Lord of the Beasts

Chapter One

London, 1847

THE WOMAN WAS BEAUTIFUL as no earthly creature could be, flawless in form and carriage, her hair cascading over her shoulders like Fane gold spun by a master weaver. The world of men had names for her kind: Fairy and Daoine Sidhe and Fair Folk among them—but no such description could begin to capture her radiant perfection. Her ivory face shone with a stern radiance that no mortal could gaze upon without recognizing that he was nothing but a low, wretched brute in the presence of divinity.

Donal wasn’t afraid, though Da had left him alone with the Queen of Tir-na-Nog. The man known by humans as Hartley Shaw—the Forest Lord, stag-horned master of the northern forests—had been cast out of the Blessed Land, driven away by his own mother because he would not give up his love for the mortal Eden Fleming. But now Queen Titania gazed down at her grandson and spoke, smothering the little spark of defiance Donal nursed in his six-year-old heart.

“Your father has made his choice,” she said, her voice sweeping over Donal like a blast of cold north wind. “But you are young, and your blood may yet serve your people.”

Donal had heard those same words a hundred times before, and always he gave the same answer. “I want to go home, with Da.” “Home.” Titania flicked her slender fingers, and silver leaves shook loose from the stately tree beneath which she stood. “The vile sty mortals have made of the good, green earth. That is what you return to, child.”

Though Donal knew there were many bad things in the world, he knew it was not as terrible as his grandmother said. Animals still ran free in the forest beyond the Gate. Ma and Da had seen to that. No matter what happened anywhere else in the land called England, Hartsmere would always be safe.

“But not for you,” Titania said. “Never for you, grandson. You will find no peace at your mother’s hearth. You will always be torn between two worlds, and your father’s choice will haunt you for as long as you live among mortals.” Her lovely face darkened as if a cloud had passed over the ever-shining sun of Tir-na-Nog. “Hear me, and remember. If ever you should love as my son loves…if ever you fall into the snare of a mortal female’s wiles…you will lose the gift that lifts you above the People of Iron. The voices of the beasts will vanish, and you will be alone. You will have nothing…nothing….

DONAL FLEMING WOKE with a start. The voice in his mind faded, and in its place rose the clamor and din of morning at the Covent Garden market.

Only a dream, he thought. Not a memory, real as it seemed…at least not his own. But Tod had been there on that terrible day twenty-five years ago, and the hob had told Donal the story so many times that Titania’s threat had become unquestionable fact.

Donal flung aside the coverlet and swung his legs over the side of the bed. He massaged his temples, seeking in vain to quiet the incessant noise that was inescapable in the vast metropolis called London. With a groan he set his bare feet on the faded carpet and staggered to the washbasin to splash his face with the tepid water that remained from the night before. The few drops that passed his lips tasted of the smoke and coal dust and grime that hung in the London air. He scrubbed his skin with the towel so thoughtfully provided by the hotel staff, but no amount of washing would remove the city’s taint.

He draped the towel over the back of his neck and went to the window overlooking the square below. The competing cries of vendors—sellers of vegetables and fruit, meat pies and bread and sausages, flowers of every variety—mingled with the clatter of cartwheels and hoofbeats, penetrating the thin glass as if it were tissue. Swarming humanity ebbed and flowed between the stalls and shops, kitchen maids bumping elbows with waifs buying violets to sell on street corners and bleary-eyed dandies gulping coffee after a night of theater and tavern.

It was an alien world to Donal. He closed his eyes and thought of the moors with their deep silences and broad, clean skies. At this hour, the farmers would have long since been up milking cows, feeding chickens and mending walls, going about the same business they did every spring morning. And he would be out visiting Eliza’s new litter or helping Mr. Codling and his fellow farmers through the lambing season. He might not utter a word all day, for the taciturn husband-men of the Dales had little use for idle chatter, and the beasts spoke without need of human language.

With a sigh of resignation, Donal selected an oft-mended shirt and his second-best coat from among the few garments he’d brought from Yorkshire. He was aware that his clothes were sadly out of date, if only because his mother had brought it to his attention on more than one occasion. Lady Eden laughingly despaired of her eldest son, and of his ever finding a wife who could overlook his stubborn refusal to accept his proper station in life.

The station of the bastard child who had been given everything the son of an earl could desire, and cast it all aside. All but his love for his parents and brothers, his memories of Hartsmere and the distant family connections that brought him so far from home.

Donal replaced the towel around his neck with a slightly frayed cravat and worked it into a simple knot at his throat. He glanced in the mirror just long enough to run dampened fingers through the unruly waves of his hair. Surely the August Fellows of the Zoological Society of London had better things to do than critique the appearance of a country veterinarian.

He considered and discarded the notion of a visit to the hotel dining room before setting out for Regent’s Park. He doubted his stomach would tolerate even his usual light breakfast, and he had no desire to see greedy, overfed tourists stuffing their mouths with slabs of beef and rashers of bacon. Instead, Donal unwrapped a hard roll left over from yesterday’s journey and broke it into small bits, wishing he had a friend to share it with.

As if in answer to his thoughts, someone scratched at his sitting room door. The sound came from very near the floor. Donal hurried to the door and opened it, meeting the bright brown eyes of his unexpected visitor.

“Well, now,” he said, squatting to offer his hand. “Have you come to share my bread?”

The parti-colored spaniel cocked his head and gravely regarded Donal’s crumb-dusted fingers. He was no street cur to go begging for his meals; his red and white coat gleamed with the luster of frequent grooming and good health, and he wore his handsome, studded collar as if it were the crown of the Cavalier King who had given his breed its name.

Donal set the roll on the ground and listened. For all his well-bred dignity, the spaniel’s thoughts were clear and honest in the way of his kind, and he gazed at Donal with absolute trust. The dog’s natural intelligence had warned him that something was amiss when his human would not rise from his bed to take him for his morning walk. When his friend only groaned at the patting of a paw and an encouraging lick, he had set aside good manners and barked until another human had come to investigate the uproar. Then he had dashed between the startled woman’s feet and run as fast as his legs would carry him, straight to the one place in all London where he knew he would be understood.

“I see,” Donal said, resting his hand gently on the spaniel’s broad forehead. “Of course I’ll do what I can.” He stuffed the roll in his pocket, rose and followed the dog into the hallway and around two corners to a door indistinguishable from his own. He knocked, but there was no answer. The spaniel whined anxiously.

Donal turned the knob, and the door gave at his push. Immediately his nostrils were assaulted by the smell of sickness. The sitting room was far more luxurious than his own modest suite, with thick Oriental carpets and furnishings that a wealthy nabob might find acceptable.

Donal strode to the bedchamber, took one glance at the rumpled bed’s motionless occupant and gave a sigh of relief. For all the signs of recent illness, the spaniel’s master was neither near death nor in urgent need of a physician’s care.

He dampened a towel at the washstand and sat beside the stout, middle-aged object of the canine’s adoration. The man had the look of prosperity about him, but he had clearly behaved with intemperance and paid the consequences. He mumbled an irritable query under his breath and subsided back into sleep.

