Maddie Ruth froze so quickly that my feet ended up some distance ahead while the rest of me remained attached at the arm. Wrenched from my bitter thoughts, I stumbled back, righted myself and did not manage even a question before I saw the object of Maddie Ruth’s wide-eyed consternation.
He lingered at the gate in a manner that put me in mind of a hungry black tomcat, all lean potential and challenging stare. He was tall as Ishmael, which said a great deal for his height, yet was only a fraction as wide. His skin was nearly as dark. Though he wore the same working togs as most everyone else who toiled in the grounds by day, he wore them with a careless sense of awareness. The collar of his plain cotton shirt and deep blue jacket revealed a corded throat, and the beginning of lean muscle just beneath. No gloves covered his hands. His hair, which I remembered as falling nearly to his waist, was plaited in a multitude of tiny braids and looped into a tail at the back of his head.
Had it only been some months past that I’d seen him for the first time? I’d come to visit Hawke by day, demand answers regarding the sweet tooth’s activities among the girls Hawke purported to protect, and this man had been there.
He’d stared at me, as if communicating a challenge even as he spoke a language I did not understand. I remember most that stare, much as he was staring now. A forthright scrutiny lacking in even the basest civility. His eyes were tawny gold, lighter brown than Hawke’s and tinted like the tomcat’s I’d considered him.
They were not pinned on me this time, but on the rapidly quailing girl beside me.
“Keep moving,” I murmured, trying to keep my lips from moving too much. “Who is that?”
“Osoba,” she whispered, a rasped sound.
Ah. Now, I had a face to match to the name.
We approached the whip together: myself with a cheerful swagger and a nod, and Maddie Ruth with much more deference. Osoba may or may not have been the savage African prince his own keeper labeled him, but even in British attire, there was something about him that made me consider some truth to the charade.
To be quite frank, there was much of him—his stance, the air of confidence and untouchable arrogance about him—that reminded me of Hawke.
To say Osoba was less dangerous than the ringmaster himself would be doing a disservice to both men— and my own good sense. No, I would be forced to play this carefully.
And with no small amount of boldness.
To my surprise, Ikenna Osoba spoke first. “Caught,” he repeated, in a voice that was not as deep as Ishmael’s, but seemed many times more resonant. “Caught doing what?” Accented deeply and almost lyrical in delivery, his was a voice groomed for the rings, the kind to command attention and demand obeisance. No wonder the lions listened.
If I were to take opium right then, put a bit on my tongue and let it burn while this man spoke of anything at all, I would be lost on a tide of musical delight.
Beside me, Maddie Ruth gazed at the ground before her feet.
I shook myself. “You must be Mr. Osoba,” I said, forcing a smile. I felt slightly dazed. Perhaps I was mistaken, after all. The stuff I’d eaten before I’d set out could have simply been slower to act. “Or do you prefer Your Highness?”
He did not rise to my distraction. He did not shift, at all. Leaning against the gate’s archway, arms folded across his chest, he behaved as if he had all the time in the world. His gaze remained on Maddie Ruth.
Blast.
“Caught,” he repeated again, “doing what?”
The blood rapidly drained from her face. A fine tremor rippled down her skirt, which we’d untied on the return home. No reason to fetch any more eyes than necessary.
The fear there, the uncertainty of it, spoke louder than any words she might have summoned for me. The man scared her right silent.
My shoulders tightened. I found myself stepping in front of her, so that Osoba’s eyes would fall instead upon me.
Taller though he was, and likely stronger, I did not cower. “Maddie Ruth was helping me.”
He was not a man to raise his eyebrows. They lowered, knotting in a ridge of black. “Oh?” A single syllable, with many pointed questions.
Who was I to be helped by one of his own? What could she possibly help me with?
What rights did I have to step between a whip and his mark?
“Collector’s business,” I said, answering each of those unspoken questions with a challenge of my own.
“I know what you are, Miss Black.”
Hawke’s own moniker, put to use again. I resisted the urge to frown. That it bothered me, his chosen name on everyone else’s lips, was something I was not equipped to examine. Not then.
“Then you know that I earn the highest of all collectors for Menagerie bounties,” I returned. I folded my arms across my chest in mimicry of his masculine posturing.
He did not answer me. I hoped the Veil was not so talkative with all whips. I spoke the truth, but I did not know how much of my increasing debt was common knowledge.
As he did not call me on it, I hoped very little of the truth was known.
“And?” he finally asked when the silence drew out too long.
“I needed help.” A flash of inspiration hit me, and I half-turned to show off the brass apparatus slung on my back. “I was having trouble repairing my net-launching device.”
He did glance at it, which was something. Maddie Ruth, to her credit, did not look up, so if she was surprised by my lies, I could not be sure.
“Maddie Ruth helped me fix and test it. ’Tis not quite up to snuff,” I added, in case he needed to know. “I apologize for taking her from her duties.”
I didn’t like apologizing for things that were not my doing, but the alternative seemed worse. Maddie Ruth trembled silently, her breath practically held, it was so shallow.
For a long moment, the lion-prince of Africa held my gaze.
It took some effort to hold it. Sweat bloomed across my skin, but I had held more fearsome gazes. That of the sweet tooth, looming over my inert body. That of Mad St. Croix, my own father, as he attempted to kill me.
Hawke’s, whose own stare was filled with a carnal knowledge he did nothing to mitigate and had not wholly earned.
The lion prince did his level best to out-do them all.
My mouth dried. I did not hold my breath, for such things were an easy tell, but I did mentally calculate the distance between the far exit and the likelihood of my getting Maddie Ruth out fast enough to save both our skins.
Fortunately, I did not have to put the half-formed measures into effect. The man inclined his head. “Very well. In the future, she should be more careful of her commitments.”
“I will be absolutely sure not to impose,” I lied, and felt nothing for it. According to Hawke, my very presence was an imposition. Bully for him.
“Go, then,” he bid, and Maddie Ruth did not wait for a second offer. She hurried past him, shoulders rounded.
“Maddie Ruth,” I called.
She hesitated, turning awkwardly as if she could not be sure which direction might provoke the least dismay.
I shrugged out of the device. “It needs some finer tuning. Would you mind? At your leisure?”
She scooted back under the arch, snatched the straps from my hands, and all but ran as fast as she could while lugging the weight over her shoulder.
Fair enough. Maybe next time, she would consider twice a fool move as she’d attempted.
“You are a peculiar thing,” Osoba told me.
I glanced at him, then again at the space between him and the rest of the open gate. “Oh?”
“I have only just cautioned her to mind her commitment, and you demand more of her.” The observation did not land without a mark. I hid a wince. “Are you attempting to challenge my authority or her will?”
Damn and blast, I hadn’t expected that. I shook my head. “Neither,” I said, and this one not really a lie. “I
