, but to save the child. From him.

‘Why would I do that?’ Cilla said. ‘He’s here to collect.’

The child... All his life women claimed pregnancy. None of them were true. The noblewoman ignored him, but he needed his answers.

‘How did you know who I was?’

All eyes went to him.

‘You don’t...remember me?’ she said.

No rejection in her reedy voice, only the slight sound of victory.

‘Your man...a carriage.’

He always hired a man. A temporary hire, for a temporary solution. He found a woman who would suit his needs, found a man for hire to procure her and bring her to an awaiting carriage.

All his women were done this way. A protection for him, a protection for them. This significant memory of hers provided no more information for him.

‘You couldn’t have known who I was,’ he said. ‘Who told you? Who—?’

‘It stinks and I don’t need to stay,’ Cilla interrupted. ‘It’s her, you know that now. You know that’s your babe—I want what’s my due.’ She laughed a cruel greed. Gleeful that her plan for great wealth had paid off. ‘I brought the happy family together. Don’t I deserve something?’

He’d forgotten the wretch was in the room. With his spare hand, Reynold brought his purse to the front. Let the full weight of it sound as he jangled the coins. It was heavy. He’d purposefully filled it to the brim.

The woman’s eyes bulged. For him, this wasn’t but convenient coin. The enamel gold box at his home was worth more than his purse, but she wasn’t a smart villain. Not smart at all, because she had threatened him.

‘I said I’d reward you amply. I came prepared.’

‘’Cause I spoke the truth,’ she said, her eyes remaining on the purse, not on the blade he hid in the folds of his cloak.

He walked slowly to her, raised the purse so it raised her eyes and exposed her neck. Her hands reached—and then...something that he had never done before. Something he was unprepared for: he hesitated.

The servant registered the blade and attacked with outstretched claws across his cheek. Feeling the sting, he turned the hilt and struck her across the head.

She collapsed to the floor like another bloodied rag. He stared at her incredulously as her chest rose and fell, as blood trickled from her temple. He hadn’t killed her. He always killed them.

The woman on the bench gasped. Another flinch, another prostrating of her body, this time towards the child propped up between the bench and her. She truly was trying to protect the child.

‘Please,’ she pleaded. ‘Don’t.

He turned the hilt, aimed the dagger towards the deceitful servant. Willed his hand to complete the deed. For his own survival, he shouldn’t leave witnesses. But he couldn’t do it. Angry, he whirled on the other woman, but his eyes went to the babe.

Was it because of this child he held his hand?

‘Don’t take the child?’ he bit out. ‘You think I want her?’ At some point, they all begged and pleaded with him for mercy. He never gave it. He shouldn’t be giving it now.

Walking away was still an option. He could tie the servant up, drag her to some more disreputable area of town with coin in her lap. Let the vultures there complete what he should have done.

The noblewoman looked soon for the grave and the child, far too young to escape this tomb of a house, would die, too. He should leave. Instead he asked questions.

‘What can I tie her with?’

Her brows drew in. ‘There might be...tassels, by the curtains.’

Did she not see the condition of the house? No tassels were left. But the worn curtains he ripped clear across, the fraying silk tearing easily. Used correctly, it would suffice to immobilise the servant.

Pointing at the servant, he said, ‘Does she know who I am?’

The woman gave a small shake.

‘Does. She. Know?’

‘I don’t know how she found you. I never wanted her to find you. I never wanted my child to be yours. You don’t deserve—’ She gasped for breath. Slumped. Her eyes closed. He watched her chest still for a moment before beginning again. When she opened her eyes, they were mere slits.

She couldn’t finish her words, but he understood all the same. That she didn’t want him to discover the child, that he didn’t deserve her.

How would she know he deserved no one? Who told her who his family was? Whoever it was had to die as well. ‘Who are you?’

‘Handmaiden,’ she whispered.

To the Queen. She was as high born as possible without being a ruler herself. He knew she must have some noble blood, had figured her for an unwanted bastard. But she had been more. She had been one of the influential ones and she had fallen to this?

More importantly, if she was close to the Queen, she knew his family. Knew his wealth, his power, knew everything.

He grabbed the gown of the servant, who jerked awake. Her eyes, registering his presence, widened before she fought him. ‘Cease!’ he ordered.

She clawed at his hands, kicked. Laughed. ‘Hit me, did you? You’ll pay for that.’

He dragged her to the iron railing. ‘I’ll pay for nothing.’

‘Cilla,’ the noblewoman whispered.

He grasped her hands to tie the ripped silk curtain around her wrists.

‘You’ll pay,’ Cilla sneered. ‘You’ll pay or your daughter will never be safe from—’

The slice across the servant’s neck was clean, precise. A mere splattering of her blood and it was over. His hand holding the dagger remained steady as he wiped the blood off with the servant’s gown.

The woman on the bench was silent, but Reynold felt her shocked eyes on him. Knew the child was awake and watching him as well.