“It’s nothing to worry about, Sir Reginald,” Donal said to the dog as he bathed the florid, mottled face and listened to the steady pulse beating in the man’s bejowled throat. “He’s only drunk more than is good for him.”

The spaniel jumped onto the bed and intently studied his master’s face, silky ears lifted.

“What he needs now is rest,” Donal said, rinsing the towel and laying it across the man’s forehead. “He’ll wake when he’s ready.”

Sir Reginald hesitantly wagged his tail. Donal tucked the bed’s coverlet under his master’s chin and clucked his tongue in invitation. After a last glance at his human, Sir Reginald followed Donal from the room.

No one paid any heed to a respectable guest and his dog as they strolled casually from the hotel lobby. Sir Reginald liked the hubbub of the market no better than Donal, so they beat a hasty retreat to the dining room, where Donal ordered steak and water for the dog and plain eggs and toast for himself. A pair of severe business men at a nearby table cast disapproving glares at the spaniel, who crouched patiently between Donal’s boots.

The waiter returned a few minutes later with a harried-looking young man whose high collar points had scratched red welts into his cheeks. The young man scurried about Donal’s table, craning his neck to see under it, and came to a nervous halt just out of arms’ reach.

“I beg your pardon, sir,” he said, jerking his head very high, “but I have had complaints…it is my understanding that you have brought an animal into the dining room.”

Sir Reginald cringed, his naturally ebullient nature suppressed by the uneasy hostility in the young man’s approach. Donal quieted him with a quick pat and got to his feet.

“I have brought a friend to dine with me,” he said quietly, meeting the young man’s eyes. “I’m sure you can see that he is not inconveniencing anyone.”

The fellow looked pointedly toward the businessmen. “Are you a guest at this establishment, sir?”

“I am.”

“Then surely you will agree that it is our duty to see that respectable standards of decency and cleanliness are upheld. If you will kindly provide the direction of your room, I will send a porter to return the beast—”

A low-pitched growl sounded from under the table, and the young man shuffled a few steps back. Donal smiled. “Sir Reginald prefers not to be disturbed,” he said, “but I will personally attest to his good behavior.”

“You refuse to remove the animal?”

In answer, Donal resumed his seat and pretended interest in a neatly mended tear on his coat sleeve. The young man sputtered. “You leave me no choice then, sir.” He signaled to a waiter, who scurried off toward the kitchen doors.

By now the scene of dispute had attracted the attention of the other diners, who shook their heads as they continued to gorge themselves from overflowing plates. A waiter with a thatch of bright red hair sidled up to Donal and leaned close under the pretense of delivering a copy of the morning paper.

“I likes dogs, sir,” he whispered, smoothing the paper as he laid it on Donal’s table. “Thought you should know that they’ve sent for the constable.” He passed a wrapped bundle into Donal’s hand. “This’ll do for the little mite. You’d best make yerself scarce, sir.”

Donal concealed his surprise and accepted the package with a nod. Sir Reginald emerged from beneath the table and politely wagged his tail at the waiter, then set off at a purposeful trot for the door to the street.

Donal casually rose and followed the spaniel, ignoring the critical gazes of the men who awaited the drama’s denouement. He reached the door and opened it, admitting a rush of noise, dust and pungent odors from the market. He closed his eyes and cast his thoughts outward like a net. Here and there, like drifting bits of flotsam in an ocean of humankind, the questing sparks of intelligent animal minds searched for the means to survive another day.

Donal called out an invitation, and they answered. Sir Reginald fidgeted on his haunches and pricked his ears toward the silent tide gathering from every quarter of Covent Garden. The wave was lapping at the very shores of Old Hummums Hotel when the officious young waiter reemerged from the rear entrance with a tail-coated constable.

By then it was too late. Donal scooped Sir Reginald into his arms and stepped out of the doorway just as the first hungry mongrel skittered into the dining room. The head waiter stopped in his tracks, open-mouthed, and one of the businessmen rose to his feet. But the flood could not be stemmed. As the dog on point skirmished toward the nearest table, his company surged in after him, a wash of furry projectiles, large and small, in every imaginable color of dusty white, brown, red, black and yellow. Yapping with the joy of sinners facing the promise of salvation, the dogs leaped upon the feast—the largest hounds planting enormous paws on table tops as they wolfed steaks and loafs of bread with equal fervor, the smallest dashing beneath to collect the fallen scraps. Not one was left wanting.

There were no ladies present in this honorable bachelor establishment to swoon at the terrifying sight of filthy beasts pilfering meals intended for their betters. Most of the men had the sense to get out of the way. One fat gentleman struggled over a roast chicken leg with an equally stubborn mastiff, whose jaws proved more effective than plump fingers accustomed to counting money and lifting nothing heavier than a silver spoon.

In a matter of minutes it was over. The constable was vastly outnumbered, and had better sense than to try to control a score of overexcited canines whose only goal was to fill their empty bellies. No human being was injured in the melee. And when the dogs had cleared every plate and licked up every crumb from the floor, they took Donal’s advice and raced back out the door to scatter and lose themselves again among the two-legged folk who could not be bothered to take an interest in their welfare.

Chapter Two

“It is quite beyond anything I had imagined,” Theodora said, brown eyes sparkling in her plain and honest face.

Cordelia Hardcastle squeezed her cousin’s arm and smiled, though she could not entirely share Theodora’s fascination with the many diversions available to the privileged visitors of the Zoological Gardens in Regent’s Park. She, Theodora and Bennett Wintour, Viscount Inglesham–who had so amiably escorted the ladies on this sojourn to London–-had already viewed the museum with its collection of stuffed birds, exotic skins and every conceivable sort of animal horn and tusk; admired the pleasingly arranged gardens and buildings; delighted in the antics of the beavers in their ponds and marveled at the Australian kangaroos, African zebras and South American llamas.

But perhaps Cordelia had not marveled quite so much as Theodora and the other men and women who strolled about the grounds on this bright spring morning. For she, like a few of the Zoological Society Fellows who had established this impressive display in the very heart of the world’s greatest city, had actually seen many of these beasts in their natural habitats. And the sight of such creatures displayed for the general amusement of the Fellows’ guests filled her with a certain discomfort.

“You can’t expect Cordelia to be impressed, Theodora,” Inglesham said, flashing his easy smile. “She has been twice around the world with Sir Geoffrey and has a menagerie of her own. I fear she may be finding this excursion rather tedious.”

Theodora searched Cordelia’s face. “Is it all frightfully dull for you, my dear? Shall we return to the house?”

“Certainly not.” Cordelia cast Inglesham a reproving glance and tucked her cousin’s arm through her own. “It was I who suggested this visit, after all.”

“And have you found the answers you sought?” Inglesham asked.

Cordelia suppressed a sigh and steered Theodora toward a bench under the spreading shade of an elm. “Lord Pettigrew was most generous with his time and advice,” she said. “But even he cannot suggest a reason for my animals’ malaise.”

