Wild:. Noelle Mack

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СКАЧАТЬ watermen guided them. The sons of the Thames are a race apart, like us. Sometimes I think they share our powers of perception, Kyril.”

      “Perhaps.” Kyril smiled slightly. “But they are not as we are.”

      Bobbing in the water, they looked in the direction from which the distant shouts had come, at last seeing the shape of a square-sterned cargo vessel riding low in the water. Looming in the darkness, it seemed unreal, a ghost ship under black sails, groaning.

      Lukian set to the oars again, bringing them at last to the other side of the river and the Baltic Dock. They were well ahead of the Catherine and the smaller boats that attended her, their lights pinpricks in the dark. Lukian looked over his shoulder only once as he rowed, pointing the bow toward the open side of a ramshackle boathouse.

      Here, though they were still in London, the sky seemed wider and higher, a great, dark bowl over the flat and marshy land of the docks. To the east, they saw the beginning of dawn.

      Lukian nodded toward the horizon. “First light.”

      “Well done. We are here. No one saw us.”

      His cousin rowed almost silently now, angling the oars so that they cut into the ripples with even more precision. Kyril looked over Lukian’s shoulder at the boathouse, its open side a gaping, dark mouth that would soon devour them.

      They shot in and the rowboat bumped against a thick mat of fibrous stuff at the other end. Kyril gripped the seat to keep from falling backward and Lukian laughed under his breath.

      “You are safe. Dry land awaits,” he said.

      Kyril made an obscene but cheerful gesture at his cousin.

      “The same to you.” Lukian drew down the oars and watched Kyril tie up. He pulled a leather bag from under his seat and tossed it onto the boathouse floor. “Time to change clothes.”

      “I had not thought of it,” Kyril said, using a cleat to pull himself up and out of the rowboat.

      His cousin did the same. “That is because Miss Sheridan has got under your skin.”

      Kyril pulled out a coarse shirt and trousers from the bag and scowled. “And if I wish to save my skin, I suppose I will have to wear these. The shirt stinks of sweat.”

      Lukian made a sound of disapproval at Kyril’s finickiness. “And a good thing, too. You are much too handsome to go about among dockworkers and sailors smelling of women’s perfume and dressed in fine clothes. The manly ones will beat you to a quivering pulp if they catch you alone and the others will make indecent offers. It would serve you right.”

      Kyril swung a fist, mostly in jest, and Lukian dodged it.

      Lukian was already dressed in rough clothes, but his face was clean, Kyril noticed. Had his cousin forgotten that important detail?

      He had not. The bag was lumpy. There were other things in it. Lukian rummaged and brought out two squat jars stopped with thick corks. “Rouge and powder.” He pulled out the corks and stuck his fingers into the first and then the second, smearing his face with grease and ashes. Then he cleaned his filthy fingers by dragging them through his hair. “How do I look?”

      “Alarmingly ugly.”

      “You are next.”

      “Give me a moment. I am tying these shoes. What dead body were they taken from? Anyone we know?”

      “I don’t think so,” Lukian said gravely.

      The crudely made shoes were damp inside and the less said about the way they smelled, the better. Disgusting. But Kyril was grateful to Lukian for thinking of everything.

      His cousin was not far wrong about Vivienne Sheridan getting under Kyril’s skin. He had stayed too late at her house tonight, hoped for more than she was ready to give—fie. Kyril prided himself upon his skill at knowing when a female was ready. Still, in her naive way, she was good about keeping her secrets. He had been told by someone else of her affair with the duke, of course, and that he’d provided for her.

      He knew nothing about her family. She was well-bred and well-educated. Given her beauty, it was a puzzle to him why Vivienne had not married well. She had been very young when the duke made her his mistress, Kyril knew that much.

      Howard? Horace? What was his first name? The old fellow had paid for the soirées at her Audley Street apartments and, in the end, deeded her the house on Cheyne Row and provided for her comfortable retirement from the business of love.

      A business that was conducted like any other in London—prudent terms set in advance, a reasonable outlay of money, a dash of goodwill, and a final nod from the solicitor who looked over the necessary documents to end it.

      Sealed with hot wax and a cold kiss.

      The experience seemed to have left her curiously untouched. Almost innocent. Or as innocent as a nobleman’s plaything could be.

      It would be amusing to find out what else Vivienne might be keeping from him. Kyril had time to find out. He might go so far as to return to her tomorrow night.

      In another minute they were walking through the boathouse door. The Baltic Dock was less than a quarter-mile away from it and the Catherine was entering the connecting canal. They hastened to the empty warehouse in which they would hide to watch the unloading.

      Kyril took out a heavy iron key that opened a rear door, and both men stole inside. There was nothing to trip over or bump into—the walls echoed their every footstep as they climbed to an upper floor.

      They sat down to wait, familiar with the tedious process that was about to unfold.

      Lukian patted his pockets and found his tobacco and his pipe, lighting it and smoking while Kyril looked out a dusty window.

      The light of dawn streamed in by the time the ship had entered the calm, flat water of the dock’s immense pool. Men swarmed over her, uncoiling massive ropes as thick as their own arms, throwing them as easily as cats played with yarn. Cranes swung huge hooks and slings over the Catherine’s deck and hatches began to open. The work of unloading was beginning. It would take most of the day and they had been told to stay there until the bitter end.

      Kyril’s belly grumbled but he ignored it. He had come away so quickly from Vivienne’s house, disturbed that he had forgotten all about meeting Lukian at the river until she had finally told him to go. He had not thought of what he would eat the next day and it had not occurred to him to ask Tom to stop the coach and buy something.

      But they would feed well at their lair tonight near the Palace of St. James’s. A traditional Howl had been planned to welcome a new member of the Pack, a man he did not know.

      Lukian heard his cousin’s belly rumble. He reached into the leather bag and took out two small parcels wrapped in paper.

      “Here you are. Bread and meat.” He tossed one of the parcels at Kyril.

      Kyril caught it. “You think of everything.”

      Lukian snorted. “I have no mate and no distractions.”

      “I am not impressed. Celibacy is nothing to brag about.”

      “I СКАЧАТЬ