Wicked:. Noelle MackЧитать онлайн книгу.
nose had wrinkled and without thinking, she’d brought the rose she’d been holding to her face and smelled its sweet fragrance, liking its extraordinary freshness. Ignoring the unpleasant man, she’d touched a finger to its tightly furled petals, separating them and found that the heart of the rose was drenched with a curious, crystalline dew.
Longing to taste it, avoiding the man’s gaze and his revolting appearance, she had ventured to sample the dew, putting a fingertip first in it and then to her lips…and…and…she had fallen, knocking over a small dressing table and the book she’d used to write upon that lay atop it.
Gasping, terrified, she’d pulled herself up by the lapels of Semyon’s coat somehow, unable to stand. The masculine smell of it had given her a jolt of strength that soon dissolved—she had let go and fallen again, to her knees. The other man had laughed at her, his voice coarse, a mongrel’s bark.
She’d tried to crawl away, escape the shadowy chamber and the strange intruder who had tricked her, holding on to the stem of the rose. It had seemed to grow thick in her hand, as thick as a young tree, and the bud had become as big as a human head.
Then her other hand had touched the fallen book and she tried to tear out a page, thinking wildly of leaving a note for someone to find. The man had kicked the book away before she could. Sobbing, she flung the rose away from herself, but the man forced it back into her hand, curling her limp fingers around it and squeezing painfully hard with his hand until its thorns pierced her skin.
She remembered no more after that.
Angelica looked with horror at the rose she still clutched. The innocent-seeming petals had held a potent and dangerous drug. She threw it into a corner and curled up in a ball when she heard footsteps approach.
Two people. Men, judging by the tread.
They stopped by her head. One bent down to test the chain attached to the cuff around her ankle, seeming to find it sound. Through her hair, she saw the heavy boots of the man doing that, boots with round, scuffed toes and a split sole on the left one that had been mended, not well. The other pair were far more elegant—they were riding boots that had cost a small fortune and were polished to a high shine. She could almost see her face in them—a tear-swollen, dirty face, she knew that, half covered with matted hair.
“Hello, Angelica,” the owner of the boots said. “Pity, seeing you in such a disreputable state. You always prided yourself on your beauty, didn’t you, my dear?”
The tip of one of the boots pressed into her cheek. Icy terror gripped her heart and her breath stopped in her lungs. She had known that voice all her life. Angelica looked up into the face of her stepbrother and fainted dead away at his feet.
Semyon was unable to sleep and left his bed, peeling off his nightshirt and dressing again, rather carelessly. But who would see or care in the dark streets of London as he roamed through them? He was thinking of Angelica all the while, slipping out and away from the Pack’s house with such stealth that he awakened no one.
His preternaturally long strides took him first to a marketplace, already stirring in the hours before dawn. No one noticed him, occupied as they were with the business of setting up stalls and dickering with farmers. Dray horses stood shivering in their traces, stamping their massive hooves with dull clops, their heavy muscles exhausted with the effort of pulling wagonloads of winter vegetables over the rutted roads to the city. Semyon glanced without interest at turnips and mangel-wurzels piled higher than his head, the earth still clinging to their lumpy sides. Another cart held immense cabbages and small sprouts still on thick stems, green kale tucked in frilly bunches beside them.
Sturdy farm women, swaddled in wool shawls and skirts, clomped about in wooden shoes. They had come to sell pies and jellies and other dainties, upturning the baskets they’d carried everything in and arranging their wares on the flat bottoms.
An enterprising one of their number had a charcoal fire going in an odd contraption that only a tinker could have made and was doing a brisk business in tea and coffee, sold in mugs that the customers drank from and handed back.
He decided against having any. Her clientele had a raffish air, for the most part. The bristling mustaches and stained beards of the men and the cracked lips of the women seemed unhygienic, although they were enjoying the steaming brews.
He walked on, lifting his head. Ah yes. Swinging sides of beef rolled by on a wheeled rack pushed by a butcher’s lad. There was mutton too, unless he missed his guess, marbled with fat. But no lamb, not in winter. He could not help wanting to snag a hunk of raw meat. It was the wolf in him and he would not apologize for it.
If he did take a bit of meat…then what? He could not eat it raw. No, he would have to thrust a stick through it and roast it over a fire with the tramps and beggars that prowled the outer edge of the market.
They might accept him as one of their own, a highwayman in stolen clothes, he thought. Or they might knock him over the head and turn his pockets inside out.
Semyon chuckled and bought a meat pie to eat instead and devoured it in seconds, licking his fingertips inelegantly but with considerable pleasure.
Then he walked away from the market, tossing a shilling into a grimy palm that stretched out to him from a shadowy doorway, and nodding to a young kitchen maid and fat cook who bustled by with empty baskets over their arms, heading in.
After a time, he became aware that he was heading in the direction of the Congreve house. In another several minutes, he was there.
Wonder of wonders, the windows were still lit up. The last of the revelers were being helped into their sedan chairs and carriages, while Congreve himself and his much younger wife called their good-byes from the top of the imposing outside stairs.
When the final door was shut, he distinctly heard Penelope say, “Good riddance!”
Semyon smiled. His hand went to his throat to fix his cravat into a decent-looking knot, and he realized he had forgotten to wear one. He looked down. His shirt was half-in and half-out, and his unbuttoned coat flapped in the chilly wind off the Thames. At least his breeches were fastened properly.
Congreve murmured something placating to his wife that Semyon did not hear. But he looked up when she called to him suddenly.
“Mr. Taruskin! Whatever are you doing there? I thought you had gone long ago.”
“I had, Mrs. Congreve.” He ran a hand through his disheveled hair in a futile attempt at grooming. “But I could not sleep and decided, ah, to take a constitutional. I happened to walk down your street.”
“A constitutional? At this hour? Have you gone mad? Come in and have a glass of sherry and whatever is left of the aspics and meats, and we will send you home at daybreak,” she said.
Her husband chimed in. “Yes, do. We shan’t sleep until the sun comes up. And you will catch your death of cold if you stand there upon the cobblestones.”
Semyon hesitated. He had hoped to catch an early-rising scullery maid of theirs out and about, and quiz her discreetly about Angelica, not speak to the Congreves. But since the invitation had been issued, he would be a fool not to take advantage of it.
He bounded up the stairs, noting with dismay that there was a look of blatant lust in Penelope Congreve’s beady eyes.
“You do look as if you just tumbled out of bed, Mr. Taruskin,” she said admiringly, “with your tousled hair and that flush in your cheeks. And your clothes—dear me. Such romantic disarray. Have you left a lady sighing happily into her pillow, then?”
“No, Mrs. Congreve.”
“You can tell me if you have. Who is she?” She swanned through the door, followed by her harrumphing husband, who seemed bored with her chatter.
Semyon hoped she would not flirt with him anymore. It was difficult as it was for him to ask the least little question about the pretty maid who had seen to the cloaks and coats. Penelope was too shrewd not to guess why.
“Come