Read Come the Night (The Dangerous Delameres - Book 1) for Free Online

among the elite of England and France.
    But William St. Clair had carried his secrets to the grave, it seemed. Despite their efforts Silver and Bram could never recover the proper formula. Their experiments had all failed dismally. Along with the dominant mix of lavender and roses, the blend must have included several obscure ingredients like narcissus or cinnamon or ginger — or perhaps even rare gum resins from Arabia. St. Clair had searched obsessively for rare ingredients to intensify his perfumes, and somewhere he must have found things that Silver and Bram did not know of.
    Any one of those rare elements could have given Millefleurs its stamina and extraordinary complexity. Without the exact formula their results were no more than faintly pleasing.
    Silver sighed. “We’ll find the formula, Bram. We have to.” She fought down a wave of pessimism and caught her brother in a quick hug. “Now enough of this gloomy talk, imp.”
    Her brother looked unconvinced. “Don’t you get lonely here sometimes, Syl? Don’t you want a home and a family of your own someday?”
    Silver’s head cocked. “You and Tinker are my family, Bram. What more could I want?”
    Bram’s dusty fingers slid trustingly into his sister’s. “It’s just that … well, I wish you had more pretty things. And more places to wear them,” her brother said earnestly. “Tinker and I both do.”
    “Well, I don’t. I wouldn’t know how to wear a fancy gown and stays even if I had them.” Silver gave his hair a ruffle. “I’m much happier in my shirt and breeches.”
    “You are? Honestly?”
    “Of course, I am. Why don’t you go tell Tinker about this discovery of yours? I need to finish a few things here.”
    Silver watched Bram trot off to the wisteria-covered cottage at the end of the lane, smiling happily over his discovery. For the moment his worries were forgotten. Silver knew that Tinker, bless him, would find a way to make the boy rest before tackling any new projects.
    She sighed, feeling the wind ruffle her hair. For a moment she was swept up in memories. Hauntingly sweet, they reminded her how things used to be when this was a happy place, lit with laughter.
    Before her parents’ deaths.
    Before Jessica had died. Before Sir Charles Millbank had started poking about Lavender Close and bothering her.
    She thought about a pearl choker her father had given her mother and a hand-painted fan of carved ivory he said had come all the way from China.
    They were gone now.
    All the thinking in the world wouldn’t bring them back.
    Silver shoved the painful memories deep, where they belonged. She had no time for pearl chokers or ivory fans. There were rows of lavender to weed and a dozen more roses to prune before nightfall.
     
     

~  3  ~
     

     
    Mist filled the valley when they burst from the thick elms bordering the lower fields. There were four of them, all dressed in the dusty moleskin of day laborers.
    Silver squinted from her spot beside a half-pruned rosebush, trying to see them clearly.
    The man in front was over six feet tall, his head muffled in brown wool. She spun about, but the other three were already waiting for her, dark blurs against a haze of purple buds.
    “What do you want?” She turned around to face the closest man, fighting to keep her voice steady.
    “Want?” Hard laughter came muffled from behind the makeshift mask. “Why, not much. Jest yerself, missy.”
    Silver thought of running, but they were too close and too many. She could scream — but Tinker would never hear her. Blast, why hadn’t she seen them sooner? Was this Sir Charles’s doing?
    Right now, that didn’t matter. She would have to hold them off somehow. “Go on about your business and leave me to my work!”
    “Saucy little piece, ain’t she?” Brown Hood ambled closer. “Pretty, though.” He kept coming, close enough now for Silver to see his frayed cuffs and the stains on his knees. “But I reckon I’ll do the talking. That