Read Engraved: Book Five of The St. Croix Chronicles for Free Online Page B

hard.
    I’d never known the Compton men to have a glass jaw, but then, I hadn’t yet come to know Ashmore and his many skills, either. Mixing drink with any sort of pugilistic attempt surely would always end thusly.
    “Now,” Ashmore said over the earl’s dead weight, “what in blazes happened?”
    “Let us fetch a hackney first,” I said, and set out to do just that. Mercifully, Ashmore did not pry during the ride back to the rowhouse he had acquired through private and anonymous means. There was no staff, only us, and though that would have been the very height of impropriety, it wasn’t a concern I bothered with.
    Ashmore had seen me at my worst, during a vulnerability that trumped all matters of polite reckoning. He had nursed me through withdrawals that would have ended me, were it not for his determination to ensure they did not.
    I owed him everything, and he returned that owing with steadfast care.
    We were bound, him and I. I would never be able to explain it to Society’s gossip mill, should they ever get word, but it was enough for me that I understood it.
    What unusual lives we had come to lead.
    Fortunately, the hackney driver did not care enough to question Ashmore’s assertion of his companion’s overindulgence. The surly driver took his coin and plodded away, leaving us outside the simple brick and brown stone facing that was our less-than-luxurious abode.
    “Perhaps we should get him inside,” I suggested, tongue firmly in cheek. “Lest the neighbors think us truly degenerate.”
    “You try me, minx,” came Ashmore’s grumble. I hurried to open the door.
    The thoroughly addled earl groaned against Ashmore’s shoulder. To think that Piers Everard Compton, Earl Compton, heir to the Marquis Northampton’s long legacy, would be carried like a bride over a shabby threshold.
    I wondered if his brother’s spirit might not be mortally offended.
    I filled Ashmore in as he laid the rousing earl upon the small sofa within the sitting room. There was not much to the rowhouse, for it wasn’t the sort of place accustomed to parlors and fancy seating. A single sitting room, an attic, two bedrooms and a small kitchen provided cramped living, but for now, it would suffice.
    Were I unfamiliar with the luxuries of the upper crust, I might consider it more than enough for my needs.
    We were close enough to Limehouse to make the trek easily, and far enough from Shadwell and Blackwall that we would not be caught unawares by the row between the Brick Street Bakers and the Black Fish Ferrymen.
    That was another quandary I would have to address—but not yet.
    Ashmore listened to my explanations, then sighed and rubbed his colored hair. I plucked my wig off, leaving my natural garnet-hued tresses pinned tightly to my scalp, save for the unavoidable fringe torn loose by exertion and stubborn curl. “I’d thought that disguise enough to save you the trouble.”
    “To be perfectly candid,” I said bitterly, discarding the wig upon a small table, “’tis unlikely he recognized me at all. I might have been nothing more than a haunt from his cups. Had I laughed and assured him of his mistake, I suspect he would have moved along.”
    “Perhaps.” Yet Ashmore did not look convinced as he sat upon the only other chair in the room and waited for our unwitting guest to waken.
    I prepared tea. It was a skill I’d learned at Ashmore’s side, for I no longer had staff to make it for me. I made it too strong, but he drank it without complaint and I was coming to prefer the bitterness of a strong black leaf.
    It took near enough to an hour, but eventually, our unwilling guest stirred.
    When Piers finally woke, he did so as a man accustomed to waking in strange places. He did not startle, but blinked bleary eyes and pressed the back of his hand to a jaw that surely ached.
    “Good evening, my lord,” I said, hoping to defer any outrage directed at the man who had dared challenge him.
    As I’d hoped, Piers’s pale