"Well, I'm angry and vicious. And that's better." I looked at him. "Now go."

v He was never really serious about staying. Pierre was a good man, but his loyalty only went so far. He would have resisted the looters-but not that much. Perhaps it had been better that I wasn't home when the raiders arrived. There would have been bloodshed. Maybe the wrong people would have lost their lives.

At the front door I drew my pistol. With my elbow I shoved the door wider and crept into the entrance hall.

It was a mess. Overturned tables. Smashed vases. Unwanted booty lying everywhere. Lying on his front close by was a man snoring in a drunken slumber. Slumped in an opposite corner was another one, this one with his chin resting on his chest, an empty bottle of wine in his hand. The door to the wine cellar was open and I approached it carefully, my sword drawn and my pistol raised. I listened but heard nothing, prodded the nearby drunk with my toe and got a loud snore for my troubles. Drunk, yes. Vicious, no. Same for his friend by the door.

Snoring apart, the ground floor was silent. I walked to a stairway that led below stairs and again, I listened, hearing nothing.

Pierre was right; they must have been in and out within moments, looting the wine cellar and the pantry and no doubt looting the silverware from the plate room. My home just another step along the way.

Now for upstairs. I returned to the entrance hall, then took the stairs, heading straight for my bedchamber and finding it in a similar ransacked state to the rest of the house. They'd found the trunk but evidently decided that whatever was inside was worthless, so had settled merely for spreading the contents around the floor. I sheathed my cutla.s.s, holstered my pistol and dropped to my knees, gathering the papers to me, sorting them and replacing them in the trunk. Thank G.o.d the necklace had been in the bottom of the trunk-they'd missed it altogether. Carefully I laid the correspondence on top of the trinkets, smoothing out any creased pages, keeping the letters together. When I'd finished I locked the trunk. It would need to go to the Maison Royale for safekeeping, just as soon as I'd cleared and secured my home.

I was numb, I realized as I pulled myself to my feet and sat on the end of the bed to gather my thoughts. All I could think of was closing the doors, crawling into a corner somewhere, avoiding all human contact. Perhaps that was the real reason I'd sent Pierre away. Because the pillaging of my home gave me another reason to mourn, and I wanted to mourn alone.

I stood and went to the landing, peering over the balcony to the entrance hall below. The only noises were the distant sounds of unrest from the street outside, but the light was dimming now; it had begun to get dark outside and I'd need to light some candles. First, though, to rid myself of my unwanted guests.

The one sleeping by the door seemed to rouse a little as I approached the foot of the stairs.

"If you're awake, then I suggest you leave now," I said, and my voice sounded loud in the entrance hall. "And if you're not awake, then I'm going to kick you in the b.a.l.l.s until you are."

He tried to lift his head, blinking as though regaining consciousness and trying to remember where he was and how he'd got here. He had one arm trapped beneath himself and he groaned as he rolled to free it.

And then he got up and closed the door.

Just like that. He got up and closed the door.

vi It took me a second or so to work out the answer. The question being, how did a man who had been lying drunk on my entrance-hall floor stand up, with not a trace of a sway or swagger, and close the door without so much as a fumble or swipe? How did he do that?

The answer was that he wasn't drunk. He never had been. And what he had beneath him was a pistol that he raised, with an almost casual air, and pointed at me.

s.h.i.t.

I swung around in time to see that the second drunk guy had also miraculously sobered up and was on his feet. He too had a pistol that was pointed at me. I was trapped.

"The Carrolls of London say h.e.l.lo," said the first drunk, the older and more barrel-chested of the two, obviously the boss, and I was. .h.i.t with the blank fact of the inevitable. We knew the Carrolls would come for us, sooner or later. Be ready, we'd said, and maybe we thought we were ready.

"So what are you waiting for then?" I asked.

"The instructions are that you're to suffer before you die," said the boss, evenly and without real malice. "Plus the bounty is for you, a certain Frederick Weatherall and your lady's maid, Helene. We thought that extracting their whereabouts and causing you to suffer might well be combined, a sort of killing-two-birds-with-one-stone arrangement."

I smiled back at him. "You can cause me as much pain as you like, cause me all the pain in the world, I won't tell you."

