He slid into the bench next to Charles.

"Sorry I took so long," he said, though he'd arrived almost on their heels. He flattened his hands on the battered table and drew a deep, businesslike breath. "Now. Tell me again what happened, and don't leave anything out."

When she got to the part about Herrington being her father, Charles's eyes went wide. "Herrington, the Yamish envoy? The demon who helped negotiate the Awar Accord?"

She shouldn't have been surprised he recognized the name. Charles liked to follow current events.

"I know I should have told you," she said, covering his hand pleadingly. "Part of me kept hoping if I ignored him, he'd go away."

"But how cana"" Charles leaned forward, his voice sinking to a rasp. "You're not aa""

"I am," she said when he failed to find a word. "At least, part of me is."

Charles sagged back against the booth, looking thoroughly flattened by the news. Though his mouth worked, nothing came out. His expression wasn't precisely horrified, but it was close. In spite of everything else that was going on, tears started in Roxie's eyes. Adrian looked at her, then at Charles. He put his hand on the boy's shoulder.

"Pull yourself together," he said, his tone gentler than his words. "She's the woman she's always been, the woman who took you and Max in, the woman who fed and clothed you, the woman who loves you with all her heart. She needs your support now, and so does Max."

Charles stared at Adrian, seeming almost as startled by the lecture as he'd been by Roxie's parentage. She wondered if any man had spoken to him in this fatherly way before. Hearing Adrian do it shocked Roxie a bit herself.

"All right," the boy said slowly, like someone shaking out of a dream. "What do we do now?"

The waitress clanked Roxie's cup of tea onto the table, pulled a grease pencil from behind her ear, and looked hopefully at Adrian. She was so pregnant she could balance her order pad on her stomach. Adrian stopped scratching his head long enough to smile at her, order a platter of corn-bread, and inquire after the baby-to-be. Though he wasn't flirtatious, the woman was blushing when she left.

"Are you certain Lord Herrington is behind the Ministry's actions?" he asked, returning to business.

Roxie turned her cracked white cup in a circle. The warmth felt good against her hands. "It couldn't be anyone else. The babyschool never asked me for birth records, and no one else has any reason to care if I'm Max's legal guardian. I don't have many enemies or even rivals. Serious artists don't consider me a threat, and the not-so-serious ones are too fond of running up debts at my shop to risk getting on my bad side."

Adrian tapped his lips with a forefinger. "What about Max's parents?"

Charles quashed that idea. "No such people. I spent weeks trying to find someone to claim him. Far as I'm concerned, he might have fallen from the sky." Without bothering to ask permission, he removed the teaball that was threatening to turn Roxie's hot water to ink and dropped it onto the tray of a pa.s.sing dishboy. He nudged the steaming cup closer to her mouth, then waited until she took a sip. "My guess is, Herrington figured Roxie wouldn't have anyone else to turn to. Whether she blamed him for Max being taken or not, she'd have to ask him for help. For better or worse, he's the most powerful person she knows."

Adrian pinched his lower lip. "I don't suppose Herrington had anything to do with the man who followed me to Little Barking the other day?"

The waitress cut off Roxie's response by sliding a platter of golden bread in front of his place. She stood a moment longer than she had to, waiting for another smile perhaps, but Adrian was too busy offering the plate to Roxie and Charles.

"Ironic, eh?" he said, unaware he'd dashed any feminine hopes. He tucked a corner of cornbread into his mouth and chewed. "When he found out what I did for a living, he must have figured I wouldn't risk getting involved."

"That could be," Roxie said, trying to act as if the thought that Adrian might refuse hadn't crossed her mind. Maybe she shouldn't have worried about coming to him. "His reasons aren't important now. All that matters is getting Max back as quickly as possible. Lord." She put her head in her hands, anger and fear sapping her strength. "What I'd really like to do is go straight to that heartless b.a.s.t.a.r.d and wring his neck. I'm just afraid confronting him will make it worse. If he had enough leverage to arrange thisa"

Adrian opened his silver watch fob. "We could try speaking to him. At this hour, the Ministry offices will be closed. I'm not sure we'll be able to get anywhere with them until morning."

"I'm not leaving Max there overnight. I won't have those people ruining the progress he's made this year. He'll never trust me again if I abandon him."

Adrian's eyes flicked to hers and then away. She suspected he was remembering their nights in the parlor, with Max's head resting on her knee or Adrian's. I wisha the boy had said more than once. Neither of them had to hear the phrase's end to know what Max wished. Adrian's departure had shaken his trust already. He didn't need any more blows.

"Very well," Adrian said, pushing to his feet. "They probably took him to the orphans' dormitory on High Street. That's the closest to his school. We'll start there."

