Witch Hunt (Witch Finder 2) (17 page)

‘The price is too high.’ She felt her mouth twist in self-hatred and bitterness. ‘Is that what you’re saying?’

‘The price is too high for
you
.’ He took her hands in his, burnt and roughened, and drew her next to him on the bed. ‘
Think
, think about what marriage to me would mean. I’m a blacksmith, Rose. I won’t ever have a butler or a serving maid. I’ll be lucky if I get an apprentice one day, but my wife will be pegging out her own washing all her days. She’ll have to scrub her own floors, work all day from dawn to dusk – it’s no life for—’

‘For a lady? What is my life then?’ she burst in passionately. ‘Marriage to Sebastian?
You
think, Luke. Think about what refusal will mean to me. Think about a life married to him, serving his every whim, with no hope of escape but death. God! I’d rather scrub a thousand floors than lie one night in his bed, I swear! Is it money, is that all? I’ll conjure sovereigns from the air . . . I’ll fix the Thousand Guineas so your horse wins . . . Anything!’

‘Then you would make a whore out of me, Rose,’ he said softly, so that she flinched and looked at the floor.

‘How long, d’you think,’ he said quietly, still holding her hands gently in his, running his thumbs across the soft blue-veined skin at the inside of her wrist. ‘How long before
my
kind find us? You want me to think about what marriage to Sebastian would mean to you? Well, you think about what marriage to you would mean to me. It’d mean my death – and yours too.’

She recoiled at that. It was true. She had been so wrapped in her own selfishness that she had not seen what it would mean for him.

‘I’m sorry.’ She pulled her hands away and stood, wrapping her arms around herself, suddenly cold in her thin shift. There was an icy draught fluttering the gingham curtains. She shivered, but her cheeks were hot. ‘I – I didn’t think . . . I’m sorry.’

‘Come here.’ He put out a hand and drew her on to his knee, and they sat very still and quiet for a long time, his arms around her, her head on his shoulder. She felt a longing that she could not explain or assuage, and she knew that somewhere there was an answering longing in Luke, but that he would not give way to it, not here, not now.

‘You don’t need a husband.’ His lips moved against her hair, his breath soft against her forehead. ‘You’ll be safe from him. I’ll keep you safe.’

But you cannot
, she thought. She thought of Sebastian coming for them both – and suddenly it was not herself she saw in Sebastian’s arms, but Luke. Luke pinned to the ground, bleeding and motionless. Luke twisted and tormented and destroyed by Sebastian’s whims.

She thought of Alexis’s remark to Luke in the clearing:
I promised Seb I’d take you alive, but I imagine that state of affairs ain’t going to last long
.

She felt her fists clench against Luke’s back. The injured finger gave a great throb of hot pain and her magic blazed out, a blaze of fury and fear for Luke.

He looked up, his face full of questioning wonder, and she knew he was seeing her magic flare and blaze.

‘What is it?’ he asked softly. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing.’ She tightened her arms around him and felt as if she would choke with it, with the fierce burning determination to keep him safe from harm and far from Sebastian’s clutches. ‘Nothing is wrong.’

He hugged her back, his skin warm against hers.

‘Don’t let go,’ she whispered. The candle guttered and the dying light of the fire cast shadows around them.

‘I won’t.’ His voice was low; it made something shiver inside her. ‘Why, are you afraid?’

‘No.’ She shook her head fiercely. ‘Never.’

But it was not true.

The poster beneath Blackfriars Bridge was frayed and water-stained but still legible, just, and the man reading it tipped his cap back and frowned as he spelt out the letters in the hissing light of a gas street lamp.

It took him a while to work out the message between the gaps, but when he had finished it was clear enough.

Someone else was looking for the girl. And not one of the Brothers. Someone with money, and no small amount of money either – a hundred pounds was an incredible sum, more than any of the Brothers saw in a year.

The man beneath the bridge scratched his head and picked a fleck of tobacco from his teeth, spitting it thoughtfully into the gutter as he considered what to do. Was this good news, or bad?

John Leadingham would know.

He considered trying to pull down the remains of the poster, but the wet peeling paper came to bits in his hands as he tried, and in the end he left it. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that someone else shared the same aim as them – someone with money and resources. And that was going to interest John Leadingham very, very much indeed.

L
uke sat in the window seat of the narrow dormer window, his feet pulled up beneath himself against the cold. It was tricky squashing his six-foot frame into the narrow ledge, but he could not have stayed in bed with Rosa, warm and languorous beside him, her face soft and flushed with sleep.

He thought again of last night and felt the blood rise in a tide from his chest to his throat and his cheeks. Did she know? Had she guessed how close he’d come to forgetting himself and his position, burying his face in her hair, pressing his lips to the soft shadowy curves that showed so painfully clear through the thin white chemise?

He thought perhaps she did, and he didn’t know whether that made him want to laugh or cry.

The worst of it was that, in some ways, what she said made sense. But it was impossible to disentangle the logical, sensible reasons for marriage from the painful longing he felt in his breast every time she laughed, or tossed her head in that funny, proud gesture. How could he think, when his heart leapt every time she touched his skin, her magic prickling through him like a current, sending him mad.

He could not tell what he should do any more. He could only tell what he wanted. And what he wanted was Rosa. But that did not make it right.

He longed for the cold steel-bright certainty of before – for the black-and-white clarity of the Book, for the clear single-minded rules laid down by the Brothers. Witches were damned in the sight of God, so they must die. It was simple.