From behind me, his friend made an aw sound, the kind of sound you make when you see a particularly appealing puppy playing with a ball.

The boss inclined his head. "He's laughing because they all say that. Everyone we've ever tortured says it. It's around the time we introduce the hungry rats that they begin to wonder about the wisdom of their words."

I looked theatrically around me, turned back to him and smiled. "I don't see any hungry rats."

"Well, that's because we haven't started yet. It's a long, old process what we have in mind. Madame Carroll was very specific about that."

"She still angry about May, is she?"

"She did say to remind you about May during the process. That's her daughter, I a.s.sumed."

"Was, yes."

"And you killed her?"

"Yes."

"Had it coming, did she?"

"I would say she did, yes. She was about to kill me."

"Self-defense then?"

"You might say that. Does knowing that change your mind at all?"

He grinned. The pistol never wavered. "No. It just tells me you're a tricky one and I'll need to watch you. So why don't we start with the sword and the pistol? Drop them both on the floor if you would."

I did as I was told.

"Now step away from them. Turn, face the banister, put your hands on your head and know that while Mr. Hook here is checking you for concealed weapons I'll be covering him with the pistols. I'd like you to remember that Mr. Hook and I are aware of your capabilities, Miss de la Serre. We haven't made the mistake of underestimating you because you're young and female. Isn't that right, Mr. Hook?"

"That's right, Mr. Harvey," said Hook.

"That's rea.s.suring to know," I said, and with a glance toward Mr. Hook, I did as I was told, moving to the banister, putting my hands to my head.

The light was dim in the entrance hall, and though my two genial killers would have taken that into account, it was still in my favor.

Something else I had in may favor. I had nothing to lose.

Hook was behind me now. He moved my weapons into the middle of the hall before returning, staying a few feet away. "Remove your jacket," he said.

"I beg your pardon."

"You heard the man," said Mr. Harvey. "Remove your jacket."

"I'll have to take my hands off my head."

"Just take off the jacket."

I unb.u.t.toned it, shrugged it to the floor.

In the room, a dense silence. Mr. Hook's eyes roamed. "Untuck your shirt," said Mr. Harvey.

"You're not going to make me . . . ?"

"Just untuck the shirt, gather it at the waist so we can see the waistband."

I did as I was asked.

"Now remove your boots."

I knelt, straightaway thinking I could use a boot as a weapon. But no. As soon as I attacked Hook, Harvey would plug me with the pistol. I needed a different tactic.

With the boots off I stood in my stockinged feet, shirt untucked for inspection.

"Right," said Harvey. "Turn around. Hands back on your head. Remember what I said about having you covered."

I resumed my position facing the banister as Hook came up behind me. He knelt, his hands reached to my feet and his hands began a journey from the tips of my toes up my breeches. At the top, they lingered . . .

"Hook . . ." warned Harvey.

"Go to be thorough," said Hook, and I could tell from the direction of his voice that he was looking toward Harvey as he said it, which gave me a chance. A tiny chance, but a chance all the same. And I took it.

I jumped, grabbed a banister strut, and in the same movement gripped Hook's neck between my thighs and twisted-I twisted hard, trying to break his neck at the same time as I used him as human shield, but breaking men's necks in a scissor-hold was never a major part of Mr. Weatherall's training and I didn't have the strength to wrench his neck hard enough. Even so, he was now between me and the pistol, which was my first objective. His face reddened, his hands at my thighs trying to free himself as I squeezed, hoping I might be able to exert enough pressure to make him black out.

No such luck. He writhed and pulled and I clung to the banister strut for dear life, feeling my body lengthen and the banister wood begin to give way as he tried to pull away. Harvey, meanwhile, cursed, holstered his pistol and drew a short sword. Over Hook's shoulder I saw him approaching.

With a shout of effort I increased the pressure of my thighs and jerked upward at the same time. The banister splintered and came off in my hands as I flipped upright and for a second was riding Hook like a girl on her daddy's shoulders, looking down upon a suddenly astonished Harvey, the banister strut held high.

It swept down. I plunged it into Harvey's face.

What bits of the banister strut went into what bits of Harvey's face, I couldn't say for sure, and don't particularly want to know.