To Roxie's relief, Adrian's legalistic language, coupled with a flash of his lovely smile, cozened them past the dormitory mistress. The challenge for Roxanne then was to handle what she found inside.

She froze just beyond the doors to the second floor, unable to go a step farther. She had forgotten until that moment, but now, poised in the maw of that sorry, lonely hall, she remembered being taken to a place like this herself a very long time ago.

She remembered the dingy white walls, the sound of an iron bar clanging shut, the shadowy figures of adults coming and going with their own mysterious logic. Voices had babbled in a foreign language, and the smell of disinfectant was just like this, seeped into the wool of a gray blanket.

She had refused to call out for her mother because she'd been convinced Yvonne wouldn't come. Roxie was a bad, ugly, stupid girl. Nothing but trouble. She had no right to expect rescue. When the miracle happened and Yvonne did arrive in a swirl of silk and camellia perfume, Roxie's throat was so tight with unspoken pleas, she wasn't able to talk for days.

There was ice cream then. Tea with honey. Ringed hands brushing her hair until it crackled with static and floated in the air. The brief interlude of maternal care was sweet, but far too short to erase the shadow of the cold, locked room and the sputtering tallow candle.

She'd known it could happen again any time.

Roxanne began to shake. She'd never get Max out of this terrible place. Never. She knew it.

Adrian retraced the steps he'd taken ahead of her.

"Roxanne," he said and again, louder. "Roxanne."

She looked at him, scarcely understanding that he was speaking to her. His face was pinched with concern. Reaching for her frozen hand, he chafed it between his own.

"What is it?" He pulled her hand between the open flaps of his coat and tucked it to his chest. His heart beat steady and warm against her skin.

"I've been here before," she whispered.

"Here?" His other hand circled her wrist, the thumb supping into her palm to stroke it soothingly.

She drew a choked breath. "A place like this. When I was small. They said my mother wasn't fit to keep me. I thought she'd never come. I fought them. They locked me in a room by myself. The candle burned out." She shook her head in denial of the old phantom. "It was so dark."

"Shh." Turning his broad shoulders to block their escort's view, he ducked his head and pressed a hard kiss to her knuckles. She shuddered with lingering fear. "You're here now. With me. Your mother got you out, and we'll get Max out, too."

"Will we?" Her words were the entreaty of a small child.

"Yes." His eyes had hardened, but they held tears. "Yes."

His will poured into her with the word. There's someone to help me now, she thought I don't have to do it all by myself. In truth, she sensed she was being asked to surrender this burden completely to hima"at least for the moment. That request was harder to accept. She trusted him, she did, but life had pounded the importance of self-reliance so firmly into her character that it was almost impossible to exercise her faith in him. Her body quivered with the force of the struggle before her resistance crumbled.

"Yes," she said, feeling as if she were saying "yes" to something else, something from which there would be no turning back.

Adrian's lips curved softly in approval, his gaze roving her face as if to commit the moment to memory.

"Ready?" was all he said.

She felt shaken, emptied, but she nodded and renewed her grip on his hand. He let her keep it even when the dormitory mistress stared at their clasped fingers from the corner of her persnickety brown eye. Far from letting go, Adrian winked at Roxie and gave her fingers a squeeze.

"Here it is!" Charles shouted from half a corridor ahead.

He was pointing at a numbered door. Roxie quickened her stride. Charles threw up the bar and yanked the door open.

"Come on, mate," he said, crouching down to child size. "It's me and Roxie. We've come to take you home."

Her breath caught in her throat as Max tottered out, looking dazed. His face was bruised. He must have struggled when the van came.

"Charles?" he croaked, as if he couldn't believe the older boy was there.

"That's right," said Charles. He took Max's hand as gently as if it were made of gla.s.s. "And see, here's Roxie."

Roxie smiled and put out her arms.

Max hesitated an instant before catapulting toward her.

"I knew you'd come," he said. His eyes screwed shut as his arms locked around her legs. "I told them you would. They didn't believe me, but I knew."

Tears ran down her face as she lifted him off the ground. "Yes, sweetie. You're mine, and I'll always come for you. You're my baby. My sweet, sweet Max." She kissed his sticky neck. "Mm, and you taste good, too."

Max giggled, and she felt his tension ease. His arms loosened as his head sagged limply to her shoulder. His eyes were drooping in exhaustion. Charles rubbed his back, smiling like a proud uncle.

"Really!" objected the dormitory's mistress, finally making herself heard above the confusion. "I'm not sure I can allow this. You didn't say anything about removing the child. I simply couldn't permit that without proper authorization from my supervisor, even if you are Securit."

"I'm afraid there's something you don't know about this case," Adrian said in his most concerned and confiding tone. He steered the worried drone to the side of the hall. "You see, I happen to know that the person who filed the unlawful custody claim isn't the concerned citizen he pretends to be."

