Page 21 of The Forsaken

Narrowing his eyes, Kerr found the fellow who’d cracked himself up.

She made Kerr an afterthought with her next address to the crowd. “You left off at…”

Six times did his iron by vigorous heating

grow soft in her forge in a minute or so.

As oft was hardened still was beating,

it softened more and hardened slow…”

Pewter mugs pounded wood tables, glasses clanged, and the patrons stomped their approval for the devilish minx.

“Ye ’eard the lady,” the tavern keeper roared. The music above stairs resumed in full swing, with the entire taproom come to life.

“Really? Sunday sermons?” Her amusement made his head ache. “I’m afraid you and I must attend very different churches.”

“I should trust a shrew like you would know bawdy tunes.”

“And I should trust a gentleman like you would not only know them, but taunt a lady with….”

The lady lost her words.

Kerr followed the source of her focus.

Another young lady, this one in a black silk cloak, beaded with crystals and matching crystal slippers, commanded the room in a different way than Andromena. Where Andromena had been greeted with the awe inspired by Helen of Troy by her mere presence, the stranger she met, in black lace gloves and a crimson-red-lined hood, was met with the respect befitting a proprietor.

“Never tell me. Your latest masquerade partner,” he said stiffly. “Which McQuoid is it n—”

Andromena darted with the speed of a startled doe, fled right for the snare.

“Bloody hell.” Kerr made a grab. She remained s just as elusive as a London fog; her cloak brushed his fingertips.

Like a skilled infantry, the vagrants moved into position around the pair, cutting him off from Andromena.

A panic akin to terror knocked at his chest. He should have thrown her over his damned shoulder. What was it about her that drove logic clean from his head? He brandished his blade at the bald, fat fellow directly between him and the imprudent chit.

A tiny, glove-covered hand came up. That gesture from the woman next to Andromena silenced the Rat’s Castle. Whoever the lady was held some sway over all the men in this place. His nerve-endings taut, Kerr honed in on their exchange. The whole while the pair spoke, his heart beat fast.

And when the discussion finished, the lady in black slipped her fingertips into Andromena’s, and began escorting her off.

“You are not taking her anywhere.”

Kerr centered his pistol on the woman who ran this place.

The room turned quiet so quickly that the metallic pling of the ale pump handle resounded like a shot. Steel hissed from scabbards.

Kerr surveyed their crowd. Men with missing teeth and more ruthless scars than the ones he sported eyed him through suddenly very sober-looking eyes.

And Andromena had achieved what she’d miraculously avoided before now—having weapons trained on them.

Him, to be precise. But she was too dumb to realize their dispensing with him gave them a free path to her.

Andromena gasped. “Edgar! Put your gun down.”

Kerr and the Lady in Black ignored her.

“The young woman is choosing to go with me.”