‘You knew all along who I was,’ he said, sheathing the dagger and standing to his full height. His eyes stayed only on the corpse at his feet as a familiar weariness overtook him. He was so tired of killing.

‘I...’ she said. He swung his gaze to hers. They widened in fear as they should. He didn’t care what she saw in his eyes. She wouldn’t live long enough to tell.

‘I saw...you at court,’ she said, licking her lips. ‘Then in the carriage.’

No one had told her who he was...and she had told no one who he was. Even as she carried his child. While she couldn’t earn coin, while she grew sick. A hint to his family and that child, squashed between her rotting body and the mouldy bench, would have been used against him.

Everyone was alive, so he knew she had told no one of this child because she didn’t want anyone to know it was... It was—

Two steps over and he snatched the child. No cries, no sounds. Was it mute? Was it deaf? It was aware, as he was in that moment. Dim light, but enough to see what he thought he never would. Grey eyes. Black hair. A girl by all accounts. But his.

His.

An almost keening sound burst from deep in his chest. One he barely held in check. But the emotion was there and it flooded him, made his knees weak and he locked them tight. If he fell.... Below his feet was the blood of sickness and human waste.

His child wouldn’t touch any of this. Shouldn’t be touching him, but he couldn’t let her go. Now that he held her, now that he knew the truth. That hope, that longing, coiled around his blackened heart. Everything within him changed.

His.

This child...this child was vulnerable. To him, to the elements, to his family. To the sickness saturated into the air they breathed.

‘Foolish woman!’

He could kill her for risking his life, for risking his child’s. Was his reputation so horrific she thought this was better?

The answer was obvious. Of course she did—and perhaps she was right. Death was here, but it was an honest one. He hadn’t been honest since he was a babe. All softer emotions were wrenched from him. They had been replaced with survival, and tricks, and games and weapons a long time ago.

‘What is her name?’

Brows drawn in. ‘You...are different.’

Over several years, he’d threatened many, killed more than that. Relished his brother’s murder by another’s hand. Black deeds left scars visible to all.

‘You...wanted to spare her.’

The servant. ‘A ridiculous lie,’ he lied.

‘You want to keep...’ a harsh breath ‘...the name I gave her. Different. You never asked for mine. It’s Grace,’ she whispered.

For the first time, he looked at the child he held. Grey eyes absorbing him. No greed, no cruelty. Nothing of his life or her mother’s affecting her. Yet she watched him. Watched him. Grace. Yes, the name was hers.

‘I’ll send a healer,’ he said, having no intention of returning.

The woman released a defeated sound. It was as grief stricken as the sounds he heard before she knew he was here. Before she knew he’d come to take the child.

‘No,’ she said, one hand raised to stop him. ‘Take me.’

A rustling and she pushed the blankets covering her to the floor.

He was accosted by the sight, by the smell. This was the decay, not the house or the chamber pot or the bloody coughs. The decay was her flesh decomposing while she still lived.

She wanted him to kill her. Before he could check himself, he glanced at the servant.

Her eyes widened as she took in his hesitancy. ‘You...can’t?’

Of course he could. He needed to. It was...the child. He didn’t want to kill in front of her.

‘You’d let me suffer?’

Legs, shredded. Mere holes to her bones. She was no more than a corpse still alive. And she was in so much pain. Why was he caring?

‘No one,’ she repeated, ‘can save me.’

No. No, they couldn’t.

‘I need you to kill me. What will you tell her? That you let me die...in agony?’

For the first time in years, Reynold’s heart sped in indecision. For once, he felt torn between what he should do and what he wanted to do.

He had hesitated killing the servant. He didn’t want to kill this child’s mother. Both were necessary if he wanted to truly protect himself and Grace from his family’s revenge.

‘You have Grace. Now do what—’ a wheezing breath ‘—you came to do.’

Keeping a child wasn’t what he came to do. Cleverly constructed life, carefully planned so his game could be played out.

‘I came to kill you, the servant and the babe.’ He said the words, but there was no heat in them.

‘You won’t kill her,’ she wheezed again. ‘You know...her name. Kill me.’

Grace. The name fit, just as the child fit in his arms. His child. Setting her on a broken chair, away from the rags, far from the spilled refuse. As far away from the stench of decay, from the heap of a crumpled corpse, from the death of her mother.

A child. So young. And though they’d just met, he hadn’t protected her from the darkest parts of his life, from the stench of avarice, greed, fear.

Grace had watched it with her grey eyes. Absorbed it as she would his final act of the night. The act of taking her away from the mother who loved her.

That soft expression, that comforting hand on her bared head and the sobbing from before when she thought her child gone forever. This woman loved her child enough to protect her against him.

He straightened and took the few steps to the bench. Loomed over her as Death with a scythe. This woman, this stranger, laid still. No flinching to flee, no cries of mercy or coughing because her battered soul and body knew their suffering was about to end.

There were no more words to say. There were no answers and the longer the child was in this house, the more chance for her to fall ill. For him as well.