"He isn't!" The headmistress pressed a plump hand to her tightly bound bosom, shocked t.i.tillation flaring in her eyes.

"No, ma'am. He'sa well, let's just say he's a very foreign national, hoping to take the child into his own care, for who knows what nefarious purpose. The truth could make for terrible press if it got out. Goodness knows, the Children's Ministry doesn't need any more of that."

The headmistress nodded with pretend sobriety. "My," she breathed, "that would be bad."

"It would," he agreed. "Not that I'm free to tell you any more. It's a delicate diplomatic matter."

"Well, goodness, we wouldn't want to get tangled up in that!"

"No, indeed. Suffice to say that this woman"a"he tilted his head toward Roxiea""has been instrumental in preventing an international incident. I can vouch for her charactera if I'm forced to."

He allowed the threat of possible unpleasantness to enter his voice. The dormitory mistress turned satisfyingly pale. After that, she was only too happy to let them take Max off her hands.

"You know," Roxie said as they escaped the dreary building, "for a policeman, you're pretty handy with a lie."

"Not a lie," Adrian corrected. "Just innuendo."

"Yeah." Charles laughed. "You innuendoed us right out of there."

"I want ice cream," Max announced, lifting his sleepy head from Roxie's shoulder. "And Adrian has to come, too." The invitation touched him inordinately, though he knew it put Roxie in an awkward spot. When he met her eyes to see if it was all right, they shone with grat.i.tude. For one wonderful moment, he felt as if he could conquer not just the Children's Ministry, but the world.

"Yes," she said softly, "Adrian should come, too." Everyone, Charles included, seemed to a.s.sume he'd accept.

The resiliency of youth went a long way toward explaining how a dish of strawberry ice cream with chocolate sauce could succeed in restoring Max to his former self. Adrian's presence didn't hurt, either. Roxanne was forced to conclude that there was no real subst.i.tute for a protective male adult. No matter how capable the female, the masculine half of the species was primally comforting.

Despite Max's obvious improvement, Roxie carried him to his room and cuddled him on her lap in the rocking chair. She'd hoped to rock him to sleep, but every time he began to drift, he'd jerk himself awake again.

"I'm here," she murmured, stroking his hair. "You can rest."

Charles lay on his back on his own narrow bed, staring at the ceiling with his hands folded over his diaphragm.

Max caught them both by surprise when he spoke. "That wasn't as bad as the dragon," he said.

"What dragon?" Roxie asked, a.s.suming he meant some childish bogeyman.

"The demon doctor. The one who bought me from my father."

Charles's head turned toward them on his pillow. A single candle burned on the nightstand. From the way it flickered at his indrawn breath, this was the first he'd heard of Max being sold.

"A demon bought you?" Roxie asked. Though Max was too young to sell legally, she knew that wouldn't stop a truly desperatea"or truly greedya"parent.

"Uh-huh," said Max around his thumb. "The dragon put me in a machine. It was supposed to stop me from feeling things."

Charles swung his legs around and sat on the side of his bed. "Is this a real story, Max? Or a made-up story like your teacher reads from a book in school?"

"It's real. The dragon said I was tainted. He said I had too many motions for dymos to feed from me."

"Do you mean daimyos?" Roxie tried not to let her horror color her voice. A chill swept across her shoulders. "This dragon said you had too many emotions for the daimyo to feed from you?"

"Yep," Max confirmed equably. "And I kept feeling motions no matter what he did. I was so tainded, he had to let me go. I couldn't find the street from when I was little. It wasn't like Awar. But then Charles saved me, so that was all right."

Charles muttered a curse under his breath. Max waved a floppy hand at him.

"Love you, Charles," he said fuzzily.

Charles covered his mouth, but whatever sound he was m.u.f.fling couldn't trouble Max. The boy had dropped his cannonball and promptly fell asleep.

"I didn't know," Charles said, coming to stand beside her as she tucked Max into his bed. "It must have been some sort of experiment. Good thing it failed."

"Yes." Roxanne gazed down at the peacefully slumbering boy. "Good thing."

Those are my father's people, she was thinking. Those are the kind of people I come from.

Charles laid his palm on her back. "You aren't like that," he said, knowing her well enough to guess at her fears. "You could never, ever be like that."

His words were a comfort, but not an absolute cure.

Chapter 19.

Is any creature more reckless than a man in love?

a"Welland Herrington, A Memoir Adrian stood as soon as Roxie entered the parlor. Her expression was distracted, her curls straggling unpredictably from her coiffure. Circles of worry darkened the hollows beneath her eyes.

To Adrian, she'd never looked more beautiful.