“I do not see why they are unhappy,” Theodora offered shyly. “Edgecott is a most beautiful estate, and they have pens of ample size. No one could care for them more conscientiously than you, Cordelia.”

“One might even say that you devote far more attention to those beasts than you do your friends,” Inglesham said with a teasing grin. “A husband might object to such neglect.”

“Then it is fortunate that I have never remarried,” Cordelia said, folding her parasol with a snap. It was an old game between them, this sparring over his lazy but persistent courtship and her polite but firm rejections. They had been friends since childhood, and in spite of the game there had always been an unspoken understanding that one day the refusals might become acceptance. They got on tolerably well together, the viscount would never think of forbidding his prospective wife to make use of her fortune as she saw fit, and Sir Geoffrey thoroughly approved of the match.

But Cordelia wasn’t ready to assume the duties of wedlock, however light they might be. She had loved James with a young woman’s passion in the few brief months of their marriage. Such passion was no longer a part of her plans for the future, and she would have to accept the conjugal responsibilities of marriage even if Inglesham demanded little else of her.

She would know when the time was right. Until then, she had more than enough interests and responsibilities to keep her heart and mind thoroughly occupied.

“We have not yet seen the elephants,” she said briskly. “Unless you would prefer to rest a little longer, Theo?”

“I am quite ready,” Theodora said, adjusting her bonnet. “If it is not too inconvenient, perhaps we might also see the chimpanzee? I have heard … Oh!”

Theodora’s faint gasp called Cordelia’s attention to the broad avenue that ran through the center of the gardens. Top-hatted gentlemen and ladies in bell-shaped skirts suddenly scattered away from a high wrought-iron gate, abandoning parcels and parasols, and the breeze carried faint cries of alarm and shouts of warning.

The cause of the disturbance was not far to seek. Through the open gate charged a great gray behemoth, an ivory-tusked colossus flapping large ears like wings and moving with amazing rapidity as it bore down on the crowd.

Theodora clapped her hands to her mouth. “What is it?” she whispered.

“That, my dear, is your elephant,” Inglesham said, shading his eyes for a better look. “Gone rogue, from the look of it. And coming this direction.”

“Of the African species,” Cordelia added, her mind crystal clear in spite of the danger. “They are said to be far more aggressive than the Indian.”

Even as she spoke, the elephant paused, swung toward a nearby bench and upended it with a flip of its powerful trunk. A woman shrieked in terror.

“Perhaps it’s best if we move out of its way,” Inglesham said. He took Theodora’s elbow in one hand and Cordelia’s in the other. “If you’ll permit me, ladies …”

Cordelia planted her feet. “The animal has obviously been mistreated,” she said, “or it would not behave in this fashion. No matter its origin, any creature, when handled with firmness and compassion, must ultimately respond to–-”

“Your theories are all very well, Delia, but now is not the time–-”

Cordelia gently worked her arm free of Inglesham’s grip, set down her parasol, and started up the avenue.

“Delia!” Inglesham shouted. Theodora echoed his cry. Cordelia continued forward, her eyes fixed on the elephant. The beast was still moving at a fast pace, but she was not afraid. Enraged the animal might be, but even it was not beyond the reach of sympathy, kindliness and reason.

The pleas of her companions faded to a rush of incomprehensible sound. Cordelia was vaguely aware of white, staring faces to either side of the lane, but they held no reality for her. The elephant barreled toward her, broke stride as it noticed the obstacle in its path, and began to slow.

Cordelia smiled. That’s it, my friend, she thought. You need have no fear of me.

The elephant shook its head from side to side and blew gusts of air from its trunk. The small, intelligent eyes seemed to blink in understanding. The space between beast and woman shrank from yards to mere feet, and Cordelia drew in a deep breath.

She had scarcely let it out again when a blurred shape passed in front of her and set itself almost under the pachyderm’s broad feet. Cordelia came to a startled halt, and the elephant did likewise. The shape resolved into a man, hatless and slightly above average height. He placed one hand on the elephant’s trunk and stood absolutely still.

Cordelia’s heart descended from her mouth and settled into a quick, angry drumming. “I beg your pardon,” she said, “but I believe it is generally considered dangerous to step in front of a charging elephant.”

Still maintaining his light hold on the pachyderm, the man half turned. She caught a glimpse of raised brows and vivid green eyes in the instant before he spoke.

“And yet you apparently believed you could stop her, madame,” he said, his accent crisp and patrician in spite of his slightly shabby coat and scuffed boots. “Did you perhaps believe that the thickness of your petticoats would protect you?”

Cordelia found that her mouth hung open in a most vulgar fashion. She closed it with a snap and looked the fellow up and down with a cool, imperious gaze.

“Were you under the impression, sir, that you were protecting me?”

A mischievous glint flared in his emerald eyes. “I have no doubt that you could bring an entire army to a halt, madame, but this lady”–-he scratched the wide, leathery skin between the elephant’s eyes–-” requires rather more delicate handling.”

Turning his back on Cordelia, the ill-mannered rogue rested his cheek against the elephant’s and whispered into the furled sail of its ear. The beast curled its trunk around his neck in something very like an embrace and gave a low, pitiful squeak.

Cordelia took firm hold of her patience and carefully moved closer. “You seem to be familiar with this animal,” she said.

“We have never met before today.”

“Yet she trusts you.”

He didn’t answer but continued to stroke the pachyderm’s trunk as delicately as he might caress a newborn baby’s skin. Cordelia took another step. “Is she hurt?” she asked.

Once more the man glanced over his shoulder, as if he found her question remarkable. “You seem more concerned for Sheba than any men she might have injured.”

“She would not have acted so without reason.” Cordelia frowned. “If you have never seen her before, how do you know her name?”

“She told me.”

“Indeed. And what else has she confided to you, pray tell?”

He turned fully and stood tucked beneath Sheba’s head, careless of her sheer weight and impressive tusks. “She has been mistreated in the past,” he said with perfect seriousness. “She was taken from her home as a child, and the men who bought her believed that only force and cruelty could compel her to obey.”

A look of black and bitter rage crossed his face, so intense that Cordelia almost retreated before the menace so thinly held in check. But then he smiled, and it was as if the sun had burst gloriously through the clouds.

“Sheba knows you mean well,” he said. “She would not have hurt you, and thanks you for your kindness.”

For a moment Cordelia was mute with consternation, torn between judging the fellow mad as a hatter or simply addled by some harmless delusion. Certainly he appeared sane in every other respect. His clothing, while worn and several years out of fashion, was clean and neat. His voice was cultured, his language educated, and his manner–-though it more than verged on the impertinent–-was that of a man raised in a respectable household.

As for his face … Cordelia’s gaze drifted over the shock of russet-brown hair, its waves barely contained and in need of cutting, followed the intelligent line of his brow, paused at those startling eyes and continued over a strong, aristocratic nose to mobile, masculine lips and a firm, slightly dimpled chin.

His was a face most would call handsome, even if he lacked the artful curls and long side-whiskers favored by the most stylish gentlemen. At first blush, she would have thought him the son of some hearty country squire, well accustomed to brisk rural air, a horse between his knees and the feel of good English earth sifting through his fingers.