He held the blade up so the glint of the waning moonlight through the windows played with it; so she’d know his purpose. She kept her eyes on him, bent her neck to give him access. To make the blade cut cleaner, more swiftly. This way, if he chose, he could make it painless.

His hand trembled.

The woman’s eyes flashed with alarm, hatred. ‘Do it!’

He adjusted his grip.

‘I intended to keep her from you,’ she panted. ‘Denied forever. Your child. Denied her. Grace.’

His body changed. He had the child, vulnerable, exposed to his family, to the elements. To this woman who couldn’t care for her. But for a greedy servant, he’d never have known she existed. A child. His. A family he wanted and she had meant to keep from him. Hatred coursed and burned in his veins. Familiar. Needed. His hand steadied. Seething rage. Unfettered malevolence and he let this noblewoman see it all.

‘You monster.’ She spat blood. Her head lolled to the side. Her eyes full of anger, of relief, closed. She’d asked for mercy and he gave her death.

‘Yes, yes, I am.’ He raised the knife and held.

The woman before him was already dead.

Chapter Four

One stroll through the marketplace and it was all too easy to discover the baker whose loaves were stolen. Gabriel picked his place well if he wanted to escape with four loaves. It was in the busiest part of the market and one of the more luxurious stalls with actual shelves carved like animals. The loaves of bread left were golden, baked from the finest of flours and artfully displayed. The baker’s design was clear though the morning light was dim.

She’d walked past this particular stall many times to smell the honey used in each loaf. Never, ever would she had thought to be in possession of them or how the loaves must have smelled to a starving child.

Why hadn’t Gabriel taken from one of the smaller venders where she stood a chance to negotiate? There would be no negotiating here.

Not with the crowd forming or with the owner waving the loaves. Not with his words describing Gabriel to the watch guards, who even now pointed in different directions.

Gabriel had stolen the fresh loaves while they were being unloaded from cart to stall when it was dark. But it had taken too long to travel from the bridge and now the day was dawning. Early patrons were there and they adored a spectacle as much as fresh bread. Gabriel could never scamper through the market again and they had months to go before the worst of the weather changed.

If caught, he wouldn’t survive again. He’d already lost an ear and, though it was unusual, his hearing in that ear as well. To lose another and possibly never hear anything? She couldn’t suffer it.

It was up to her to make amends. Once she was out of the shadows, the baker would notice his loaves and so would the guards. If they didn’t accept her apology and offer of free work, she’d be sent to gaol, to the gallows, could lose her ear or hand. Any of those scenarios were unacceptable. She had three people depending on her now. She made a promise to return.

However, if she didn’t return the loaves they’d search for Gabriel. He couldn’t hide forever. With one ear missing, he was unmistakable. And since he was a known thief his punishment would be worse.

A child’s future or hers?

There wasn’t a question.

She stepped out of the building’s shadows.

A few hours to return to the house and for Reynold to notify the most loyal of mercenaries of what must be done with the bodies.

By the time morning arrived Reynold was back to staring out of the window at the top of the building. Everything was as it had been before the servant approached him. Everything except the child who slept in his arms. Both of them needed washing. But not yet. Much time had gone by since he left in the late evening and nothing now could be left to chance.

He had to think. To plan, to add another factor to his games. Perhaps the most important one and he was already pressed for time. Time was his only true enemy. Not because of his death. That was a certainty since he’d been born to a father who had killed his brother. Since his own brothers intended to kill him.

Time was his enemy because his plan depended on it. Assignations. Manipulations. Hiding, concealing, enquiring after legends. All these matters required time, a schedule, which was why he hid in one home after another. Always hiding while he played his games. He was close to securing victory over his family this last year when an Englishman bungled the capture of the treasure, the Jewel of Kings, a legend much like Excalibur. Except the gem was real and his family wanted it very much.

He thought the Englishman a clever foe, but he was only a fool. A dead fool when he was found by his family. And so he remained ahead in the game, for only he knew the legend’s true worth. Only he kept track of all the players in the game so he kept his advantage.

Until then the child, Grace, could not exist. This child was his, he did not want to let her go, yet he could not claim her. To claim her would spell her death. At least outside the walls of his home, he needed an alternative to him. Dark hair, grey eyes. Every feature of a Warstone and some that were his own.

Had he been this quiet at her age? He couldn’t remember. She hadn’t clung to her mother, to Cilla. She hadn’t cried out. Just kept those eyes open, absorbing everything. Depending on no one, observing all.

‘You like the shadows, too, my girl? You like to watch. So do I.’ How many times had he stood in darkened hallways and around shadowed corners? As a boy for protection, to wait and see if the room was clear and safe, and later to listen to private conversations.

But she was only a child. His child. A liability. A gift. His greatest weakness. His mind never found problems, but for once he could think of no solutions.

A commotion in the marketplace caught his eye. The baker, Ido, was making a fuss again. The man thought his loaves of bread were sanctified by God. They were good, but not divine. He knew of one baker in a village south-east of Paris, where the loaves were superior.

