Page 76 of A Duke's Keeper
Camille wrapped the familiar cold and shadow of the streets around her like the shawl looped over her shoulders. The country had been a nice reprieve from the constant caution and threat of danger, but complacency bred death. It would never do to get too comfortable with the elite, no matter how different and kind some seemed.
Lord Quickner’s wide smirk came to mind, and that of a steaming mug of cocoa. The image warmed her against the night’s chill and chipped away at the ice coating her feelings of theton.
How her views of the titled had changed. Almost without realizing it, Camille found herself smiling and taking precious moments to talk idly of nothing of consequence, as if the bright memories of the elite world had somehow brightened her own.
Comfortable cocoa, warm partings, laughter: her growing circle of acquaintances had rendered more cheerful memories in the past weeks than in the whole of her childhood.
And it had all started with a handsome duke.
Camille crossed over to the next street and stopped dead.
She gasped at a figure leaning over a body in the street. Images of Grey’s and Flank’s bodies flashed through her mind.
Camille tore through her skirts for the letter opener, her heart hammering and her hands shaking. She ripped the steel out with a tearing of seams and advanced. “Stop!”
The figure whirled, the moonlight catching the unmistakable cut and style of a man’s haircut. Camille gasped, certain the light played tricks over fair hair. The body groaned, a whining, animal cry of pain.
At the sound, the man took off down the alley and vanished into the maze of the rookery.
Camille reeled, her feet frozen beneath her. What she’d seen, it hadn’t been real. She rubbed at her eyes, nicking her ear with the letter opener. The sting brought the alley, the smell of rot between the cobblestones, the body before her, all into sharp focus.
It couldn’t have been Renard. He was back at the Quickner estate. Camille rushed forward, steeling herself for another broken corpse. She rolled the body—so slight and thin—until a face appeared with a smirk Camille knew well.
“Hey, Cam.”
“My God, Syd!” Camille wiped at the blood on her friend’s face, looking for the source of the bleeding. “What happened?”
Syd’s breathing was shallow and her face pale, but her eyes were mercifully clear and focused.
“We need to get off the streets before the animals come sniffing,” Syd said.
Camille pulled Syd to her feet and threw her small arm over her shoulder, the girl’s weight nothing. This scenario was too much like that night with Scarlet, and Camille gasped around her own panic.
To think anyone could take on Syd... “Was it Hawkins out for revenge?” she asked. The moonlightmusthave played tricks with the man’s features. Anyone could wear a wig. Syd noddedin the direction of the free clinic. “Later. I need to get you safe first.”
“Me?” She’d break Hawkins with her own two hands. She pulled Syd closer, noticing a patch of red spreading up her side.
Camille swallowed that panic down, the taste like coal and smoke down her throat. Now wasn’t the time to fall apart. Shoving the emotions into a box in her mind, she bolted the lock. Pressing a hand to her friend’s side, Syd gasped and put her own hand over Camille’s as if she could contain the hurt.
“Syd—”
“It’s just pain.” Syd smirked through trembling lips. “I’ll survive.”
Deep-seated hatred sprouted up from Camille’s soul. How many times had she thought that same thing? Pain was pain, and she’d accepted it as part of life.
Life held more than pain. There was surprise, and joy, and moments too precious to label. One need only grit their teeth and ignore the demons of the past.
“Hold on.” Camille hefted her friend’s small frame onto her back. “This is going to hurt.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Everyone knew themoment Markus Laundry arrived.
The clinic walls, whitewashed and bare, seemed to shrink at his nameless bellow; even Mrs. Banner, the heartless creature—more bone and beratement than flesh and blood—winced.
“In here, Pops,” Syd called.
Heavy footfalls sounded down the hall, into the room, and then the separator was torn away, revealing the middle-aged man, his normal stoic air replaced with lethal rage.