She emerged from her study to find him regarding her with the same bold stare, noting her well-cut but sensible gown, her plain bonnet and simply-dressed hair. What he thought of her features it was impossible to discern.

“Can it be, sir,” she asked, “that in spite of your intimate acquaintance with elephants, you have never observed a female of the species homo sapiens?”

That imp of mischief snapped again in his eyes. “I have had occasion to examine a few in their natural habitats, but seldom have I had the privilege of beholding such an extraordinary specimen.”

“Extraordinary because I do not swoon at the first sight of danger?”

His face grew serious again. “Extraordinarily foolish,” he said. “If I had not–-” He broke off, his gaze focusing on something behind Cordelia. A moment later she heard the tread of boots and Inglesham’s familiar stride.

“Cordelia! Are you all right?” He stopped beside her and took her arm in a protective grip. “The brute didn’t touch you? I came as quickly as I could, but when I saw you had the beast under control, I thought it best …” He paused as if noticing the stranger for the first time, and Cordelia sensed his confusion.

“I fear I cannot take credit for calming Sheba,” she said a little stiffly. “This gentleman reached her before me.”

“Indeed.” Inglesham gave the other man a swift examination and assigned him to a station somewhat beneath his own. “In that case, my good fellow, I owe you a debt of gratitude. Are you an employee of the Zoological Society? I will see that your courage is properly rewarded. If you’ll remove the animal to a place where it can do no further harm …” He favored Cordelia with a look of somewhat overtaxed tolerance. “Miss Shipp is quite beside herself. She feared for your life.”

Cordelia suffered a pang of guilt and glanced down the avenue. “I’ll go to her as soon as I’ve had another word with–-”

She stopped with chagrin as she realized she had never learned her would-be savior’s name. When she turned to remedy the oversight, she found that man and elephant were already some distance away, about to be intercepted by a small herd of uniformed keepers who carried various prods and manacles designed to subdue and restrain.

Whatever they might have intended, the auburn-haired gentleman clearly had the upper hand. The keepers kept their distance, and Sheba continued on her majestic way unhindered.

Cordelia considered it beneath her dignity to run after a man who so clearly had no desire to further their acquaintance, so she accompanied Inglesham back to the bench and spent several minutes reassuring Theodora that she had never been in any real danger. But even after they returned to the townhouse and enjoyed a soothing cup of tea, Cordelia could not pry thoughts of the stranger from her mind.

It was true that he had not done anything she hadn’t been prepared to do herself. But the casual ease with which he approached and touched the elephant, the manner in which it responded to him … all suggested a man with considerable experience in the area of animal care and behavior.

Unlike Inglesham, however, she was not convinced that he was merely a Zoological Society employee. It had occurred to her that he might even be one of the Fellows, a scientist in his own right. Her father was a cogent example of a titled gentleman who often dressed and sometimes behaved with no more sophistication than a common farmer.

So the green-eyed stranger remained a mystery. In a brief moment of fanciful abandon, Cordelia christened him Lord Enkidu after the legendary companion of Gilgamesh, who had been raised by animals and could speak their language. Several times during their last few days in London, Cordelia considered writing to Lord Pettigrew and asking him if he knew Enkidu’s name and direction. Each time she remembered his hauteur, and how he had simply walked away without as much as a good-bye.

In the end she allowed Inglesham to distract her with a few more London entertainments and resolved to dispense with all further speculation about Lord Enkidu. But when she retired to her bed in the pleasant comfort of her father’s townhouse on Charles Street, she was troubled by the strangely stimulating notion that she and Lord Enkidu were destined to meet again.

 

THE DREARY STREETS of London seemed to echo Donal’s mood as he made his way back to the hotel. The fine spring morning had lapsed into an evening thick with choking fog, a miasma that left Donal wondering how any creature could long survive with such foul stuff constantly seeping into its lungs.

But he had learned that the mere act of fighting for life was far more cruel in the city than in the countryside, where struggle was a natural and accepted fact of existence. Here he had seen ragged children selling wilted flowers for a few pennies, and hollow-eyed women selling their bodies for only a pittance more. Men beat their children and their wives and each other, their breath and clothes stinking of liquor. Starving dogs and starving humans scuffled over refuse even the hungriest wild scavenger would disdain to touch.

Donal could not hear the silent cries of the men, women and children in their daily suffering, but he heard the animals. He strode along broad avenues where the carriages of fine ladies and gentleman dashed from one amusement to the next, attempting to shield his mind from the wretched travails of overworked cart horses who might be fortunate enough to live a year or two before they broke down and were sent off to the knackers. The contented thoughts of pampered lap dogs, safe in their protector’s arms, slipped past his defenses, but he could not warn them that a dismal life on the street was only a stroke of misfortune away.

Once again his thoughts turned to last night’s dream of Tir-na-Nog. In the Land of the Young there was no stench, no starvation, no drunken violence. What men called hatred did not exist. Anger, like joy and thanksgiving and affection, was the work of a moment, quickly forgotten.

At times such as these he could almost forget why he had chosen to throw in his lot with mankind.

He stopped at a street corner to take his bearings, blinking as a lamplighter lit a gas lamp overhead. Behind lay Regent’s Park and Tottenham Court Road, and between him and his hotel at Covent Garden stood the filthy warren of tumbledown houses and bitter poverty known as Seven Dials. He had been warned by the staff at Hummums to avoid the rookeries at all costs, but he had little concern for his life or scant property. The wilderness of his own heart was a far more frightening place.

When he had traveled up to London at the request of Lord Thomas Pettigrew, an old acquaintance of his mother’s and Fellow of the Zoological Society, Donal hadn’t expected to face anything more arduous than the work of healing he was accustomed to doing in his Yorkshire practice. Certainly he had never before been asked to examine an exotic beast from beyond England’s shores; he had been content to limit his sphere to the common animals he had known all his life. But Lady Eden Fleming had too much pride in her children to hide their lights under a bushel, and so Lord Pettigrew had been convinced that her gifted son must give his expert opinion on several difficult cases that had defied solution by the usual string of local experts.

That was how Donal had come to see the tiger. She had been refusing food since her delivery at Regent’s Park, and her keepers feared she might starve herself to death. So Donal had sent all the other men away and listened to a mind unlike any he had touched before.

It was not that he had never entered the thoughts of creatures that survived by taking the lives of others. He had run with foxes on the moors, hunted with badgers among limestone grykes and ridden the wings of soaring falcons. But those familiar souls were simple and mild compared to that of a beast who had stalked swift deer in the teeming forests of India, undisputed mistress of all she surveyed.

Donal had shared the tiger’s memories and her deep, inconsolable grief for what she had lost forever. That joining had left its mark on him, but he might have come away unchanged if not for the others: the giraffes and zebras with their dreams of running on the vast African plain; the chimpanzees whose seemingly humorous antics had meaning no ordinary human could understand; and Sheba, who remembered what it was to bask in the mud with her kin and glory in a world of which she was an irreplaceable part.