A large crowd was forming. This was more than Ido being cross over an opinion of his bread, much more than being shortchanged coin. A brute of a watch guard clenched the arm of a thin black-haired woman. In front of them, Ido was brandishing two loaves at her as if they were weapons. The woman was pulling, trying to get away. A theft.

Commonplace, barely worth his notice. But he knew immediately, incredibly, what it was: a solution.

With rapid strides, he swung the door to his room open and gave the guards outside precise instructions and his bag of coin.

‘Let me go!’ Aliette yanked her arm to ease the manacled grip of the guard who held it. After her feeble attempts he tightened it. She’d been concerned with bruises, now she was terrified he’d tear her arm away.

It had been years since she’d been caught. It had hurt then, too. But when she left the shadows and approached the stall, her attention had been on the baker. The guard had caught her by surprise. A deadly mistake.

‘I’ve returned the loaves,’ she said.

‘Ruined!’ The baker hoisted the loaves over his head and made a slow turn. It was a gesture for the growing crowd. ‘I can’t feed these to pigs now!’

There were hungry, barely clothed children who were eagerly in position in case he dropped or tossed that ruined bountiful bread.

She should have kept them. But she thought it early enough that she could return them without him knowing. What she hadn’t been aware of was the baker had already reported it to the guard, who dragged her across the market to confirm the loaves...and thus confirm the thief.

Very fine loaves, and an extremely arrogant baker. She was a woman grown and felt the scrutiny of shoppers. Gabriel would have been in tears with no chance to negotiate.

‘They’re not ruined. I returned them and I’ll work for the other two.’

‘Other two? I’m missing four loaves this morning. Four! And these...things! I’ll never accept bread from your filthy fingers! If I sold it, I’d be ruined as much as these loaves!’ He waved them again. A section fell to the ground and disappeared.

It wasn’t true that Gabriel stole four, but with the bruising grip of the guard and the salivating baker, it wasn’t the time to argue. ‘I’ll work for the others as well.’

‘You’ll go to gaol,’ the watch guard said.

‘Cut off her hands now!’ Ido said. ‘Gaol is too kind for one such as her.’

‘No. Please! I meant no—’

The crowd parted and two men silently approached. One whispered low and heatedly in the guard’s ear. The other flanked her right side. Neither touched her, nor gazed at the crowd. Neither acknowledged the abruptly silent baker. The men were identically dressed, hair identically cut. Their size the same, their build the same. Their manners the same. If not for the colour of their hair and eyes, she’d think them twins.

Hired mercenaries, but for whom?

A look at Ido told her much. His face unearthly pale, mangled bread fell from his hands to disappear before it hit the ground.

‘See here.’ Ido looked from one man to the other. He looked to the crowd who had backed several paces away. Some of them continued to jeer. Others had gone quiet or vanished.

‘I didn’t know she was part of his house,’ Ido said. ‘I have no grief with his house.’ He scampered to shelved loaves and proffered several to her. ‘Take these if you wish. They are the best I made today.’

The guard let her go. Startled, Aliette gaped as the mercenary gave him a small bag with the unmistakable jingle of coin. Without a backward glance he walked away.

But the mercenaries stepped closer to her. She couldn’t run. The crowd that was left stood solid at her back, their attention on the baker who looked as if his hand was to be chopped.

‘I was mistaken.’ Sweating, Ido was almost stabbing her with the loaves he held. ‘Take these. They’re yours for free. Tomorrow’s as well.’

‘I don’t want them. I told you, I’ll work for the ones already eaten. Free me and I’ll work twice what those loaves are worth.’

Ido stepped back. ‘Free you. I can’t—’

The men snatched the loaves in one hand and took her arms in the other.

‘Wait! Who are—? Please!’

They dragged her away from the baker’s stall. She yanked and fought, but these men weren’t a fattened guard or an even fatter baker. These men were warriors. Deadly. Paid well, with weaponry tucked at their waists.

‘Where are you taking me?’

They didn’t answer. Panic set in. She’d been worried to go to gaol, for her arm, for her hand. For Gabriel. But this was far worse. In gaol, there were people to plead with, to beg for mercy. These mercenaries dragged her away from anything she knew to take her somewhere she didn’t know. She’d made promises!

Stomping on a foot caused one mercenary to curse in surprise, the other swiftly wrenched her arm behind her back and brought her to her knees.

Sharp agony in her shoulder and she cried out. The other mercenary gripped her assailant’s arm until the wrenching eased, but not enough for her to break his hold. Just enough to be aware of the two men over her, and others walking by, but not offering help.

She was in trouble. The kind with consequences she couldn’t return from. The men didn’t talk, but maybe she could talk to them. ‘I need to return. Please, I don’t want to do this.’

Nothing, although the second mercenary didn’t ease his grip from his comrade.

‘At least...tell me what you want to do with me.’

Silence while she was held down, while she heard the regular sounds of the marketplace. Shoppers going about their day while hers was turned upside down.

