Romancing the Crown: Kate & Lucas. Justine Davis

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СКАЧАТЬ closed against the autumn night. The homey scents of olive oil and garlic still hung in the air here, remnants of someone’s late supper, but no light showed from behind the shutters. By day, these historic alleys were magnets to tourists, but now the houses were simply homes.

      Had she overreacted? Could the sound she heard have been that of a fussy baby behind one of those shuttered windows? Could some weary parent be pacing the floor, comforting the child and putting it back to bed with a kiss while Kate raced past like a fool?

      No. An ordinary cry wouldn’t have set Kate’s hair on end. It wouldn’t have stirred this instinctive uneasiness deep inside. She reached a crossroads and paused, holding her breath as she strained to listen. In the winding maze of the old quarter, sound traveled in deceptive patterns. The child could be a quarter mile away or it could be in the next alley.

      There. Another cry. It seemed closer than before, but it was quickly muffled, as if someone were covering the baby’s mouth.

      Exhaling hard, Kate chose the middle street. She left the neighborhood of cobblestone alleys and entered a moonlit courtyard ringed by a hedge. There, at the opposite end, a figure moved furtively in the shadows. More cries wafted through the air, rapid and frantic enough to break a stone’s heart.

      “Hey,” Kate called, breaking into a sprint. “Wait.”

      The figure appeared to be a female carrying a blanket-wrapped bundle the size of an infant in her arms. Instead of stopping, she scurried through a break in the hedge.

      Kate followed, emerging on a sloping street that was illuminated by a line of wrought-iron street lamps. She blinked to adjust her eyes to the sudden brightness and spotted a sign for the King Augustus Hospital. The woman was on the opposite side, heading up the hill toward the hospital’s back entrance.

      Hesitating, Kate wondered if the woman might be taking her child for medical care. Was that the reason for her haste?

      But instead of going through the hospital’s doors, the woman stopped beside the low stone planter that jutted from the hospital wall and set her bundle on the flowers.

      A gurgling wail came from the bundle.

      The woman brushed off her palms. Her voice, dry and harsh, carried clearly on the breeze. “Go ahead and cry. Someone will hear you soon.”

      Kate scowled and jogged up the hill. “Excuse me, do you need some help?”

      The woman snapped her head up and glanced over her shoulder. Instead of retrieving the baby, she took a step away.

      Kate was close enough to see a tiny fist poke out of the bundle of blankets. It waved in the air, as if to punctuate its displeasure.

      The woman’s response to the infant’s distress was to take another step away.

      Kate’s chest heaved, not only from the exertion of her run but from a growing sense of outrage. This woman acted as if she intended to leave the child where it was. “What are you doing?” Kate demanded. “You’re not really planning on abandoning your baby there, are you?”

      The woman glanced around, her gaze as furtive as her movements had been. In the bleak glare of the streetlights, her plain, pinched features and her mousy brown hair gave her the look of a rodent. “Keep out of this. It’s none of your business.”

      “A child’s welfare is everybody’s business. If your baby is ill—”

      “There’s nothing wrong with the baby. He’s fine. I just can’t keep him anymore.”

      The resolution in the woman’s tone deepened Kate’s outrage. Nevertheless, she tried to reason with her again. “Ma’am, if you need help caring for your child, there are agencies that you can go to—”

      “You know nothing about it. Get out of my way.”

      It took no more than a heartbeat for Kate to assess her options. As a U.S. naval officer and a foreigner in Montebello, she had no authority over this civilian. Yet turning away, continuing with her run, was out of the question. No matter how tired she was, no matter what flack she might take from her base commander for interfering, she had a clear duty that transcended the rule book and the need for sleep. Before the woman could take another step, Kate grasped her wrist. “Sorry, I can’t let you leave.”

      “What do you think you’re doing? Let go of me!” The woman yanked her wrist, a surprising amount of strength in her wiry frame, but she couldn’t break Kate’s hold. Muttering a curse, she aimed a kick at Kate’s shin.

      Kate neatly sidestepped the kick as her training took over. Without loosening her hold, she used the woman’s momentum to spin her around, then twisted her arm behind her back. Exerting just enough pressure to hold her in place against the low stone wall without injuring her, Kate turned her head to look at the infant.

      He had managed to kick off the blankets altogether and lay on his back with his feet and fists waving in the air. His cries had stopped, as if he preferred the cold embrace of the flower bed to being held in his mother’s arms. His face was flushed from crying, and tiny shudders rippled over his body, but his blue eyes were bright with interest as he gazed around him at the crushed flowers.

      How could anyone discard their child like this? Babies were so precious, their lives so fragile, what kind of monster would abandon, with such indifference, the life she had carried? Didn’t she fear the nightmares that would follow? Didn’t she realize how the cries would haunt her?

      “Let go,” the woman repeated. “Ow! You’re breaking my arm!”

      Kate wrenched her attention to her duty. Turning toward the hospital doors, she raised her voice to the level she’d learned to employ on the deck of a battleship and called for help.

      After ten seconds the hospital door swung open and an elderly white-clad nurse peeked out. Her eyes widened when she saw Kate and the struggling woman.

      Belatedly, Kate realized how the situation must look. Dressed in her sweat-damp T-shirt and running shorts, her face bare of makeup and her hair a windblown mess, she probably appeared like some kind of female mugger who was overpowering this hapless, mousy woman. Before the nurse could jump to the wrong conclusion about which one of them was calling for help, Kate spoke up. “I’m Lieutenant Kate Mulvaney, U.S. Navy,” she said. “I’m making a citizen’s arrest. I need you to call the police and tend to—”

      “No! No police.” The woman renewed her struggle to escape Kate’s hold. “I didn’t do anything!”

      The nurse ducked inside before Kate could tell her to see to the baby. Lying in the planter the way he was, he wouldn’t have been visible from the door. Now that he’d stopped crying, no one would notice he was there unless they were looking. If Kate hadn’t witnessed what had happened, how long would the child have gone undiscovered?

      She thought of what might have happened to the helpless infant and had to restrain herself from giving the woman’s arm an extra twist.

      A security guard emerged from the hospital. He was a large man with a generous belly that stretched his light gray uniform to the limit of its buttons. “What’s going on here?” he asked.

      Kate identified herself once again and guided her prisoner toward him. “This woman was abandoning her baby.”

      “Baby? СКАЧАТЬ