The sights and smells and sensations of those “uncivilized” lands had reduced England to a narrow cage of ordered fields and hedgerows, shaped by man for mankind’s sole purpose, and the animals’ wild souls had awakened a yearning within Donal that hearkened back to his father’s ancient and unearthly heritage…feral blood that recoiled at the thought of returning to the sheltered, safe existence that Dr. Donal Fleming had believed would content him for the rest of his life.

He shivered and continued on his way toward the hotel, stepping into Crown Street with little awareness of the changing scene around him. In his imagination he crept through a dense and dripping jungle where only a few men had ever walked, breathing air untainted by civilization’s belching chimneys and grinding machines. His fingers sought purchase on the sheer side of a mountain peak while pristine snow lashed his face. His legs carried him at a flying run over a plain where the only obstacles were scattered trees, and the horizon swept on forever.

And sometimes, in the visions of freedom that possessed him, a nameless figure walked at his side. A woman with bold gray eyes, severe brown hair and a foolhardy fearlessness she wore as if it were a medieval suit of armor. A female of the type he thought he despised: meddlesome, supremely well-bred and absolutely convinced of her own infallibility.

But he couldn’t drive her from his thoughts, so he accepted her presence and set off across a sun-scorched desert, searching for the life that lay hidden just beyond his reach….

The scream shattered his pleasant illusion. He jerked upright, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness of the narrow, lampless street. The half moon crept behind him like a timid beggar, offering only the faintest illumination, but it was just enough to show Donal how far he had gone astray.

The rookeries of Seven Dials rose around him, unglazed windows and empty doors glaring like hollow eye-sockets and toothless mouths. The air was still and heavy, poised as if awaiting a single misstep from an unwelcome visitor.

Donal had no memory of how he had come to be in the very heart of the slum. Ordinarily he would have simply turned and walked away. But the cry of one in deathly fear still quivered in the silence, and he could not pretend he hadn’t heard. He listened, breathing shallowly against the stink of raw sewage and rotten food. There was no second scream.

The sagging walls of cramped tenements seemed to press in on him with the sheer weight of the misery they contained, and he almost chose flight over intervention. But he continued to linger, casting for the thoughts of the stray dogs that knew each corner of every maze of alleys and crumbling shacks.

Almost at once he found the source of the trouble. He unbuttoned his coat and followed the agitated stream of images that flowed through his mind like water over jagged stones, abandoning the illusory safety of the street for a dank, noisome passage between two dilapidated buildings. Slurred laughter floated out from an open doorway, and a man’s voice uttered a stream of curses in a hopeless monotone. Donal felt the dogs’excitement increase and broke into a run.

The passage ended in a high stone wall. The sound of coarse, mocking voices reached Donal’s ears. He turned to the right, where the wall and two houses formed a blind alley, a perfect trap for the unwary. And this trap had caught a victim.

A child crouched amid a year’s worth of discarded refuse, her back pressed to the splintered wood of a featureless house. The dress she wore was no more than an assemblage of rags held together with a length of rope, and the color of her long, matted hair was impossible to determine. It concealed all of her thin, dirty face except for a pair of frightened blue eyes.

A trio of nondescript dogs stalked the space directly in front of the girl, facing an equal number of men whose manner was anything but friendly. It was their voices Donal had heard, and they were far too intent on their prey to notice Donal’s arrival.

“’ere, now,” a fair-haired giant said, wiggling his blunt fingers in a gesture of false entreaty. “Don’t be so shy, love. We only wants to show you a good toim. Ain’t that roight, boys?”

“’at’s roight,” said the giant’s companion, a skinny youth whose jutting teeth were black with decay. “Yer first toim should be wiv true gents like us. We won’t disappoint you.”

“Maybe you’ll even be able t’walk when we’re done,” the third man said, wiping the mucus from his nose with the back of his sleeve. All three broke into raucous laughter, and the girl shrank deeper into the rubbish while the dogs bared their teeth and pressed their tails between skinny flanks.

“You come wiv us now,” the first man said, “and maybe we’ll let yer doggies go. ’R else—” He nodded to Rotten Teeth, who drew a knife and slashed toward one of the dogs. The animal darted back, shivering in terror but unwilling to abandon the girl.

Donal set down his bag and stepped forward. The dogs pricked their ears, and the girl’s eyes found him through the barrier of her tormenter’s legs. Her cracked lips parted. Fair-Hair’s shoulders hunched, and he began to turn.

With a flurry of silent calls, Donal shrugged out of his coat and tossed it on a slightly less filthy patch of ground.

“I regret to interrupt your sport, gentlemen,” he said softly, “but I fear I must ask you to let the child go.”

CHAPTER THREE

THE THREE BLACKGUARDS spun about, wicked knives flashing in their hands. Fair-Hair lunged, and Donal leaped easily out of his reach.

“Now, now,” he said. “Is this the welcome you give strangers to your fine district? I am sadly disappointed.”

Fair-Hair, Rotten-Teeth and Snot-Sleeve exchanged glances of disbelief. “’oo in ’ell are you?” Snot-Sleeve demanded.

“I’m sure you’re not interested in my name,” Donal said, “and I am certainly not interested in yours. Let the child go, and I won’t report your disreputable behavior to the police.”

Rotten-Teeth snorted. “Will you look at ’im,” he said. “Some foin toff who finks ’e can come ’ere and insult us.”

“Oi remembers the last toim someone did that,” Fair-Hair said. “Not much left o’ ’im to report to anybody.”

“’at’s roight,” Rotten-Teeth said. “You lookin’ to ’ave yer pretty face cut up tonoight, nancy boy?”

“That wasn’t my intention,” Donal said, listening for the scratch and scrabble of tiny feet, “but you are certainly welcome to try…if you have enough strength left after your daily regimen of raping children.”

Snot-Sleeve aimed a wad of spittle at Donal’s chest, which Donal deftly avoided. He glanced past the men to the circling dogs. They heard his request and made themselves very small, waiting for the signal to move. The girl remained utterly still.

“’e must be crazy,” Fair-Hair muttered, peering into the darkness at Donal’s back. “’E can’t ’ave come ’ere alone.”

“There ain’t no one else,” Rotten-Teeth insisted. “Let me ’ave ’im first.”

“Oi got a be’er idea,” Snot-Sleeve said. “’ooever takes ’im down gets first crack at the girl.”

“Oi don’t loik this,” Fair-Hair grunted. “Somefin’ ain’t roight….”

Without waiting to hear his friend’s further thoughts on the matter, Rotten-Teeth crouched in a fighter’s stance and advanced on Donal. The stench of his breath was so foul that Donal almost missed the subtle move that telegraphed his intentions. Rotten-Teeth’s hand sliced down at Donal’s arm, and Donal stepped to the side, grasped his attacker’s shoulder and twisted sharply. Rotten-Teeth yelped and fell to one knee.

Fair-Hair and Snot-Sleeve rushed to their companion’s defense, but they had taken only a few steps when the rats spilled from their hiding places. Rotten-Teeth gave a high-pitched whine as half a dozen dark-furred rodents swarmed over his feet. Another fifty rats and a few hundred mice raced in an ever-tightening circle about the other men’s boots, breaking rank only to nip at the humans’ ankles.

