Mick leaned forward. “I’ll not let ye drive me from me home, old man.”
Charlie’s eyelid drooped. “What makes you think you have any say-so in the matter, boy?”
Mick’s smile hardened. “What makes ye think I don’t?”
Charlie shrugged one shoulder—the other had scarring. “Might be because I know you’ve got your babe hid in that palace of yours—along with a woman called Silence Hollingbrook. I find that interesting, I do. Seems to me that it’d be a fair trade: your woman for my own.”
Mick shrugged himself as if Silence didn’t matter to him, but his heart had begun to beat in triple time. Of course the Vicar had found out about Silence. Of course he’d know that she was different simply because she’d stayed when none of his other women had.
“I never took yer woman,” Mick said.
“Aye, but you tried to.”
Mick raised an eyebrow. Charlie wasn’t making sense, but then he’d long known the man was mad.
“And that babe?” The Vicar tutted. “I hear she’s a sickly thing. Like to die soon. That must weigh upon your heart most sadly.”
Mick looked at the Vicar. He was such a small man for all the malice he held inside of him. Long ago Mick had wondered why Charlie was made the way he was. What had carved away all sympathy, all respect for other men. What had made him the vicious, violent bastard he was.
But he’d learned to stop wondering. It made no never mind why the Vicar was the way he was. As well to ask why a viper struck and killed for no reason. It was simply the way of nature.
“Ye know as well as I that I lost whatever heart I once had long ago,” Mick replied without emotion, a simple statement of fact. “If the babe lives, or if she dies, it makes no difference to me. I’ll still eat sweetmeats on the morrow and taste the sugar on me tongue, still fuck women and feel the pleasure in me bollocks. And, Charlie—mark me well, now—I’ll still kill ye and laugh in yer ugly face as I do it.”
He walked away then, carefully not looking at the new headstone with the tiny angel carved at the top. Lad glanced up from sniffing a weed and fell into step with Mick as he passed. The temptation to attack now was almost overwhelming. His hands, balled into fists by his side, shook with the urge to strike the older man and put an end to this once and for all.
But Charlie never went anywhere without a half dozen guards. One lounged behind a tree, another two stood by the wall, and the remaining three were out of sight, but Mick had no doubt that they were nearby. Strange. Only a year ago, he might’ve damned the guards and attacked Charlie anyway. Now, Mick had the knowledge at the back of his mind that if he failed, he’d not be there to protect Silence—Charlie was mad enough to revenge himself on Silence even if Mick were dead. The realization was not a pleasant one—that only he stood between Charlie and Silence.
He nodded ironically to one of the Vicar’s men stationed at the churchyard gate as he passed by. Six men could overwhelm him, he supposed, if the Vicar chose to attack now, but that wasn’t the man’s way. Charlie preferred the indirect hit, the slow poison that systematically destroyed a person before they were even dead.
Mick halted in the middle of the street and threw back his head to gaze at the blue sky overhead. It was going to be a rare clear day in London, the sun shining so brightly one could almost believe in a God and all his angels, of a mother’s love and a boy’s innocent dreams. He closed his eyes and saw her brown eyes, sad and defeated and filled with tears as she’d sung to him.
Take me in your arms, my love
And blow the candle out.
A shouted curse made Mick open his eyes and spin to glare at a drover with a heard of sheep.
The man’s eyes widened and he was stuttering apologies even as Mick turned away. Mick walked the rest of the way home without conscious thought. When he got to his own door Lad trotted up the steps behind him. Mick shot him a look and for a moment the dog froze, one paw still lifted, and rolled his eyes sheepishly at him.
Mick sighed. “In with ye, then.”
Lad’s jaw dropped open in a grin and he happily capered into the palace.
“How were ye ever a bull-baitin’ dog?” Mick muttered to the animal as they tromped through the house. “The bulls must’ve laughed themselves silly when ye were thrown in the pit.”
Lad panted beside him happily, not a thought in his boneheaded brain.
They reached the upper floors and Mick strode down the hallway quietly. Bert was dozing outside Silence’s room, but straightened hastily as Mick neared.
“Are they awake?” Mick asked softly.
Bert blinked sleepily. “Fionnula left jus’ a minute ago to fetch some tea. I ’aven’t ’eard a peep.”
Mick nodded and entered his room, shrugging out of his coat and waistcoat. He preferred the freedom of just his shirt in his own home. He crossed to the connecting door and cracked it carefully, peering in. Silence lay on the bed, her form still, save for the slow rise and fall of her chest. He was about to shut the door again when a squeak came from the cot on the far side of the bed.
Mick was across the room in a second.
The child lay on her back, her eyes open, yawning sleepily. She saw him and her tiny pink lips trembled, her mouth turning down.
Mick frowned at her. “Hush.”
His admonishment had the opposite effect from what he intended. Her mouth opened and she let out a fretful wail.
Mick glanced at the bed. Silence hadn’t moved at the sound. She was exhausted from hours of nursing the brat. Fionnula had left the room and might not be back for some time, and Bert would be very little help.
Mick scowled at the toddler. “What d’ye want?”
She sobbed and lifted her arms to him.
He blinked, taken aback. Surely she didn’t want him. But another wail gave him very little choice.
He lifted the little girl from the cot, bringing her close to his chest as he’d seen Silence do. She was as light as feather down from one of his fine pillows. His chest wasn’t as soft as Silence’s, but the baby didn’t seem to mind. The fretful sounds stopped as she stuck a finger in her mouth and regarded him with wide brown eyes. Her eyelashes were spiked with tears, making them dark and long.
She’d be a beauty someday, he thought dispassionately, someone would have to guard her against the men who would be drawn to her. They’d swarm around her like bees to honey, wanting to lift her skirts, wanting to dishonor her, little caring of her feelings or who she was as a person. She’d be a piece of flesh to them, not a girl. Not someone’s beloved daughter.