A Dark Heart (16 page)

Sasha patted the girl’s shoulder and smiled gently. “Don’t worry. Fyodor
won’t hurt the boy. He’s our nanny.”

The girl’s eyes opened wide with disbelief. “Nanny!”

Sasha shrugged. “It’s true. He’s our nanny at the moment. And a good
friend. You’ll hurt his feelings if you continue to faint around him and call
him names. Now relax and let me have a look at you. I’m a doctor.”

The girl kept her wide eyes trained on a furiously blushing Fyodor, who
looked as if he wished he could melt into the wallpaper, as Sasha poked and
prodded her. But some of the tension left her shoulders as she began to accept
that Fyodor was no threat.

“You’re a sick girl, my dear,” Sasha concluded after his brief
examination.

The girl accepted the cup of tea Aline had prepared for her with a brief,
unconcerned shrug. “I know. I’m sorry for fainting,” she said, sitting up
straight and setting aside her finished teacup. “But I’m feeling better now.
Hector and I … well, we’ll be on our way.”

“You’re not going anywhere,” Percy said, still standing stiffly in the
middle of the room, his determination undaunted despite the large black smudges
of exhaustion underneath his ice-cold eyes. “Not until you tell me everything
you know about the Gentleman.”

The girl’s expression immediately shuttered.

The Gentleman? What did a jewel thief have to do with what had happened
tonight?

“Inspector Drexler nearly died tonight saving your life,” Christiana said
in a gentler tone than Percy used, though she was beginning to share his sense
of urgency. The girl’s condition was pitiable, as was the boy’s, but she wanted
answers more than ever now. “Perhaps you might do us the favor of explaining
why.”

“I’m sorry about the Inspector,” the girl said. “But I don’t know
anything about the Gentleman.”

The girl was as poor a liar as Christiana. Her cheeks took on a
fever-bright tinge, and she couldn’t meet anyone’s eyes as her bony fingers
picked at the frayed hem of her sleeve.

“You know more than anyone else in London about the Gentleman. He’s your
brother, isn’t he? And he works for O’Connor,” Percy insisted.

“Newgate Nick O’Connor?” Sasha interjected with a quirk of his brow. “The
Black Market king? Is that what this is about? You and Elijah are after
O’Connor?”

Percy gave Sasha an ice-cold smile. “We’ve a score to settle with the
blighter, and the Gentleman is …
was
… our ticket to running him to
ground.”

“I don’t know anything about O’Connor,” the girl insisted. “I swear.”

Percy rolled his eyes. “Your loyalty to your brother is tedious. And
unwarranted. He abandoned you to us, if you haven’t yet noticed.”

“I
told
Hex to leave,” the girl said, rolling her eyes. “If you
wanted to hurt us, you wouldn’t have rescued us in the first place.”

“I didn’t rescue you, the Inspector did.
I
wouldn’t have bothered,”
Percy said coldly, and Christiana believed the man. There was something hard
and ruthless about him, underneath all of those fine clothes and cutting words.
Something arctic. “And you just admitted to knowing the Gentleman. Hex, is it?
What sort of name is that?”

Realizing her slip, the girl clamped her mouth shut and curled her arms
around her body.

Christiana sighed and glared at Percy. The man had absolutely no
delicacy. She traded places with Sasha once more and laid a gentle hand on the
girl’s frighteningly thin arm. “No one’s going to hurt you here. And you’re
free to go when you want …
if
you want. But if you’re in trouble, as I
suspect you are, we can protect you.”

“Not unless you’re like the Inspector,” the girl murmured.

“You mean a vampire?” Christiana asked.

The girl nodded. “O’Connor has an army of them.
You
can’t protect
us from them.”

“You’d be surprised,” Christiana said. “There are others out there more
powerful than vampires.”

“Others?” Percy interjected, clearly thrown. “What others?”

The girl ignored Percy and settled her attention on the Professor, puzzling
through something in her mind. “I knew a man long ago with eyes like yours,
sir,” she said. “I once saw him take one of the stones from the top of the
biggest pyramid in Egypt and throw it halfway to Giza. Are you like that man?”

Sasha looked amused by her story and gave her an enigmatic smile.
“Perhaps. Did this man have a name?”

The girl gave him the same smile right back. “We called him Mr. Pharaoh.
I was quite young.”