‘Please—’

‘Orders will be followed,’ the kinder one said.

She waited for him to explain, but he offered nothing else. No words that all would be well, or what would happen when they arrived at whatever destination they took her to. All she knew was that these men weren’t from this city. As large as it was, she would have noticed them before now, and she wasn’t sure they were French because the accent was strange. Yet she was to go with them, away from Gabriel, Helewise and Vernon.

What were the alternatives? None. Slowly she stood again, but now her knees and arm throbbed. On and on they threaded her through the parting crowd.

Around the stalls and a building or two until they abruptly stopped at large double doors. It was one of the many tall residences in the area that overlooked the market.

‘This isn’t my home.’ She wrenched her arm. If she entered, she feared she’d never return. ‘Let me go.’

The doors in front of them remained closed. The men remained still, waiting for something.

For what? This wasn’t a grand home that had servants. It wasn’t in much better condition than the boarded house she occupied.

But the men flanking her were rich, or at least well provided for, and they had parted with that bag of coin as though it was simply a loaf of bread. The owner of such men should have had a great estate or, if in town, a residence in the more luxurious boroughs.

Two other men opened the great doors and her captors marched her through the entrance. The house was larger than it looked from outside. As if one house was constructed to appear like many. Gawking, she was walked through a courtyard. More men swiftly crossing the small space as if they had great distances to go, or important matters to attend.

The home was a crumbling palace and a battalion occupied it. All mercenaries, all men. There was only one commodity she had that would be of any use to them. One commodity that she fought to protect ever since it was the only thing she was left with: herself.

‘No!’ she called out.

Some men looked their way, but none paused in their duties.

When she dug her heels in, her capturers tossed their bread loaves to men around them and bodily carried her to another large door that was opened effortlessly by others. Nothing in this small room but stone and a staircase that looked new.

Up and up, her feet hitting each stair until they reached the landing. There they released her and she flexed her tingling fingers.

‘Now what?’

Neither said anything, but both blocked the stairway down.

A short landing, nothing but three closed doors. Two at her front and another to her left.

‘I’m to go through those?’ She pointed to the ones at her front.

Again, silence.

A few stolen bread loaves had brought her to this dark door. Bread she hadn’t eaten so she was hungry. Scared. But if going forward meant getting this day over with and back to Gabriel as she promised, it was what she would do.

Releasing the latch, she stepped into the room. The men behind her closed it.

Then there was only her. And a man cradling a child.

Chapter Five

Reynold did not wait to turn as he had with the wench before. He needed to know immediately if the thief he’d spotted at the market would suit his purposes.

If not, he’d have his men march her to gaol and start again. So he turned, expecting no more or less than what he always expected. Except... Something was different.

Maybe it was the night of no sleep, that underneath it all he felt his hand still tremble at a killing he couldn’t complete and one he didn’t want to make. Last night had shaken him and he’d altered his course from past deeds because he had Grace, who remained quiet and watchful.

It was different and he blamed the child in his arms for his reaction to the woman in front of him. Standing still, remaining quiet, letting her gauge him as a man with her large eyes.

What did she see? Dirt, blood, his weariness. Running, always running, and last night his mind unable to let him sleep since he held his greatest vulnerability. He didn’t have the advantage he usually desired.

He never allowed strangers to simply stare at him. Customarily, he hid in corridors or corners and waited to emerge. He liked watching. The waiting made the person he watched reveal more than they wanted to.

Most never knew he was inspecting their mannerisms for weaknesses as they paced and twitched. As they lifted his enamel boxes off his tables or inspected his books. When he’d eventually emerge, to hide their moment of vulnerability they’d cover their shock with spilling words.

There’d been an exception to this once. Not so long ago, a maiden, scarred and far too loyal to another knight, taunted him out of the shadows, but she was a rarity. He knew immediately that this woman in front would also be an exception. How she would, he didn’t know, because he’d been foolish.

For a while he ruminated on his situation and last night. He’d been standing in front of her, so that he was fully exposed to her, revealing his weaknesses and vulnerabilities. It was time to inspect her in turn.

She reminded him of a pixie. Despite the years of filth marring her skin and dishevelled clothes, everything about her was delicate and frail. The only abundance was the length of her thick wavy black hair, bound in an irregular plait, and the freckles across her nose.

If there wasn’t such poignant awareness in her large eyes and the tell-tale sign of soft curves under her threadbare gown, he’d mistake her for a child instead of a woman grown.

Her eyes were not dark as he’d thought. Blue? Difficult to tell with the curtains closed in this room. But her hair was so dark it was almost as dark as his own. This would be useful when it came to his daughter, to his plan.

There were questions in her eyes. Fear, too, but not the sort he was used to. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but she wasn’t skittish as though she worried about her own life. Another’s, perhaps. He’d seen that once before.

She was quiet, which surprised him, as she made a perusal of him, of Grace in his arms, and then her eyes took in the room.

