Wicked:. Noelle Mack

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СКАЧАТЬ was difficult to tell the difference between the aftermath of a large party, though, when servants who were tired or drunk or both would scramble to retrieve milady’s things. The few chairs leaned against the wall but one had been knocked over. The dressmaker’s figure stood upright, a mute witness to what had happened here.

      “I left her on that pile where she was, still a-sleeping,” Jack said. “It was much later when I came back and that was to break up a fight between two lady’s maids. Scratching and clawing they were, but Angelica was nowhere to be seen.”

      “Did you not search the house?”

      Jack shook his head. “I was wanted elsewhere.”

      “There is a bad smell in the room,” Semyon declared. “Of decay and worse.”

      Jack took a cursory sniff or two. “It smells the same to me, sir. But it has not been aired out. The high and mighty stink like anyone else, of course, and so do their clothes. Especially after a long night.”

      Semyon willed his wolf-sight into his eyes, turning his face away from Jack so that the servant would not see his pupils change to glowing gold. He strode to the wall, where he had discerned faint, long scratches.

      Yes. He caught her smell underneath the lingering odor of decay, the cause of which he could not guess. As Jack had pointed out, many people had come and gone in this small space tonight.

      He looked intently at the wall. The scratches had been made by fine fingernails, feminine ones, and it was clear to him that she had made them. Perhaps clawing at the wall, sliding down it after falling against it. Had she tripped over the pile when she had arisen at last? He had to consider the possibility that nothing of consequence had happened to her, that she had merely decamped, especially considering the antipathy between her and her mistress.

      The possibility that she had gone off with an unknown lover—the matter of the rose in her hand still troubled him—was not something he wanted to think about.

      The side of his boot touched against something hard. Semyon looked down.

      He recognized the book she had used to write his name upon the slip of paper she’d put in his pocket. He bent down to pick it up and opened it.

      A few pages had been torn and recently. A few fine threads of linen trailed from the jagged edge of the torn pages. He put it to his nose, catching the unmistakable scent of fear. Her hands had been sweating, her body exuding a nameless terror that only he could sense.

      To Jack, to anyone, what he held was only a book. Semyon quickly riffled through the other pages to see if anything had been written in it in desperate haste—no. There was nothing.

      The book was small enough to slide into his pocket and he did so, touching the slip of paper he had not thought of until now, the one with his name on it.

      Hearing a noise of someone dashing about not far away, Jack had gone into the hall just outside. Semyon brought the slip of paper to his nose, smelling it for comparison.

      The feminine hand that had touched it had left a trace of scent as well, but there was nothing at all fearful in it.

      No, it was pure and sweet. He knew that seeing him had been a pleasant experience for her from that alone, and he studied the graceful handwriting. Just his name, written with care in pencil. He sensed that she had liked writing it and hope sprang high in his heart.

      So little to go on. So much to be found out. Wherever she was in the teeming city, he would find her. And he would deal savagely with anyone who hurt her.

      Semyon put the slip of paper back in his pocket with the book and joined Jack in the hallway.

      “There is nothing here,” he said with finality.

      Chapter 3

      Angelica struggled to open her eyes, knowing only that her cheek was pressed against something that scratched like wool. She lifted herself up on one elbow and looked warily around her. She had been dumped on a carpet in a different room and there were no boots, rough or polished, near her face.

      Waiting for she knew not what, she held her breath and listened for the faint sound of someone else’s breathing. There was nothing, but other sounds outside filled her ears.

      She knew was still in London—she could hear the raw-voiced cries of street sellers and a hack driver clattering by, roaring at his horse in foul language that was nonetheless English.

      Still, she could be anywhere. Good neighborhoods could be right next to rough ones like as not. Angelica was not about to dash to the window and scream for help when she was not even sure that she was alone in the room.

      She seemed to be on one side of a high bed that boasted a mahogany frame with posts carved in spirals and a canopy in draped silk that would have been the pride of a Parisian demimondaine.

      She was near the windows of the room, away from the door or doors that she could not see. She looked up and around herself again taking in every detail of the expensive but somehow tawdry furnishings. Affixed to the tasseled corners of the canopy were tiny cupids, swarming thickly as mosquitoes.

      The louche décor was luxurious and sensual but the bizarre contrast to the austere chamber where she had first been imprisoned made her uneasy. She stayed where she was, convinced by now that she was alone in the room.

      For now.

      Knowing her stepbrother, he had brought her to a pretty prison for a reason that was bound to be ugly. Victor Broadnax was capable of ingenious and elaborate cruelty.

      What he was planning—what he might do next—made her shudder and she forced her fears aside. Then she thought suddenly of the iron cuff around her ankle and curled over to feel for it. That too was gone. She rubbed the sore marks that gave evidence of it having been there at all, feeling as if she were moving through a waking dream.

      Angelica moved closer to the bed and raised her head, venturing a look over the puffy coverlet. She saw no one but located the door, telling herself that it was undoubtedly locked.

      Her only ways out were it or the windows. The angle of the sunlight streaming in and the distant quality of voices she’d heard from the street told her that she was probably on a high floor. She lifted herself up noiselessly by gripping one of the bedposts and took a few stealthy steps to the nearest window.

      There was no betraying creak of floorboards underneath the carpet she’d lain on. Well and good.

      Angelica stood to one side of the window’s sheer curtains, looking down at the iron railing that completely surrounded the narrow area between the house and the street.

      A burly man stood there, thick-fingered hands clasped behind his back, wearing a heavy coat with an upturned collar and a nondescript hat. Passersby glanced into his face, which she could not see, and hurried past him.

      So this side of the house was guarded. No doubt the back was too. She looked up and down the street below, not recognizing it at all. But then she had not been long in London.

      The houses seemed new but they had a raw look, as if they had sprung ready-built from a former field on the outskirts of London. They were jammed together with no alleys or cuts in between, which would make an escape difficult to hide. She could not slip away unnoticed when СКАЧАТЬ