She looked into his warm, strong, loving eyes and voiced her remaining doubt. “You’ll never have children if you marry me.”
And he did the strangest thing. Winter Makepeace, the man who never laughed, threw his head back and shouted with laughter.
He looked down at her and grinned, sweeping his arm toward the stairway, now crowded with children of every shape and size. “Oh, my precious Isabel, these are my children—the children of my heart, the children of my life’s work. I’m the father to dozens of children and plan to be the father to hundreds of children in the future. Come. Say yes, be my wife, and help me raise my brood.”
“Yes,” she whispered, and when some of the children leaned forward, unable to hear, she shouted the word: “Yes!”
Winter grinned and kissed her on the mouth, fierce and quick, and then turned to the waiting children of the home. “Children, it is my great honor to tell you that Lady Beckinhall has consented to marry me.”
For a moment there was awed silence and then a great roar went up: “HUZZAH!”
Winter laughed again and picked Isabel up by the waist, swinging her around, high above his head.
“HUZZAH!” the children cheered, half-maddened by delight.
“Nell!” Winter shouted to the maidservant standing among the children. “I think this calls for scones for everyone at tea.”
That prompted the biggest cheer of all and then a mad scramble as the children raced to find seats for tea. Nell beamed as she brought up the rear, and even Mistress Medina dabbed at her eyes with her apron as she hurried back to the kitchen.
“My dear, I hope you haven’t ruined a perfectly good orphanage manager,” Amelia said drily from the sitting room doorway. Her expression softened. “But I wish you all the happiness possible.”
“Thank you.” Isabel’s eyes grew misty and she received a congratulatory kiss from each of the ladies, even Lady Penelope, who looked quite bewildered.
“Let me escort you to your carriage,” Winter murmured in Isabel’s ear.
She nodded quickly, for she wanted a few more minutes alone with him. But as they neared the door, a patter of feet came behind them.
They turned to see Mistress Medina, holding out a small key on a ribbon to Winter. She winked. “I almost forgot in the last week’s flurry. Thought you might want the key back, sir. Wouldn’t want all those slingshots to get loose again.”
Outside, dusk was just beginning to descend.
Isabel waited until the home’s door closed behind them. “What was that all about?”
Winter actually looked a little guilty. “Well, when I left the home on d’Arque’s orders, I gave this key to Mistress Medina.”
She looked at the innocent little key, realization dawning. “And it…”
“Unlocks the cabinet where I keep all the slingshots I’ve confiscated from the boys.” He nodded and beamed. “I actually have quite a collection. I’ve been acquiring them for nine years, you see…”
She giggled at the thought of Mistress Medina arming all the little boys in the home. Poor Lady Penelope! She’d never stood a chance.
Winter tugged her cape closer about her neck. “Are you happy?”
“Ecstatic.” She smiled up at him. She felt so free suddenly, as if a great weight had been lifted from her shoulders. “Let’s have a short engagement. I want to move into the home as soon as I finish decorating it.”
“Decorating?” His eyebrows arched in amusement.
“Decorating,” she said firmly. “It’s much too austere for children. I want to bring Mr. and Mrs. Butterman, and Will and Harold the footmen, and of course Pinkney, though she’s liable to expire from shock from living at an orphanage, and of course I’ll have to bring Christopher and Carruthers.”
He stopped suddenly, facing her. “Christopher didn’t leave with his mother?”
They’d not spoken since that night when everything had been so rushed.
“No.” She looked up at him, so grateful for what he’d brought into her life. “I took your advice and told Louise that I wanted Christopher to live with me. As it turns out, she was quite relieved—it seems that a small boy isn’t very conducive toward romance.”
The corners of his mouth twitched. “It depends on the type of romance, I think.”
Then he was kissing her again, his mouth so warm and full of life that she entirely forgot where she was and kissed him back enthusiastically.
“I do love you,” she whispered as she pulled away. “Now and forever. I realized it when I thought you might die at Seymour’s hand.”
“There was never any chance of that,” he murmured. “Not when I had you to live for.”
“But…” She trailed off, her eyes widening as she glanced over his shoulder.
Winter turned to look.
A man stood not half a dozen steps away, dressed in harlequin’s motley, black jackboots, and a long-nosed mask. As she gaped at him, he nodded and tipped his black, floppy hat before leaping to a low-hanging balcony and thence to the roof where he disappeared.
Isabel looked up at Winter. “What…? How…? Who…? ”
He smiled and leaned down to kiss her on the nose before whispering, “I told you I was the Ghost of St. Giles, but I never said there weren’t others as well.”
Epilogue
As the sky lightened in the east, the Harlequin Ghost of St. Giles shivered. When the dawn’s first rays touched his face, he shuddered. And when at last the sky was blue and the sun yellow overhead, he wept.
“Forgive me, my True Love,” he gasped as he sank to his knees. “Forgive me, for I was in a place of darkness, neither in this world nor the next, and I forgot who I was and what you meant to me.”
“I forgive you,” the True Love said, and kissed his lips. “For you are the light of my world. I love you more than life itself.”
“And I love you as well,” the Harlequin said. He laid his palm upon his True Love’s belly and looked at her. “Let us leave this place and marry so that we can bring our Hope into the world together.”
And so they did. The Harlequin and his True Love left St. Giles, married, and lived happily ever after…
But beware, my dears! For ’tis said that even in his happy new life, the Harlequin sometimes grows restless on a moonlit night. There are those who say he returns to haunt the streets of St. Giles, wearing his tattered Harlequin’s motley and wielding two sharp swords. And when he does, murderers and thieves, those who would harm the innocent, and those whose evil deeds are done by dark tremble at the mention of the Ghost of St. Giles!
—from The Legend of the Harlequin Ghost of St. Giles
Godric St. John jumped silently down into his town house garden and then crouched, motionless, and waited for a full minute. The precaution was most likely unnecessary. Since Clara’s death—and a long time before she’d passed away—no one had cared about his comings and goings.
Still. It was good to keep in practice.
When nothing and no one moved, Godric slowly rose to his feet. He slid from shadow to shadow, making for the door at the back of his house that led into his library. Tonight had been mostly wasted. He’d chased a thief and then lost him in a warren of back alleys, scared off a possible footpad from a pieman returning home for the night—the pieman hadn’t even known his peril—and seen Winter Makepeace kiss Lady Beckinhall in the middle of Maiden Lane. That almost certainly meant a marriage—however oddly matched the couple—and Winter’s retirement from their… hobby.
Godric grunted as he opened his library door. One fewer Ghost meant—
“Good evening, Mr. St. John.” The voice came from the shadows obscuring the old leather armchair near the fireplace.
Godric swung in that direction, crouching low, his swords already out and up.
The vague shape in the corner tutted. “Now, now, Mr. St. John, there’s no need for violence, I assure you.”
“Who are you?” Godric whispered.
The man leaned forward into the faint light cast by the embers in the fireplace. “My name is Griffin Reading.” Godric could see now that he had an elbow propped on the arm of the chair and something dangled from one finger.
Godric paced forward and the shape resolved itself into a mask: long-nosed, leather, black. Exactly, in fact, like the one he wore upon his face. Exactly like the spare mask that should be hidden in his bedroom.
But evidently wasn’t. Godric looked at Lord Griffin.
Who smiled without humor. “I have a proposition for you.”
The masked avenger known as the Ghost of St. Giles rides again, risking his life for justice, for freedom, and for love.
But this time, another man takes on the disguise—and another woman dares to touch the darkness…