His favourite room filled with tapestries, silks, comforts and stacks of books. Because it was hard on the bindings and parchment, he never placed the books upright if there were enough tables to support them. As his only true family, he liked to take great care with them.

Her eyes didn’t gleam with greed as Cilla’s or with awe. Instead, she looked curious. He should have met this thief in one of the bare rooms on the other side of the house. A room that wouldn’t have revealed anything of himself. She now knew more of him then he of her. Since the fateful day he’d overheard his family’s intentions to kill him, he’d never revealed anything of himself.

It was the child in his arms. Any act he did from this point on wouldn’t be as he had done in the past. The game had changed.

Another turn of her gaze around the room. Another one of him. ‘Why have you brought me here?’ she said.

Her voice. Direct with an elegant lilt to her words. A common demeaned thief should have spoken with guttural accent like Cilla. Instead, she held almost a cultured accent that both intrigued and confounded him. It was a boon. A dark-haired woman with a pleasing accent and desperate to survive. He didn’t deserve it, but Fortune favoured him greatly this morning.

Aliette had been afraid of only one thing her entire life. Darkness. As a child, she knew shadows hid bad people. As an adult, she avoided them for in a building’s crevice was inevitably a man with a knife. Around a corner would be a guard or a hand to grab what food she’d scavenged.

At night, when Darkness came, she huddled in whatever sliver of moonlight she could under her bridge. Night was always worse, for she’d fall asleep and remember that, when she woke one morning, her family had left her in the night.

Darkness was cruel. And though logically Aliette knew the man before her stood in daylight, his surroundings were clear and every feature of him was there for her to see, every instinct in her clamoured the opposite.

This man before her was shadow and night. He was Darkness.

Dishevelled raven hair, dark tailored clothing and a black gaze lit with a feral light. He was clutching a child wrapped in a tattered white gown that drooped almost to the floor.

Blood. Unmistakably blood was streaked across his clothing and his cheeks. Mud splattered along his breeches, his arms and thickly encrusted on his boots as if he had tromped through freshly turned graves.

The child’s crumpled swaddling was also streaked with dirt and blood, and it remained unnaturally quiet and still. As if it was dead...or pretending to be. She couldn’t see its face for the man held it far too tightly to his chest.

Would it escape if he eased his grip? Perhaps it was a changeling he’d dug up for some ritual.

The room was no comfort from her thoughts. The sumptuous surrounding only confirmed her certainty that this man was Darkness. For Darkness was powerful and encompassed everything. Perhaps kings could surround themselves with such opulence, but she couldn’t imagine they possessed such extravagance as this man.

Too long had it been since she had been to church, but she fervently wished she was there now so she could beg for sanctuary and stand under a hundred candles. To beg for Helewise, Vernon and Gabriel as well, though they weren’t in this room with her.

For she had feared Darkness all her life and finally he bared himself to her. His ruthlessness apparent in the savage edges of his cheeks and square of his jaw. His arrogance drawn by the refinement of his nose and arch of his brow. But the eddying dark grey of his eyes, the lush frame of lashes and soft curve of his mouth bore him a cruel beauty. If this was how Darkness deemed to personify itself, it wasn’t safe for any of them.

Because Darkness enticed.

‘Why have I brought you here?’ he said. ‘It is an interesting question that you ask.’

Fanciful thoughts she couldn’t stop that beat with the hammering of her heart. The low rumble of his voice did nothing to help her. Neither did the fact he found the question on whether she lived or died interesting.

‘An important one, I think,’ she said.

One brow raised. ‘Extremely, but most do not dare ask it.’

The others he brought to his lair? Aliette shook herself to stop her errant thoughts. She wasn’t a child anymore, and this was daylight. Despite the warning hairs on her neck, he could be no more or less than a mere man with a child. Mud, blood and gold aside, he was human and not the most important one in her life. Gabriel, Helewise and Vernon were above such fears. She needed to, she must, return to them. Whatever this man wanted, she wanted it over. She’d been gone long enough. Gabriel might leave the house and search for her. If so, Ido could snatch him for gaol.

‘Whatever it is you want of me, tell me now and have done with it.’

‘So much haste.’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but not for my death.’

A quirk to his lips. ‘Most of us aren’t hasty for death.’

Us. He wasn’t Darkness. Of course he wasn’t. But he was dangerous. He had enough wealth and power to drag her here with no interference.

‘Why am I here?’ she repeated.

He adjusted the child in his arms. She saw tiny fingers curl, but little else. For a child, it was unnaturally quiet.

‘Do you have a family?’

She couldn’t answer that and remain safe.

His brow rose at her silence. ‘Do you have a father? And a mother?’

This was personal. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘You keep asking me questions...thief.’

She couldn’t have heard him correctly. Surely this wasn’t about something so trivial as the baker. ‘Were those your loaves of bread?’

‘Parents. Answer me.’

She shook her head. ‘No parents. Is this over the bread? Did you watch me take it?’

‘I watched you being caught.’

Relief that he hadn’t seen Gabriel steal gave her courage to ask more questions. ‘And that had you bring me here.’

