Thief of Shadows (Maiden Lane #4)(3)

Isabel slumped back against the squabs and gave her lady’s maid a quick grin.

Half an hour later, the carriage was pulling up before her neat town house.

“Bring him inside,” she ordered Harold when he opened the doors.

He nodded wearily. “Yes, m’lady.”

“And, Harold?” Isabel descended the carriage, still clutching the sword.

“M’lady?”

“Well done. To both you and Will.” Isabel nodded to Will.

A shy grin split Harold’s broad, homely face. “Thank you, m’lady.”

Isabel permitted herself a small smile before she swept into her town house. Edmund, her dear, late husband, had bought Fairmont House for her shortly before he’d died and had gifted it to her on her twenty-eighth birthday. He’d known that the title and estates would go to a distant cousin and had wanted her properly settled with her own property, free of the entail.

Isabel had immediately redecorated on moving in four years ago. Now the entry hall was lined in warm golden oak panels. A parquet wood floor was underfoot, and here and there were items that amused her: a dainty pink-marble-topped table with gilded legs, a laughing boy faun holding a hare in black marble, and a small oval mirror edged in mother-of-pearl. All items she loved more for their form than their worth.

“Thank you, Butterman,” Isabel said as she tucked the sword under her arm and pulled off her gloves and hat, handing them to the butler. “I need a bedroom readied immediately.”

Butterman, like all her servants, was impeccably trained. He didn’t even blink an eye at the abrupt order—or the sword she carelessly held. “Yes, my lady. Will the blue room do?”

“Quite.”

Butterman snapped his fingers and a maid went hurrying up the stairs.

Isabel turned and watched as Harold and Will came in, carrying the Ghost between them. The Ghost’s floppy hat lay on his chest.

Butterman raised his eyebrow a fraction of an inch at the sight of the unconscious man, but merely said, “The blue room, Harold, if you please.”

“Yes, sir,” Harold panted.

“If you don’t mind, my lady,” Butterman murmured, “I believe Mrs. Butterman may be of assistance.”

“Yes, thank you, Butterman. Please send Mrs. Butterman up as quickly as possible.” Isabel followed the footmen up the stairs.

The maids were still turning back the sheets on the bed in the blue room when the footmen arrived with their burden, but the fire on the grate was lit.

Harold hesitated, probably because the Ghost was quite dirty and bloody, but Isabel gestured to the bed. The Ghost groaned as the footmen laid him on the spotless counterpane.

Isabel propped his sword in a corner of the room and hurried to his side. They were out of danger, but her pulse hadn’t slowed. She realized she was a bit excited by this odd turn of events. She’d rescued the Ghost of St. Giles. What had started as an ordinary, almost dull day had become a curious adventure.

The Ghost’s eyes were closed. He still wore his mask, though it was askew on his face. Carefully she lifted the thing over his head and was surprised to find underneath a thin black silk scarf covering the upper part of his face, from the bridge of his strong nose to his forehead. Two eyeholes had been cut into the material to make a second, thinner mask. She examined the harlequin’s mask in her hand. It was leather and stained black. High arching eyebrows and the curving grotesque nose gave the mask a satyr-like leer. She set it on a table by the bed and looked back at the Ghost. He lay limp and heavy on the bed. Blood stained his motley leggings above his black jackboots. She bit her lip. Some of the blood looked quite fresh.

“Butterman said ’twas a man injured,” Mrs. Butterman said as she bustled into the room. She went to the bed and stared at the Ghost a moment, hands on hips, before nodding decisively. “Well, nothing for it. We’ll need to undress him, my lady, and find out where the blood’s coming from.”

“Oh, of course,” Isabel said. She reached for the buttons of the Ghost’s fall as Mrs. Butterman began on the doublet.

Behind her, Isabel heard a gasp. “Oh, my lady!”

“What is it, Pinkney?” Isabel asked as she worked at a stubborn button. Blood had dried on the material, making it stiff.

“ ’Tisn’t proper for you to be doing such work.” Pinkney sounded as scandalized as if Isabel had proposed walking naked in Westminster Cathedral. “He’s a man.”

“I assure you I have seen a nude man before,” Isabel said mildly as she peeled back the man’s leggings. Underneath, his smallclothes were soaked in blood. Good God. Could a man lose so much blood and survive? She frowned in worry as she began working at the ties to his smallclothes.

“He has bruising on his shoulder and ribs and a few scrapes, but nothing to cause this much blood,” Mrs. Butterman reported as she spread the doublet wide and raised the Ghost’s shirt to his armpits

Isabel glanced up for a moment and froze. His chest was delineated with lean muscles, his nipples brown against his pale skin, with black, curling hair spreading between. His belly was hard and ridged, his navel entirely obscured by that same black, curling hair. Isabel blinked. She had seen a man—men, actually—naked, true, but Edmund had been in his sixth decade when he’d died and had certainly never looked like this. And the few, discreet lovers that she’d taken since Edmund’s death had been aristocrats—men of leisure. They’d hardly had more muscles than she. Her eye caught on the line of hair trailing down from his navel. It disappeared into his smallclothes.