A Kiss In The Dark Read Free Page A

tracks.
    “Do you truly believe all children ’ave guardian angels, m’lady?”
    She faced him, trying in vain to read his expression in the dimness of the room. “Yes. Yes, I do.”
    “Even the bad ones?”
    In that moment, he sounded so lost and alone that Deirdre longed to put her arms around him in a warm, motherly hug. How often as a little girl had she asked herself the same question? How many times had she lain awake on her dirty cot in the hovel she’d called home and wondered if God could ever forgive her for what she was forced to do just to stay alive?
    “You’re not bad, Peter. None of you are.”
    One corner of his mouth tilted upward in a cynical slant. “We’re pickpockets, m’lady. We steal for a living, and I ’ave a ’ard time believing God would send any angels to the likes of us.”
    Before Deirdre could think of a suitable reply, he had wheeled about and disappeared back into the shadows.
    He was so wrong, she thought, biting her lip as she stared after him. But how did you explain that to a fifteen-year-old boy who only saw the worst that life had to offer? Before Nigel had come along and taken her in, given her a home and a reason for being, she’d felt exactly the same way. The viscount had been more than her angel. He’d been her salvation.
    At that moment, a slight movement at the edge of Deirdre’s vision caught her attention, and she looked up to find Jack Barlow watching her from his place by the fire, his eyes full of anger and resentment.
    She suppressed a shiver. There was something about that boy that stirred a feeling of uneasiness within her, and she couldn’t help but believe that his presence in the gang would eventually lead to nothing but trouble.
    Tearing her gaze away from his, she wrapped her cloak more tightly about her and slipped out into the darkness of the alley.
    Though Deirdre’s carriage waited for her just around the corner, pulled up to the curb at the end of the street, she hesitated long enough to make certain no one was watching before stepping out onto the sidewalk. In this part of town, it was better to be safe than sorry. Waving her coachman, Cullen, back onto his perch when he would have hopped down to assist her, she pulled open the door and quickly climbed in, barely settling herself before they took off with a lurch.
    With a soft sigh, Deirdre let her head fall back against the seat cushions, closing her eyes as a great wave of exhaustion washed over her. Returning to Tothill Fields was always an emotionally draining experience. It brought back too many recollections of a time before she’d become Lady Rotherby. When she’d been merely little Deirdre O’Shea, daughter of the local drunkard.
    And a pickpocket in Barnaby Flynt’s gang.
    A chill slithered up her spine as a vision of the gang leader’s cruel visage flashed across her mind. With his shiny, bald head, cold, dark eyes, and the sinister scar marring the left side of his face, he was the devil incarnate. For eight long years, his evil shadow had loomed over her, causing her to wake screaming in the middle of the night, plagued by nightmares of the tragic event that had changed her life forever.
    Even after all this time, her memories of the incident were still just as fresh and stark as if they had happened only yesterday. The pained cries of the beautiful lady as she had tried to fight off Barnaby and his men, the crimson of her blood as it had pooled beneath her on the cobblestones. But the image that tormented her the most was the handsome, battered face of the young man who had cradled the lady’s fallen body so tenderly against his own, his unusual violet eyes full of anguish. Something about him had drawn Deirdre, touched her in a way she’d never forgotten. And now, the person who had set the whole terrible chain of events in motion was back.
    Deirdre’s hands tightened into fists on her lap as she contemplated what Barnaby Flynt’s return to the Fields could mean. Peter was