‘You know what would have happened to you if that watch guard took you away?’

‘Do I look a fool?’

‘You’re the one caught for mere bread—perhaps you didn’t know the consequences.’

Living the way she had all her life, she always knew the consequences. ‘It’s not mere bread when it means life and death.’

‘Ah, yes, the important question. I don’t want your death.’

‘Rape, then.’

A curl to his lips as if she insulted him.

‘I’m a woman. You’re a man. Why else did you force me here?’

‘Not. That.’

His answer was short, curt, the tone as if he found her question distasteful.

Aliette refused to be embarrassed. She was poor, street born and bred, her clothes barely serviceable. But some of it she purposefully created. She needed to smell, to grind dirt into her skin and clothes to deflect leers and lust. Life would have been easier if she was a boy. When she’d become old enough she’d thought to disguise herself, but by then she was all too easily recognised. So a girl, now a woman, she remained.

She should be pleased her filthy appearance worked as it had all her life. He didn’t want her death, or her body, and he purposefully saved her from gaol and losing her hand.

‘In truth, what—?’ he began to ask.

‘Why are you holding the child?’ she interrupted.

Chapter Six

He looked perplexed. ‘Because I have not put her down.’

A girl. Aliette had no reason to trust he wouldn’t harm her, but he had held his hand so far and it was enough for her to truly pay attention to the man before her...and the child. ‘What’s wrong with her?’

Alarm crossed his strong features. ‘Nothing.’

‘She’s too quiet. Is she asleep?’

He looked down at her. ‘Her eyes are at half-mast.’

Awake, but listless. ‘Is she with fever? Sick? Has she spit up?’

‘I don’t—’

She took a step forward and raised her arms. ‘Give me that child.’

‘No.’

He said the single word so evenly and decisively it was as a sword striking down.

It stopped her short, her arms outstretched, her stepping foot braced in the air.

‘You may not take her,’ he said.

Where were her finely honed survival instincts? This was not a man to be ordered about. She lowered her arms and foot and stepped back. ‘I only meant—’

‘Save me from well meaning intentions,’ he said sardonically. ‘That’s not why you’re here.’

She could not keep her eyes only on the man. She was a fool. Maybe he was Darkness. But for some reason, instead of heeding the warning in his expression, in his words and deeds, she stupidly took her eyes away from him.

It was the child. Jarringly innocent in this darkened luxurious room, a clamouring instinct had welled up and overtook her good sense.

If she survived this, she’d blame Helewise and Vernon. Gabriel as well, for he was frequently sick and needed her care. He’d been unused to street fare and exposure. It had taken him weeks to toughen to the degree he had.

‘You haven’t told me why I’m here.’

‘I will, in my time.’

‘In the meantime—’ She couldn’t let it go. It was unwell; she was certain of it. Maybe it was the fact she had been a neglected child, or maybe it was the care of Helewise and Vernon that compelled her. Either way, she asked, ‘Is the child yours?’

He swiped a dagger from his waist. If she had taken those steps towards him, it would be buried in her belly.

‘Why do you keep asking me questions about the child?’

‘You’re...’ she swallowed ‘...you’re holding her in front of me.’

The blade looked well used and fit easily in his hand. It was a weapon this man had used many times before. He held still. So did she.

‘The child isn’t mine,’ he answered, watching her watch the blade.

Her entire life she’d lived with Death and his scythe. If it wasn’t the icy cold of winter trying to kill her, it was another person trying to survive. When threatened, she’d learned it was always the person behind the weapon she should be wary of. But this man wasn’t like another thief on the streets trying to steal a blanket. This man didn’t pull his blade to take something from her, for she had nothing. He pulled the blade because she asked about the child. He did it to protect the child—from her.

Fear from being kidnapped swirled with her usual mistrust. But his deeds ceased every emotion in her. She’d never seen a person defend a child before. Not like this. Certainly never her own parents and even a mother with a suckling infant put the infant aside if there was food to be had or a customer to pull up her skirts for.

Five winters past, it had been bitterly cold and she had come across what she thought were wadded-up old blankets. But instead of a treasure, it was a swaddled baby. Frozen, its skin pale, lips blue, with ice feathering along its tiny eyelashes. She’d cried for days afterwards. The babe haunted her dreams still. To this day she avoided that part of town in winter and found herself wary of piles in corners.

But Darkness drew a blade for a child who he awkwardly held and something ripped through her chest. She couldn’t breathe right.

‘You’ve gone pale,’ he said, sheathing the dagger. ‘Are you fainting?’

She felt far away. As if she was here, yet not in the same place she was before. As if she recognised everything, but nothing was the same. Because Darkness guarded a child from harm.

She swallowed. ‘Have you...have you ever taken care of a child before?’

‘No.’

‘Can you put her down?’

His smile curved cruelly. ‘Are you ordering me?’

He said it as though she was an insect who could talk. ‘I’m not ordering you. I...simply want to see her.’