“Well, I’ve a feeling you met one of my …
kind
, whoever he was,”
Sasha said with a smile in his voice. “And so you know my abilities. And Fyodor
can protect you as well. If you haven’t guessed already, he’s not just our
nanny.”

She looked a bit skeptically in Fyodor’s direction and tensed up again.
The lad had stepped even nearer to the Russian Abominable, studying the
intricate gears of the mechanical exo-skeleton covering his left side. Fyodor
stood enduring the inspection stoically, though he still seemed too embarrassed
to meet the girl’s glance.

Then suddenly the girl sucked in a breath as her brother reached out and
traced his finger over the steel machinery of one leg. But all Fyodor did was
raise one of his mechanical hands and pat the boy awkwardly on the head.

When the boy did nothing in response, just stood there, allowing himself
to be touched, all of the tension seemed to drain from the girl’s body. She
slumped against the divan, tears filling her eyes.

Fyodor looked horrified at what he’d inadvertently done and jerked his
hand back.

“What is it?” Christiana asked, grasping one of the girl’s thin hands.
“He won’t hurt him, I promise.”

“I know,” the girl said, wiping at her eyes, “it’s just that Hector never
lets strangers touch him. He barely lets
me
touch him.”

“You should see Fyodor with my
children,” Aline said wryly.

“You’re really not going to hurt him, are you?” the girl asked Fyodor.

He finally met her glance and shook his head, his expression grave. For a
long time they just stared at each other, until at last the girl closed her
eyes and sighed.

She turned back to Sasha, as if she’d reached a decision. “We do need
protection,” she said. “I’m not sure why.” Her last words were clearly a lie.

“I could tell you why,” Percy said darkly. “Selling ... and hurting children
is one of O’Connor’s specialties. Especially little boys.”

A chill ran down Christiana’s spine.
Surely not
…

But the girl shook her head, clearly understanding the implication, but
dismissing it. “That’s not why O’Connor wants us.”

“How do you know? It seemed that way to me tonight,” Percy said. “The
leeches were going to give your brother to O’Connor and keep
you
for
themselves.”

The girl’s face went white at Percy’s blunt words, and Christiana thought
she herself might be sick. The idea that men could be so cruel to anyone,
especially a child, filled Christiana with disgust and fury.

“Perhaps those men would have … have
kept
me,” the girl said. “But
that isn’t why O’Connor wants us.”

“Then what does he want?”

The girl squirmed. “It’s a long story.”

“Then start talking, damn you,” Percy said in frustration.

Christiana glared at the man before turning back to the girl. “You can
start by telling us your name, my dear.”

The girl paused again, thinking it through, before sighing in
resignation. “I suppose there’s no point in keeping it from you now. I am Helen
Bartholomew, and that is Hector.”

“Bartholomew? As in the antiquities expert, Hubert Bartholomew?” Aline
asked sharply.

“Unfortunately,” the girl said with a wince. “My father. You know of
him?”

“Hubert Bartholomew had dealings with an
acquaintance
of mine,”
Aline said disapprovingly, sharing a dark look with her husband. “And anyone
who had dealings with Charles Netherfield was bound to be corrupt.”

“You’re right. My father is a scoundrel,” the girl said in a tired voice.
“A first class swindler. And I knew Mr. Netherfield, long ago in Egypt. He is
not
a good man.”

“He
was
not a good man,” Aline corrected. “He’s quite dead now.”

“Well, that’s good, then,” Helen said with a weak smile. She might only
be eighteen, but her dull, knowing hazel eyes and casual contempt of a dead man
spoke volumes of how much she must have seen in her short life. “He had it
coming.”

 “Did he ever,” Aline murmured with a visible shudder, as Sasha
reached her and wrapped an arm around her waist, holding her close. Charles
Netherfield had courted Aline for three years in an elaborate charade to
destroy Sasha and steal his Da Vinci heart. It sounded like a plot straight out
of Aline’s own penny-dreadful she wrote for the
Times-Dispatch
, too
fantastic to be true. But it had really happened, and Aline had nearly died as
a result.

So had Christiana, for that matter. She was merely a Bonded companion,
not completely indestructible, and the bullet Netherfield had put in her during
his escape had hit her inches from her heart. She wouldn’t have survived a
wound like that, Bond or no Bond.