But where he was now, there was no Book to guide him. He was completely alone – save for Rosa, breathing softly in sleep just across the room, her bandaged hand on the pillow beside her cheek.

He looked out of the window, pulling the gingham curtain aside. It was still dark, but there was a thin pre-dawn sheen in the sky and the mist on the ploughed fields was luminous with its glow. Somewhere, not too far off, a horse neighed, and he wondered if it was Brimstone. Across the fields he heard the clang of cow bells. They were being led for milking, perhaps. Full udders wouldn’t wait for dawn.

For no particular reason he thought of Minna, walking to the dairy in the pre-dawn light, her apron painstakingly laundered and dried in their cramped rooms, spotlessly white.

He wished he knew where she was now. He wished he’d had time to say goodbye. He thought of her as he’d last seen her, her face swollen with the phossy jaw. Would it heal, away from the factory? He didn’t know.

He missed her like an ache in the heart. Her small impudent face, her thin dirty hands ‘like a monkey’s paws’, William used to say, as she came scampering in at the back door to swipe an apple off the kitchen table, or a slice of bread from William’s plate, back when Luke himself was just a skinny urchin and she a skinnier one.

Would he ever see her again? Would he see any of them again? William, John, Minna – and beautiful, dirty, heaving London.
His
London, not Rosa’s – not the stuck-up white buildings and grand boulevards, but the real heart of London, the twisted foetid stinking streets that had raised him from a baby to a man.

Those streets had nearly killed Minna.

If only he knew if she were safe . . .

‘What are you thinking?’

Rosa’s voice made him jump. He turned, his heart beating angrily. She was standing next to him, the sheets clutched to her chest.

‘Jesus! You nearly gave me an apoplexy.’

‘I’m sorry.’ She hitched the sheets higher and shivered. ‘I thought you’d heard me.’

‘Well, I didn’t.’ He swung his legs to the floor and was about to stand when she said again:

‘So, what were you thinking?’

His instinct was to shrug it off, but he thought of the other day, of her furious cry:
How can we argue, how can we say what’s in our hearts, if you close up every time you feel anything?

‘I was thinking of Minna, if you must know,’ he said reluctantly. ‘I was wondering if she’s all right.’

‘Oh.’ Rosa bit her lip. She looked at the ground, her dark lashes sweeping her pale nutmeg-freckled cheeks. Then she looked up again. ‘Do you . . . were you sweethearts, Luke?’

‘With Minna?’ He almost laughed at the notion. Perhaps he would have, if his heart had not been so heavy. ‘No! God no. It was never like that. She was always . . . I don’t know. A mate. I never had a sister, perhaps like that.’

‘But you do love her?’

‘Yes.’ He said it simply. His feelings for Minna
were
simple. He loved her, in spite of her faults – and God, she had enough of those.

‘I . . .’ Rosa took a breath and turned towards the bed. She picked up her skirt and stepped into it. Luke knew her well enough now to recognize the set of her shoulders and spine, to know that she was pretending carelessness, but that what she was about to say mattered very much. ‘I could . . . you know. Scry. If you wanted.’

‘Scry?’

‘Look for her.’ She began to lace her corset, wrapping the laces around her middle before she tied them. She had her back to him, but Luke still turned away.

‘H-how?’

Something rustled and he guessed she was putting on her petticoats, or her bodice. Her voice was muffled when she spoke.

‘Water will do. Is there any in the ewer?’

‘Yes,’ he said automatically. Then. ‘No. I don’t want you to.’

‘But why not? You’re worried!’

‘I can’t – I can’t explain it. Later, maybe.’

‘Are you worried about it leading them to us? Or are you frightened of what I might see?’

‘I don’t know.’ He bit his lip. Both, perhaps.

There was a silence, and then he heard Rosa make a small sound of frustration and pain, and he turned to see her struggling with the last of her buttons.

‘Damn my finger!’ she burst out at last.

‘Here, let me.’ He came across to where she stood by the bed and lit the candle, the better to see. He bent down to look. His fingers were too big for the tiny pearl-sized buttons, and for a moment he felt like laughing. A blacksmith – playing the lady’s maid. But Rosa only stood quietly, trying not to breathe, looking down at the top of his bowed head, and at last the final button slipped into place.

‘Thank you,’ she said quietly.

‘You’re welcome. How’s your finger?’

‘All right, I think.’ She held it out, but it was impossible to see much beneath the bandage. There was no sign of any seepage. But it looked horribly, horribly wrong – that shortened stump where her finger should have been but wasn’t. Like a street magician’s trick, gone grotesquely awry.

‘Rose—’ Luke began, but before he could finish there was a knock at the door. They both looked at each other, and then Luke tucked in his shirt and moved to answer it. The old lady, Mrs Cleave, stood outside, smiling.

‘Porridge is ready, my dears. Come on down. You’ll be hungry, I don’t doubt.’

Luke scraped the last of the porridge from the bowl and licked his spoon. It was, if possible, even better than the meal of the night before. Then he had been too hungry even to taste the food; he had just gulped it down, inhaling the meat and potatoes more than eating them.

Now he looked up hopefully and Mrs Cleave smiled at him, her wrinkled face crinkling even more.

‘I like to see a boy with an appetite. My late husband was just the same, three bowls he could eat, and not a pick of flesh on him.’ She ladled another helping into Luke’s bowl and topped it with a slosh of creamy milk, and he set to again, the hot porridge scalding his mouth.