He did a double take. Another. A cant to his head, waiting for something.

She wasn’t about to do anything else. This was enough and he made it clear it was too much. Never trusting anyone, she shouldn’t care about anything other than getting as far away as possible from this madman.

This killer. Who happened to cradle a child and was overly protective about her. But the child was too quiet. Aliette needed to see her.

‘You can place her over there, unwrap her and I can see her from a distance.’

‘You know something of children?’

‘Is that why I’m here?’

‘Hmm.’ He took two strides forward. So swiftly she braced herself for a curled fist. It didn’t come. Instead, he held the child towards her. ‘She feels warm.’

‘All children feel warm if you hold them too long.’

She took the child who, despite her length, was light, and carefully unwrapped the swaddling.

Thin, gaunt cheeks. Bone-like arms, a swollen stomach and sunken hip bones.

‘How old is she?’

His brows drew in, his eyes searching the child as if asking her to answer. ‘Around a year.’

She did know something of children and this condition, she knew it very well. Thin, emaciated. Greyish skin. Listless. An unwise anger swept through her. ‘She’s—’

‘Yes.’

‘She’s...hungry,’ she blurted. ‘You’re starving her! When was the last time she ate?’

At his mystified look, she demanded, ‘Did you give her something to drink?’

Lips clamped shut and his eyes narrowed.

‘You haven’t fed her, or given her a drink? Has she been crying? Restless?’

Another bout of silence. Aliette had no patience with it. Maybe the wealthy had time for waiting, but if she stalled or waited for anything she’d have starved to death. ‘She needs oats or bread all warmed with milk and honey.’

‘You want me,’ he said in that terrifyingly even voice of his, ‘to provide that for you.’

‘I don’t know this place. These men don’t follow my orders. How else am I to get it?’

‘This isn’t—’

‘Whatever you want of me, I won’t do it, not when this child needs me.’

He looked to the child and to her. He looked to argue, the superiority of his expression one she’d seen many times when a shopkeeper thought to abuse a street urchin. She stared him down. If he meant to kick or strike her, he could join the others. She’d survived many such blows over the years.

If he intended to kill her, there was nothing she could do to defend herself, though she’d try to protect the child first. But if this was her day to die, it was simply like every day she ever lived. In truth, she wasn’t meant to have made it this long.

With another narrowed gaze, he pivoted towards the door, but not before she saw a flare of victory in his eyes.

What he thought he’d won Aliette didn’t care about, as long as the child had what she needed. She’d seen enough suffering in her lifetime—the fact that this child was surrounded by gold and silk and was still hungry she couldn’t tolerate.

Reynold left the room and closed the door. The two men who had escorted the thief were on the other side and he gave them the unusual tasks. If they wondered about the requests, they didn’t ask. He paid them not to question. Although one of them looked behind him. To see if the thief was unharmed? He would have to be dealt with later.

When they marched down the stairs, he turned to go back into the room, but stopped. The door was partially closed and the thief wasn’t looking his way, her attention fully on the child in her arms.

She was doing this walking, swinging motion and singing softly.

The morning sun filtered through the unwashed windowpanes delicately lighting its two occupants, the shimmering reds and greens of tufted cushions and the rich browns of well-polished carved furniture.

The woman was slight, not much more substantial than the babe she held. Her clothes were an odd, but practical mixture of layers. Two coarse surcoats, one much shorter than the other, over a thick, overly large chemise. She had no gown and her shoes had distinct holes. Grace’s greying swaddling dragged on the floor as the thief swept them from side to side. Both were slight, filthy, their clothes unkempt.

The room was small and the subtle distinct tang of abject homelessness, blood and fresh dirt clashed with the resonating fragrance of lavender and lemon, the warmed silk from the tapestries and the musty familiar perfume of his books.

But she was perfect. Everything about this was perfect. Hair that almost matched Grace’s and both appearing filthy from the streets. No parents to care for her. No one to suspect or question the child she held so carefully and sang to so beautifully was his.

Even more so now that her mothering instincts resurrected themselves. Against him, which both grated on and amused him.

The thief was the solution to keep Grace close to him. A woman of childbearing age in a desperate situation. She would be a servant to him and raise the child. He could then see Grace, keep her close through the years. And because the thief and Grace would be perceived as servants, his arrogant family wouldn’t perceive Grace as his greatest vulnerability.

He turned to the mercenaries taking the stairs behind him and instructed them to place the food for the babe, the woman and himself on an empty table. He’d propose to the thief what needed to be done and she would thank him profusely for saving her from gaol and poverty. It was all too easy.

Although...there was that one moment of lapse in his control which was concerning. Her request to take Grace catching him off guard. The blade was out of its sheath before he thought to draw it. An indication of how much he cared though he hadn’t had his daughter for a day.

Such action would be an anomaly from now on. People did not catch him unawares and now that he knew his feelings existed, he’d hold them in check so he didn’t reveal anything more. Until he dismantled his family, not even his daughter or the thief could know him.

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