All I can tell you is that I aimed for an eye, and though the strut was too thick to penetrate the socket, well, it did the job, because one moment he was advancing on us with his short sword ready to attack, and the next he had an eye full of banister strut and was wheeling off, his hands at his face, filling the final seconds of his life with bloodcurdling screams.

With a twist of my hips I brought myself and Hook crashing to the floor. We landed badly but I pulled myself away, throwing myself bodily toward my sword and pistol in the center of the floor. My pistol was primed and ready, but then so was Hook's. All I could do was dive for my gun and pray I reached it before he recovered enough to reach for his.

I got there, whirled onto my back and held it two hands on him-at exactly the same time as he did the same. For the briefest second we both had the drop on one another.

And then the door opened, a voice said, "Elise," and Hook flinched. So I fired.

There was perhaps half a second during which I thought I'd missed Hook entirely, before blood began gushing from his lips, his head dropped and I realized I'd shot him through the mouth.

vii "It looks like I arrived just in time," Ruddock said later, after we had carried the bodies of Hook and Harvey out through the rear courtyard and into the street, where we left them among the broken crates and barrels and upturned carts that littered the area. Inside we found a bottle of wine in the pantry, lit candles and sat in the housekeeper's study, where we could keep an eye on the back stairs, just in case anybody returned.

I poured us a gla.s.s each, pushed one across the table to him. It went without saying that he looked much healthier than he had the last time we met, since he'd been swinging on the end of a rope back then, but even taking that into account, he had recovered a bearing, too. He looked more self-possessed. For the first time since our meeting in '75, I could imagine Ruddock as an a.s.sa.s.sin.

"What did they want, your two friends?" he asked.

"To exact revenge on behalf of a third party."

"I see. You've upset someone, have you?"

"Well, obviously."

"Yes, quite. I suspect you do your fair share of upsetting people, do you? As I say, it was lucky I arrived in time."

"Don't flatter yourself. I had it covered," I said, sipping my wine.

"Well, then I'm very pleased to hear it," he said. "Only it looked to me as though it could have gone either way, and that my entrance gave you the element of surprise you needed in order to gain the advantage."

"Don't push your luck, Ruddock," I said.

The truth was that I was amazed to see him at all. But whether he'd taken my threat to hunt him down seriously or he was a more honorable man than I'd taken him for, the fact was he had come. Not just that but he'd come with what you might call "news."

"You've found something?"

"Indeed I have."

"The ident.i.ty of the man who hired you to kill me and my mother?"

He looked abashed and cleared his throat. "I was only hired to kill your mother, you know. Not you."

I fought a wave of unreality. Sitting in my family's wrecked villa sharing wine with a man who openly admitted trying to kill my mother; who, if all had gone to plan, would no doubt have left me alone and crying over her body I poured more wine, choosing to drink, not think, because if I thought then maybe I might wonder how I got to be so numb that I could drink with this man, that I could think of Arno and feel no emotion, that I could cheat death and feel nothing.

Ruddock continued. "And the fact is I don't know exactly who it was who hired me, but I do know with whom he was affiliated."

"And who might that be?"

"Have you ever heard of the King of Beggars?"

"No, I can't say that I have-but that is the person with whom your man is affiliated?"

"As far as I can tell, it was the King of Beggars who wanted your mother dead."

That strange wave of unreality again. Hearing it from the man who was hired to carry out the job.

"The question is, why?" I said, taking a gulp of wine.

"Steady on," he said, and reached to touch a hand to my arm. I stopped, the beaker still held to my lips, glaring at his hand until he took it back, abashed.

"Don't touch me again," I said, "ever."

"I'm sorry," he said. His eyes dropped. "I meant no offense. It's just that-you seem to be drinking too swiftly, that's all."

"Haven't you heard the rumors? I'm a drunk of some repute. And I can quite handle my wine, thank you."

"I only want to help, mademoiselle," he said. "It's the least I can do. By saving my life you've given me a new outlook. I am trying to make something of myself now."

"I'm pleased for you. But if I thought that saving your life meant you were going to lecture me about the wine I was drinking, then I wouldn't have bothered."

He nodded. "Again, I'm sorry."

I took another gulp of wine, just to spite him. "Now tell me what you know about the King of Beggars."