Fair-Hair swore and stabbed ineffectually at a bold male who sat on his haunches and mocked the human with a twitch of his whiskers. At the same moment the dogs sprang into action. They darted at the men, seizing sweat-stiffened woollen trousers in their jaws. The hiss of ripping fabric joined the squeaking of the rodents and the villains’ cries of fear and disgust.

The battle was over almost before it began. After failing to reduce the number of rodents by stamping his oversized feet, Fair-Hair chose the better part of valor and stumbled past Donal in a wave of terrified stench. His bare buttocks gleamed through the large hole in his trouser seat. Snot-Sleeve was hot on his heels. Rotten-Teeth came last, frantically dragging his twisted ankle behind him as if he expected to become the rats’ next meal.

A restless silence filled the little space between the walls. Donal gave his thanks to the rodents and sent them scurrying back to their nests. He retrieved his coat and casually shook it out, watching the girl from the corner of his eye. She had scarcely moved since his arrival, and her gaze held the same stark fear with which she had regarded her tormentors.

No, not fear. She had been frightened before, but now those blue eyes held far more complex emotions: suspicion, anger and a glimmer of hope swiftly extinguished. She held out her arms. The dogs wriggled close, licking her face as if she were a pup in need of a good cleaning.

They told Donal all he needed to know. He started cautiously for the girl, holding his hands away from his sides.

“Are you hurt?” he asked.

She lowered her head between her shoulders and peered at him from beneath her dark brows. “Wot do you want?” she demanded.

Her directness didn’t startle him. A child left alone so young would have been educated in a hard school. She had probably been hurt so often that she regarded pain as a simple fact of life, like hunger and the casual cruelty of strangers.

“I mean you no harm,” he said, settling into a crouch. The dogs grinned at him in apology but remained steadfastly by their charge’s side. “I heard you cry out—”

“Oi never. You ’eard wrong.”

Donal studied her face more carefully, noting the blue bruise that marked her right eye. “Did those men touch you?” he asked.

She hugged the dogs closer. The spotted, wire-haired male whined anxiously, striving to make her understand. She cocked her head and frowned. “You ain’t no rozzer, is you?”

“I am not a policeman.”

“Did you bring the rats?”

Donal considered the safe answer and immediately discarded it. “Yes,” he said. “They wouldn’t have hurt you.”

“Oi know.” She pushed a hank of hair out of her eyes. “Why didn’t you let ’em eat them nickey bludgers?”

Her hatred was so powerful that he felt the fringes of it as if she were more animal than human. “Rodents are naturally secretive creatures,” he said seriously, “and I already asked them to do something very much against their natures. Would you ask your dogs to eat a man?”

She giggled with an edge of hysteria and wrapped her arms around her thin chest. “They ain’t my curs,” she said. “But sometoims they ’elps me, and Oi ’elps them.”

“They’re very brave, and so are you.”

She shrugged, and the gesture seemed to break something loose inside her. “Wot’re you going to do now?” she whispered.

Her bleak question reminded Donal that he hadn’t considered anything beyond rescuing the child from her attackers. The smallest of the dogs, a shaggy terrier mix, crept up to Donal and nudged his hand. The animal’s request was unmistakable.

“What is your name?” Donal asked, stroking the terrier’s rough fur.

“That ain’t none o’ yer business.”

“Mine is Donal,” he said. “Donal Fleming. How old are you?”

“Twelve years,” she said sharply, narrowing her eyes. “Wot’s it to yer?”

Donal’s hand stilled on the terrier’s back, and the dog growled in response to his sudden surge of anger. “Where do you live?” he asked, keeping his voice as level as he could. “Do you have anyone to look after you?”

She concealed a wet sniff behind her hand. “Oi don’t needs nowbody.”

“What if the men return?”

Blinking rapidly, the girl scraped her ragged sleeve across her eyes. “Oi won’t let ’em catch me.”

But her efforts at bravado were hardly convincing, and the dogs knew how truly afraid she was. Donal got to his feet.

“You’d better come with me,” he said.

Her eyes widened, gleaming with moisture in the dim moonlight. “Where?”

“To my hotel. I’ll see that you have decent clothing and a good meal. And then…”

And then. What was he to do with a child? His thoughts flew inexplicably to the woman from the Zoological Gardens and skipped away, winging to his farm in Yorkshire. He hadn’t the resources to take the girl in, but there were a number of solid families in the Dales who owed him payment for his care of their animals. Surely one of them could be convinced to give her a decent home.

Relieved that he had found a solution, Donal smiled. “How would you like to come north with me, to the countryside?”

The dogs burst into a dance of joy, their tails beating the air. The girl pushed to her feet and brushed scraps of refuse from her colorless dress. “Away from Lunnon?” she asked in disbelief.

“Far away. Where no one can hurt you again.”

She stared at the ground, chewing her lower lip as she watched the dogs gambol around her rag-bound feet. At last she looked up, brows drawn in a menacing frown. “You won’t try nuffin’?”

His smile faded. “I have no interest in abusing children,” he said. “Your dogs know that you can trust me.”

“Oi told you, they ain’t my—” She broke off with an explosive sigh. “Can Oi takes ’em wiv me?”

Donal briefly considered the obstacles involved. “Perhaps we can sneak them in. I already have a dog there. His name is Sir Reginald.”

The girl snorted. “’At’s a flash name for a cur.”

“But he isn’t puffed-up in the least. You’ll like him.”

“Well…” She kicked an empty tin and sent it spinning across the alley. “Awroight. Me name’s Ivy.”

Donal bowed. “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss Ivy.”

She made a rude sound, but her eyes were very bright. “Come on, then,” she said to the dogs. “Oi’m ready for a spot o’ supper, even if you ain’t.”

 

THEY ARRIVED AT HUMMUMS after midnight. The market was quiet, awaiting the arrival of the next day’s wagons, though a few coffee stalls accommodated fast gentlemen and women of the street trolling for their night’s business. There were no “rozzers” present to complicate Donal’s scheme.

He left Ivy and the dogs in a quiet niche around the corner from the hotel and retrieved his greatcoat and a blanket from his rooms. He threw the coat over Ivy and gave her the smallest dog to hold while he wrapped the other two in the blanket and bid them keep absolutely still. Ivy proved adept at moving quietly, and they passed through the lobby without attracting more than an indifferent glance from the night clerk.

Sir Reginald greeted them at the door to Donal’s rooms. He stiffened when he smelled the strange dogs and retreated to a safe place under the sitting-room sofa. Ivy set down the terrier, gazing about the room in silent appraisal as Donal released the other dogs from the blanket. He crouched near the sofa and coaxed Sir Reginald into his arms.

“Sir Reginald,” he said, “this is our guest, Ivy. Ivy, Sir Reginald.”

The spaniel wagged his tail but continued to regard the canine interlopers with suspicion. The three street dogs were on their best behavior, as if they recognized that they had been granted a privilege they must not abuse.