“We have been living in Baltimore for the last year, thinking we were
safe from our past, especially our father,” Helen continued. “The man’s nothing
but trouble. He found us about six months ago, though. I warned Hex not to
trust him, not to let him pull us into the life again. But…” The girl sighed
and wiped at the tears that had begun to fall. “I should have never let Hex do
it. I knew deep down what our father promised was too good to be true.”

“What happened?” Christiana urged.

“He told us he’d met a gentleman who wanted a job done in England, and he
needed Hex to do it for him.”

“What sort of job was this?” Sasha asked grimly.

Helen gave him a droll look. “One of the illegal safe-cracking variety.
Hex is
very
good at it. Or was. Hex stopped doing that sort of work
after the twins came along.”

 “Twins!” Percy breathed, looking a bit stunned.

“Yes, Hector has a twin, Hester,” she said, eyeing Percy warily. “O’Connor
took her, along with my father, after the job was done – as collateral.
Apparently, Father had not given all of the take to O’Connor, and O’Connor
found out.” She shook her head angrily. “It’s just like Father to do something
so utterly selfish and foolish. He never learns his lesson, he never changes.”

“So O’Connor is holding your father and sister until your father decides
to hand over what he stole?”

“Father is as stubborn as he is foolish. Hex made a deal with O’Connor to
get Hester back, though. O’Connor needed certain other …
things
, and Hex
agreed to steal them for him, in exchange for Hester.”

“By ‘things’ you mean the diamonds the Gentleman has been stealing all
over the city?” Percy demanded.

Helen nodded. “But I don’t think O’Connor ever meant to keep his promise.
Not after tonight. I think he’s growing tired of my father’s games and planned
to …
persuade
father to tell him where he hid the documents by hurting
us. God knows what he’s done to Hester.”

“Documents? What documents?” Percy pressed.

“It is part of what Hex stole for father. A whole stack of papers.
Blueprints of some sort. Father must have held back some of the pages when he
handed them over to O’Connor.”

“As insurance of his own,” Sasha mused. “Your father must have known
better than to trust the deal he made with O’Connor and wanted a bit of
leverage to make sure O’Connor fulfilled his end, but it backfired. O’Connor’s
not the sort of man to play games.”

“No, he’s not. He had at least a dozen of those …
things
with him when
he came after my father in Cardiff. The only reason he didn’t take all of us then
was because Hector and Hex weren’t even there at the time. And I was too sick
at the time to leave the bed after the journey from America. I guess those men
thought I wasn’t worth their trouble.”

“You said Cardiff,” Sasha began. “Was the job not in England?”

“It was,” she insisted, “it was outside of Cardiff.”

“Cardiff is in Wales, not England,” Percy muttered with an eye roll.

“Oh,” Helen said, her brow furrowing. “I thought Wales was a part of
England.”

“Tell that to the Welsh,” Percy shot back, mumbling something about idiot
Americans under his breath.

 “
Where
outside of Cardiff?” Sasha pressed a bit more
urgently, ignoring Percy.

Helen shook her head. “Hex never told me, other than to say it was very
hard to find. Does it matter where it was?”

“I’m not sure,” Sasha said, sharing a significant glance with Christiana.
“We have an acquaintance who lives in that vicinity.”

Brightlingsea.
Of course. She hoped the Duke wasn’t involved in
this – or maybe she did. His sword arm might come in handy very soon.

 “But why would Hex agree to the job at all?” Christiana asked,
still wondering about that detail of Helen’s story. “You said Hex was …
retired. What did your father do to convince him?”

Helen’s cheeks colored with something that looked very much like shame,
and she looked down at her hands clenched in her lap. “Father said that the man
who wanted the documents … O’Connor … promised him a cure for me.”

“And Hex couldn’t resist taking the bait,” Sasha said.

“Neither could I,” Helen said. “I knew deep down it must be too good to
be true. We’ve been to doctors all over the world since I was ten years old.
None of them have ever helped. They call it leukemia.”

“And there is no known method of treatment for that particular disorder,”
Sasha finished.

“I tried to tell Hex this, but Hex didn’t want to listen. And I didn’t
want to argue. I don’t have much longer, and I couldn’t help but hope… But now
that horrible man has Hester … and father. He’s a fraud, but he’s still my
father, and I don’t want him dead.”