Free Cates, Kimberly by Angel's Fall Page A

tidy garden and doors not half thick enough to ward off the crack of one sturdy boot-kick.
    He frowned, his gaze snagging on a caricature of a man across the room. More cadaver than human he was, bone-thin, yet wiry, his face carved with ivory hollows beneath eyes so pale they seemed milky as a witch's charm. An austere nose and thin lips slashed across that face, a smattering of thin black hair revealing glimpses of his scalp. But it was the fact that he sat, like Adam, alone in the crowd that was strangest, as if contempt had drawn an invisible circle around him.
    A thin walking stick was leaned against the table at the man's side. Adam was dead certain it concealed something lethal—a sword-stick, probably so rusted it would shatter at the first blow, and so dull-edged it couldn't cut warm butter. Not that the man would be able to wield the weapon, anyway. Juliet could doubtless defeat him with a single wave of her parasol.
    But, incompetent as the man seemed, his glare was obviously in working order. He leveled it at Adam with burning intensity.
    What the blazes had he done to offend the scrawny cur? Adam wondered idly. The man hadn't been in the mob, of that Adam was certain. He would have noticed someone like that, wouldn't he? Adam grimaced. He'd have been lucky if he'd recognized his own brother in that mess. His whole awareness had been stolen by the golden-curled angel with her parasol.
    A buxom serving-maid sidled up to him, her eyes huge beneath an off-kilter mobcap. "Eh, there, me fine sir, do ye be thirstin'?" she quavered, casting a nervous glance over her shoulder.
    "Whiskey. A big glass of it."
    "Aye, sir," the girl replied. But instead of bustling off in a swirl of threadbare petticoats, she lingered, hovering beside Adam like a jittery butterfly.
    Adam cast an impatient glare at her. "What is it? Did I forget to say 'please'?"
    The girl's cheeks went pale, and she twisted her fingers together. "They're whisperin' that you were at the Angel Lady's house today. That you sent Mother Cavendish an' her crew scramblin'. Be you that same gennelman?"
    Perfect. Adam frowned. Doubtless Percival had sent the girl over to check out his identity before he blasted him to eternity. Surprisingly civil of the bastard. "I was at Angel's Fall. But I'm certain if you asked the Angel Lady, she'd tell you I'm no gentleman. Tell Sergeant Percival, over there, to blast away."
    "P-Percival?" The girl's lips curled as if she'd just seen a dead rat floating in her bath water. "I'll not be tellin' him anything, the slimy, no-good cur! I just... just wanted to say thank you, sir, fer helpin'," she whispered in a tiny earnest voice. "The lady, she be so all alone. And kind. When my baby sister was sick, she... well, doesn't matter. Jest, thank you. When next ye see her, will ye tell her that little Janey's back at her mama's knee?"
    "Pegeen!" the tavern keeper's bellow made the girl whirl around. "Ye'll not make me any coin standin' there yammerin'! Fetch out some drinks or go home!"
    "Aye, Traupman! I'm comin'," the woman called, but she turned to flash Adam one last grateful smile before she bobbed a curtsey and dashed away. Adam stared after her, bemused. It seemed as if Miss Grafton-Moore had one champion in this mess. Something hard lodged in Adam's chest at the memory of the gratitude in the serving girl's eyes, and his mind crowded with images of his own younger sisters, headstrong termagants, every one, yet, the notion of them far from home, sick... frightened, alone. The mere thought scuttled a chill through Adam's veins.
    He drove his fingers through the thick waves of his hair, as if he could scatter such thoughts to the wind. His sisters were daughters of an earl—illegitimate, though they might be. Their lives were worlds away from the hardscrabble existence of Pegeen and little Janey. Yet if circumstances had flung them into the snake pit that was London, wouldn't he have been grateful if there were someone like Juliet