Ivy sat down on the carpet beside them and sniffed loudly. “It’s flash enough,” she conceded. “You said we could ’ave some food?”

Donal set Sir Reginald on the sofa and brought out the basket of bread and fruit he had bought before he left for the Zoological Gardens. “I’ll purchase more when the market opens in the morning,” he said, “and I’ll find you a dress.” He surveyed her slight form, reflecting on how little he knew of women’s garments. Surely anything would be an improvement on her current wardrobe. “I think it best that you remain here when I go out.”

Ivy snatched the bread from the basket and broke it in half, dividing one part among the dogs and sinking strong, surprisingly white teeth into the other. “You ashamed o’ me?” she asked with studied indifference.

“Not in the least. But you will have to take a bath—”

Ivy shot to her feet, crumbs showering from her patched bodice. “I ain’t takin’ off me clothes!”

“I’ll have them send up a hip bath and hot water while you hide behind the bed,” he said patiently. “Then I’ll leave you alone. Only the dogs will see you.”

She thumped back down and reached for an apple. “I scarcely remember what it feels like to be clean.”

Donal glanced at her sharply, aware of a sudden change in her voice. Gone was the thick rookery accent; she had pronounced every word with the perfect diction of the educated class.

“Who were your parents, Ivy?” he asked.

She noticed his intent look and hunched protectively around the basket. “Oi don’t remember nuffin’.”

“Nothing at all?”

“You sayin’ Oi’m a liar?”

Donal sighed and sat on the nearest chair. “You’ve had a difficult day. I suggest you try to get some sleep.”

She glanced toward the door that separated the two rooms. “Only if you stay in there.”

“Wouldn’t you rather have the bed?”

“Ain’t used to ’em.” She grabbed the blanket and wrapped it around her shoulders. The dogs snuggled close. “Go on.”

Donal picked up Sir Reginald and started for the bedchamber. “You will still be here in the morning?”

“’Course Oi will. You promised me a new dress.”

There was nothing else to be done but obey the girl’s command. Donal entered the bedchamber and closed the door, sending a last request to Ivy’s canine friends. If the girl attempted to leave, the dogs would warn him. In any case, he had no intention of sleeping until he and Ivy were safely on the train to York.

He stretched out on the bed fully-clothed, Sir Reginald tucked in the crook of his arm, and let the intoxicating scents and shrouded mysteries of the jungle close in around him. He stalked with the tigress, his ears twitching as he caught the movement of deer in the bush. She paused to meet his gaze, inviting him to join in the hunt, and her golden eyes turned the somber gray of a winter-bound lake.

“Can it be, sir,” she purred, “that in spite of your intimate acquaintance with tigers, you have never observed a female of the species Homo sapiens?”

Donal snapped awake to the sound of scratching on the door. Daylight streamed through the window. In an instant he was on his feet, his head ringing with the dogs’ sorrowful apologies. He flung open the door.

Ivy was gone. She had left the blanket neatly folded on the sofa beside the empty basket.

Sir Reginald trotted up behind him and pawed at the leg of his trousers. The mongrels tucked their tails and whined. They were as disconcerted as Donal, for somehow the girl had got past them in spite of their vigilance. Not one of them remembered the moment of her departure.

Ivy was clearly no ordinary child. Donal had severely underestimated her, and miscalculated her trust in him. He had made entirely too many errors in judgment since coming to London. This world left him as addled as a sheep with scrapie, and he would begin to question his sanity unless he were quit of it soon. Quit of men and all their troublesome works.

But he had made a commitment to Ivy. Even if she had chosen not to trust him after all, he wasn’t prepared to surrender her to the streets.

“We will find her,” he assured the dogs firmly. “One of you will come with me.”

The little terrier gave a piercing bark and leaped straight up in the air. Donal set out a bowl of water for the dogs and made a hasty change of drawers and shirt, leaving his jaw unshaven and covering the tangle of his hair with his black top hat.

A few minutes later he squared his shoulders and plunged into the forbidding wilderness of Covent Garden.

 

MIDMORNING IN LONDON’S biggest market was a riot of color, sound and utter confusion. Theodora took in the sights with the same wide-eyed fascination that she had viewed the Zoological Gardens, the Tower of London and Buckingham Palace, while Cordelia thought of home and Inglesham kept himself busy shielding his charges from jostling or any other annoyance. Here costermongers and fishwives rubbed elbows with ladies in extravagant layers of petticoats and gentlemen in velvet-collared frock coats and tight woollen trousers, all of them shopping for bargains in a place where nearly anything could be had for the right price.

Theodora caught sight of a flower stall overflowing with bouquets of every variety of flower and stared at it wistfully until Inglesham recognized her longing and steered her through the crowd. Cordelia lagged behind, her senses strangely on the alert, and so she was perfectly positioned to observe the next sequence of events.

She saw Theodora cradling a spray of primroses, absorbed in their scent as the flower-seller haggled with Inglesham over the price. Inglesham half turned toward Cordelia, an indulgent smile on his handsome face. And just as he turned, a figure in the remnants of a faded dress darted from between a pair of chattering kitchen maids, slipped behind the viscount and dipped her hand inside his coat.

The thief had no sooner relieved Inglesham of his purse than he spun about and caught her wrist, nearly jerking her off her feet. Theodora dropped the flowers, her mouth opening in shock. Cordelia glimpsed the pickpocket’s face—a piquant visage that might once have been pretty—and pushed her way to the viscount’s side.

“You little mongrel,” Inglesham was saying, shaking the girl from side to side. “Thought I’d be easy prey, did you? Once I have you up before a magistrate—” He noticed Cordelia’s approach and set the girl back on her feet. “Mrs. Hardcastle,” he said formally, “perhaps you should escort Miss Shipp to a place of safety while I deal with this cutpurse. I shall summon a constable—”

“Wait,” Cordelia said. She studied the girl’s face more carefully. She appeared to be no more than eleven or twelve years of age, and her eyes—when they flashed defiantly up at Cordelia—were a surprisingly fetching bright blue. But her hair hung in matted hanks about her shoulders, its color indistinguishable, and her feet were bound in rags instead of shoes.

“What is your name, child?” Cordelia asked gently.

“Her name is of no consequence,” Inglesham said. “She is a thief and must be punished.”

“But you have recovered your purse, Lord Inglesham,” she said, matching his cool tone. “The child is obviously poor and desperate, or she would not be driven to such extremes. Where is the harm in letting her go?”

“The harm lies in permitting her to continue her thieving ways. Surely you, of all people, do not approve of flouting the law.”

“Surely the law can occasionally err on the side of mercy.”

“I agree,” Theodora said. “I should hate to think—”

Inglesham shook his head. “Forgive me, ladies, but you know nothing of these things. I—”

“May I be of assistance?”

Cordelia turned to face the speaker and started in surprise. There, dressed in the same rather shabby coat and bristling with a day’s growth of beard, stood Lord Enkidu. His green eyes moved quickly from Cordelia’s face to Inglesham and then to the girl, assessing the situation in an instant.

