“Too bloody bad, your lordship.”
Raoul took a menacing step forward. An effective gesture, but the wind whipped up at the same moment, tugging back the hood of his cloak and parting the clouds over the moon. The light fell full across his face.
“Look here—” The woman peered at him, then gave a scream followed by a piercing whistle. “Run, Jack. It’s a trap.”
Raoul lunged at her. Melanie turned and flung herself across the burned-out building, through the ruined doorway, and across the next room to the front door that gave onto Salisbury Street. The courtyard was irrelevant now. Jack Evans was somewhere in the streets beyond with her son.
Salisbury Street was thick with shadows, but nothing moved. The Bow Street Patrol must have run into the passageway at the eruption of noise in the court. Melanie scanned the street and saw what Charles must have remembered from their earlier scouting of the area. Almost directly opposite the passageway was a dark, seemingly empty house. She could make out boards nailed over the lower windows, but one of the attic casements gaped open. A perfect place to wait concealed with a six-year-old boy for a summons or a signal for flight from the court beyond.
She ran to the door. It was unlatched. She pushed it open and stepped into a musty, unlit hall. A silent musty, unlit hall. No whisper of breathing, no footsteps, no telltale creaks. She moved toward the dark outline of a staircase, then saw the door at the back of the hall. That must be how Evans had brought Colin in. If they’d used the front door, the Bow Street Patrol would have seen them. Perhaps he had fled through that same door. If a struggle was in progress above, surely she would hear it.
She went the length of the hall in a handful of steps and pushed the door open onto a narrow alley that stank of mildew and rotting food and stale urine. Shafts of moonlight pierced the slabs of shadow and gave the grimy cobblestones the sheen of marble. A clatter from above pulled her out into the alley and drew her gaze upward. The house next to the one she had just left was slightly lower and its roof slanted up to a peak with a towering brick chimney at one end. A bent figure was inching up the slope of the roof. He seemed to be wearing a pack on his back. And then she realized that the pack was her son.
She forced down the scream that rose up in her throat.
“Give it up, Evans.” Her husband’s voice echoed down into the alley. He was half out of the attic window through which Evans must have escaped, hauling himself onto the roof where Evans crawled with Colin. “Carevalo’s dead. Hand Colin over and it will go easy with you.”
At the sound of Charles’s voice, Colin jerked, loosed his hold on Evans, and went slithering across the roof at a diagonal, toward the alley.
This time Melanie could not contain her scream. She ran to catch her son. Colin slid to the edge of the roof overhanging the alley and stuck there, his coat caught on some blessedly placed nail. He gripped the coping with both hands, his upper body on the roof, his legs swinging free.
The force of Colin’s action had knocked Evans’s legs out from under him. He flung his arms round the corner of the chimney to stop his slide and lay sprawled, legs flailing for a purchase on the roof tiles.
Charles, halfway up the slope of the roof, began to crawl sideways toward the outer edge where Colin clung. Evans kicked out and struck Charles in the face. Melanie heard the thud of a heavy boot connecting with flesh and bone.
Charles slid down the slope of the roof, feet and hands scraping over the tiles. Evans pulled himself upright, clinging to one of the clay chimney pots, recovered his balance, and took a step down the roof toward Charles’s prone figure. Melanie saw the glint of a knife in Evans’s hand. She shouted a warning to her husband.
Charles sprang to his feet and launched himself at Evans. Evans drew back his knife hand. Charles caught Evans by the wrist. The two men grappled together midway up the slope of the roof, Evans trying to turn the knife on Charles, Charles trying to wrest it away from him.
Colin was clinging to the edge of the roof in terrible silence. She couldn’t see his face, but he must be gagged. “It’s all right, darling,” she called, over the groans and thuds from above. “Just hold on.”
She was standing where she could catch him or at least break his fall. She had her pistol out of her reticule, but she couldn’t shoot at Evans without risking Charles.
Evans went for Charles’s throat with his free hand. Charles fell back, throwing Evans off balance, tightened his grip on Evans’s right wrist, which held the knife, and twisted. Evans gave a grunt of pain. The knife flew in a glittering arc, bounced off the roof, and clattered to the cobblestones in the street below.
Evans clawed at Charles’s eyes. Charles ducked. Evans kicked Charles in the shins, then screamed as his foot slipped out from under him. He slid beyond Charles’s grasp and tumbled to the edge of the roof, lower down the slope than the point where Colin clung. His fingers scrabbled against the tiles for a moment. His legs swung wildly. Then the coping gave way in his hand. He fell with a cry that echoed through the alley, slammed into the cobblestones not a dozen feet from Melanie, and lay still.
“Colin.” Charles’s voice was level and conversational. Melanie nearly sobbed in relief. “It’s all right. He can’t hurt you anymore. All you have to do is hold still. I’m coming to get you.”
It looked as though Colin nodded his head. Melanie glanced at Evans, but he had plainly broken his neck in the fall. “Charles?” she called. “Shall I come up?”
“Stay there until I have Colin. Then meet us at the attic window.” Charles lowered himself to his hands and knees again and crept down the sloping roof, his bad leg dragging awkwardly, his hands sure and steady. The short expanse of roof tiles seemed to stretch endlessly, like a chessboard with the black and white of the squares blurred to gray.
A wrench of fabric sounded through the night air. Colin’s coat had given way, but Colin still lay half sprawled on the roof, clinging to the coping.
Charles stretched out his hand. “Colin? Don’t move quickly, but can you reach out to me?”
Colin put up one hand. Charles closed his fingers round Colin’s own.
Melanie released her breath and clamped her jaw to hold back the press of tears. Footsteps sounded in the alley. She tore her gaze from Charles and Colin to warn the new arrival to be still, but he had already stopped. It was Edgar, his hat gone, his hair golden in the moonlight, his gaze trained on the roof where Charles was pulling Colin to safety. He didn’t seem to see her in the shadows of the overhang. She turned her gaze back to the scene on the roof. As she did so, Charles dropped flat against the roof tiles, holding Colin against him. He shouted his brother’s name, not a warning but an anguished plea.
Melanie looked at Edgar and saw the gleam of a pistol in his hand. He leveled his arm and took aim at the roof, his intention written in the lines of his body.
She had no time to think or plan. She raised her own pistol and shot her brother-in-law in the chest.
The sound of booted feet came from the other end of the alley. Melanie turned her head to see Raoul pull himself up short, his cloak swirling round his shoulders.
Charles lifted his head from the roof tiles. “Mel?”
“It’s all right, Charles. Just get Colin down.”
She started toward Edgar, but Raoul ran forward. “Go up and help your husband with Colin,” he said. “I’ll see to Captain Fraser.”
The need to hold Colin in her arms drove her back into the house and up three flights of sagging stairs at a run. A door was open on the attic level. She ran in, stumbling against the rotted wood, and flung open the casement to see the welcome sight of her husband’s now-grimy boots. He was crouched on the edge of the next roof, holding Colin in his arms.
He handed Colin down through the window to her. She touched her son’s feet and then his waist and then she had him in her arms and his own arms closed tight round her neck. Her heart seemed to burst inside her.
She kissed him and set him down. “Help me help Daddy, darling.”
Charles already had his feet on the window ledge. She and Colin guided him down. Colin flung an arm round each of them and they landed in a three-way hug on the dusty, splintery floorboards.
Her chest shook as though she’d forgotten how to breathe. She was aware only of the solid warmth of Colin’s