“We require no assistance,” Inglesham said gruffly, “unless you would be so good as to fetch a constable.”

The girl stared at Lord Enkidu and suddenly dropped her gaze. “Oi’m sorry,” she muttered.

Lord Enkidu doffed his hat and offered a slight bow. “Forgive me for my presumption,” he said to Cordelia, “but it occurs to me that we have not been introduced. I am Donal Fleming.”

Inglesham stiffened at Fleming’s impertinence, but Cordelia spoke before the viscount could issue a scathing set-down. “I am Cordelia Hardcastle,” she said. “My companions are Viscount Inglesham and my cousin, Miss Shipp.”

Mr. Fleming bowed again and met Inglesham’s eyes. “I would be happy to take the child in custody, sir, if you wish to escort the ladies to a more congenial location.”

Inglesham’s immaculately shaven chin shot up. Cordelia again intervened. “As you see, Mr. Fleming, Lord Inglesham is of the opinion that the girl should be given over to the police. Would that also be your intention?”

Fleming held her gaze, and Cordelia lost herself in it just long enough to make the silence uncomfortable.

“I should not like to contradict the viscount,” he said softly, “but it seems that this child has suffered more than enough to atone for any small transgressions she may have committed.”

“Fortunately for the welfare and property of honest English citizens,” Inglesham said, “the matter is not in your hands.” He glanced around and fixed his eyes on some point beyond the opposite stall. “If you ladies will go on to St. Paul’s Church, I shall meet you there when this business is concluded.”

Fleming followed Inglesham’s stare. His eyes narrowed. Without another word to Cordelia he withdrew, neatly losing himself in the crowd. Cordelia was about to argue with Inglesham when a small, scruffy terrier trotted up to the viscount, lifted his hind leg, and relieved himself on Inglesham’s spotless black ankle boot.

Inglesham jumped, kicking out at the dog with a curse. The terrier evaded his foot. The little thief wrenched her arm free of the viscount’s hold. He snatched at her sleeve, and as she struggled a silver pendant at the end of a frayed cord swung out from beneath her torn collar. She shoved it back under her bodice, writhing wildly, and her sleeve gave way in Inglesham’s hand. She was off like a fox before the hounds.

“Oh!” Theodora exclaimed. “Are your boots quite ruined, Lord Inglesham?” But her eyes met Cordelia’s in a flash of almost mischievous satisfaction.

Inglesham took himself in hand, dropped the filthy scrap of cloth and straightened his hat. “I beg your pardon, ladies,” he said. “I have obviously failed in my duty to protect you from such unpleasantness. Perhaps it would be best if I return you to the house.”

“Of course,” Cordelia said. “I believe Theodora has had her fill of the market…haven’t you, cousin?”

Theodora paid the flower seller for the blossoms she had dropped. “Indeed. It has been a most trying day.”

“Then let us put this incident behind us,” Cordelia suggested. “We shall be on our way home tomorrow, and the country air will soon put us to rights.”

Inglesham smiled, offering an arm to each of the women. “A very sensible suggestion, my dear Mrs. Hardcastle,” he said. “What would we do without you?”

His words were light, dismissing their recent quarrel. It seemed impossible for Bennet to hold a grudge; he could be quick to anger, and just as quick to forgive. His sincerity was beyond question.

And yet, as Inglesham hailed a hackney cab to take them back to Russell Street, Cordelia found herself watching for Mr. Donal Fleming, wondering why he had come and gone with such mysterious haste. She thought of the little dog who had appeared so fortuitously after Fleming vanished into the crowd. A very peculiar coincidence indeed. And what an exceedingly trying and vexatious gentleman, with those unwavering green eyes that seemed to judge and challenge her at one and the same time….

As the cab rattled away, Cordelia could have sworn that she saw Fleming with the girl, deep in conversation while the little terrier trotted happily at their heels.

She resolved then and there that Donal Fleming would not remain a mystery much longer.

 

THE GIRL WAS ALIVE.

Béfind paced across the silver floor of her crystal palace, her slippered feet beating a muted tattoo that shattered the morning’s perfect stillness. It had been many long years since she had felt such blinding rage. Life in Tir-na-Nog provided little cause for the primitive emotions that so consumed the lives of mortalkind; Fane might quarrel over a pretty trinket, or play spiteful tricks upon each other for the sake of an hour’s amusement, but such minor conflicts were as quickly forgotten as one’s latest love affair.

No, Béfind had not felt so since she had left the human world forty mortal years ago. She had never had any desire to return. The passions that ruled mankind—love and hate, joy and sorrow—were like some foul disease, defiling everything they touched.

Even a great lady of the Fane who had lived three thousand years.

With a whispered curse, Béfind went to stand between the fluted columns that framed a flawless view of the emerald lawn. The sun shone like a vast jewel in a cloudless sky, reigning over unblemished meadow and forest, lake and stream. Deer and horses of every hue grazed among the flowers. A sweet, warm wind ruffled the grass with playful fingers.

A female halfling, great with child, wandered among trees heavy with fruit and blossoms. She strolled beside a dark-haired Fane, laughing at his jests as if she enjoyed her pitiful condition. A mortal visitor to Tir-na-Nog might never realize that the girl was little more than a broodmare…an exotic, captive creature pampered and petted for one reason only: to save the Fane race from extinction.

Humankind had but one advantage over the Fane: their blood was strong and hearty while that of the Fair Folk grew thin and weak. Few pure Fane matings produced children, but the spawn of Fane and human were extremely fertile. For as long as Béfind could remember, it had been the duty of each and every Fane to seek a mate among the humans and return to Tir-na-Nog with a halfling child whose own offspring would buy the Fane another few centuries of existence.

Béfind had done her duty. She had forced her body to endure months of ugly thickening, sacrificing her beauty to the thing growing in her belly. Idath had been beside her on the day she delivered the half-human brat. High Lord Idath, who had been her lover for a hundred years and more, had informed her with seeming regret that her babe had died upon its birth.

How the gossips had enjoyed telling her, all these years later, that Idath had lied.

Béfind hissed between her teeth and watched Fane men and women ride ivory steeds in a hunt for the stags of the golden forest. The hunters’ arrows would bring no suffering to the beasts when they died, only a swift and gentle sleep. Pain was banished from Tir-na-Nog. Regret had no place here. But there was still room for vengeance.

Béfind lifted her hands and called, summoning the hobs and sprites and lesser Fane who served her in her splendid isolation.

“No matter how long it takes,” she told them, “you will find her. Find the girl and report to me.”

The hobs and sprites knew better than to utter cries of dismay at the task she had set them. They scattered and vanished, flying swiftly for one of the last remaining Gates that connected Tir-na-Nog and earth.

Béfind turned away from the window with a smile and idly changed the color of her gown from glossy amber to flaming scarlet. Tonight she would summon young Connla to her bed and see how well he pleased her. Tomorrow she would choose another. Let Idath enjoy his victory now; he would soon see who played the cleverest game.

Sooner or later, the girl would be hers.