Come the Night (The Dangerous Delameres - Book 1) (4 page)

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.

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 means
you’ll
do the listening.” His dirty fingers caught up a handful of her hair.

Then tightened slowly.

Silver swallowed. She slid her hand behind her until she felt the comforting edge of her little gardening trowel, thrust into her back pocket. At close range it would give this swine a considerable jolt. “Oh, I’m listening,” she said coolly. “I just hope it will be something worth listening to.”

The dirt-streaked fingers tightened. “And ye’d better keep listening too. I’m only going to say this once.” The man tugged her closer, muddy brown eyes flat and expressionless. “Ye’re going to leave Lavender Close, Miss St. Clair. All of you. That means yerself, the boy, and anyone else ye got working here. Crate, barrel, and carriage. Anyone staying might just get hurt.” The beady eyes hardened. “Hurt
real
bad.”

Silver shoved down her fear. “Why? Why would you do this? What do you hope to gain by—”

“No bleeding questions!” The dirty fingers clenched. “If ye don’t listen, then accidents’ll start to happen. All kinds of accidents. Like
this.”

Stunned, Silver watched him nod to one of his burly companions, who hefted a barrel from the ground and dumped its contents over a lavender bush. The man fumbled on the ground and a moment later the fragile leaves exploded into flame.

Silver struggled furiously.
“Stop!
You can’t just—”

The hard fingers tightened, jerking her still. “Shut up and listen. In three days the big accidents start, understand? An’ after four days more, things start to disappear. Tools. Crates.” The muddy eyes crinkled at some private joke. “Aye, it’s one week ye got.”

Silver lurched wildly, kicking the man’s shins, oblivious to his hands clawing at her temples. “You wouldn’t
dare!”

“Oh, no?” His cold eyes taunted Silver. “Do ye want to find out?”

“But
why
? Who are you—?”

“Shut up or I’ll
make
ye shut up!”

Silver felt her knees start to shake. Only by raw force of will did she keep from slumping to the ground. “If it’s seeds you’re after, I’ll give them to you. I’ll take you there right now. If it’s lavender or some of the other fragrance oils, then—”

Brown Hood only laughed. “Seeds, Mr. Harper. The saucy little piece thinks we want her
seeds!”
The man’s big body shook with sudden, explosive laughter. “Gawd Ole Mighty, that’s a good ‘un. Here’s what we think o’ yer bloody flowers, missy!”

At his nod the next shrub was set to the torch.

Silver watched in horror as another cloud of purple blooms burned red-orange, then wasted away to ash. Who
were
they? Why were they doing these dreadful things?

Propelled by a wave of fury, she launched out at her attacker, clawing at his neck and shoulders. For a second his mask slipped and her nails met skin.

Cursing savagely, the man in the hood tossed her into a row of alba roses. Thorns bit at Silver’s arms and legs, but she pushed to her feet and ran at the accomplice who was even now starting to kindle another bush.

Her captor caught her arm and shoved her back like a wisp of dandelion fluff. “Best step aside, missy. Wouldn’t want to get that nice face o’ yers burned, now, would ye?”

Tears blurred Silver’s eyes. The sharp scent of lavender mingled with smoke and ash. Her chest hurt and her legs felt as if they were stuffed with cotton.

Her captor only laughed. “Seven days, Miss St. Clair. Just ye remember that. Otherwise next time
all
the flowers’ll go! Like this one.” He set another plant to the torch, then waved to his fellows and strutted back toward the woods.

Silver barely heard. Her head pounding, she pushed to her feet and ran for the stream, praying she could save her beloved lavender.

~ ~ ~

His right boot had a hole in it.

Silver remembered that much. As she tossed down the last bucket of water, feeling smoke burn her eyes, she couldn’t seem to forget that dirty, jagged opening.

If he had a hole, he couldn’t be a very thorough man. Maybe he was just blustering. Maybe he would be careless about this, the way he was about mending his boots. Maybe he’d forget everything.

She caught back a sob. It was a vain hope. They had come here for a purpose and they weren’t going to settle for less.

But
why?

Her head pounded. The purple fields began to pitch and sway around her.

Abruptly lavender and roses bled away into streams of muddy black.

~ ~ ~

“Syl, wake up!”

Hands. Shaking her. Hard.

Cold ground and a stone digging into her rib.

“Syl, what’s
wrong
?”

Silver’s eyes opened slowly. She tasted blood on her lip and her head felt as if a barrel of bricks had rolled over it.

Seven days, Miss St. Clair. Just ye remember that.

Her whole body felt cold. “Bram, is that you? Are you all right?” Silver reached out desperately, searching the boy’s face for injuries.

There were none, but he was clearly afraid. “Of course I’m all right. But someone’s burned half this lavender and kicked two rosebushes flat!” As Silver came awkwardly to a sitting position, Bram knelt beside her, his eyes wide. “Dash it, Syl, what have you done to your head?” The tremor in his voice told her that she looked terrible.

Which was just about right, since she
felt
terrible.

Her body ached. She hugged her chest, fighting her fear.

Next time all the flowers go.

Bram touched her aching cheek. “Who did this, Syl?” His voice shook, the sound of a boy trying to grow up overnight and become a man.

When she didn’t answer, his hands tightened. “I was sketching some specimens up by Waldon Hall when I saw the smoke. That’s what made me come looking for you.”

“You shouldn’t go up there, Bram. You know that’s not our land anymore. I’ve told you that things are different now. We can’t wander anywhere we like.” Silver’s voice was mechanical. “Even if the owner never seems to be in residence, that doesn’t mean—”

Bram stared at her as if she had just sprouted green spots and begun speaking Russian. “What
happened
here, Syl? Don’t chatter on about Waldon Hall or its secretive owner!”

Silver hesitated. She would have to be careful how much she told him. “It — it was nothing.” She pushed slowly to her feet. “A mistake, that’s all.”

“A mistake?” The boy’s fingers hardened to dusty fists. “Don’t lie to me, Syl!”

Silver managed the hint of a smile. “It’s true, Bram. I just wanted some of those new cuttings burned. The sick ones, you remember? I asked some men from the village to come up and help me.” Her eyes hardened for a moment. “It seems they burned the wrong plants.”

“And they just happened to knock you down and bloody your forehead while they were at it? Of course, how completely logical.” Bram’s hands tightened, the knuckles gone white. “So logical, I can’t imagine why
I
didn’t think of it.”

“Bram, please. You don’t—”

He shot upright, five feet of white-hot, offended boyhood perched just on the edge of tumultuous adolescence. “You’re right, I
don’t
understand! I don’t know what in heaven really happened here. And I certainly don’t know why you’re standing there lying to me!”

Silver looked at him, his thin arms akimbo and brown hair awry. He was pale. He was thin, yes. But there was fire in his eyes and a St. Clair’s courage in the angry set to his jaw.

She realized then that she’d have to tell him. He had a right to know, after all. Lavender Close Farm belonged more to her brother than it did to her. She was merely safeguarding it until he reached his majority.

She sighed, her hands dropping to her sides. “There were four of them. I — I don’t know if they were the same men who followed me last night on the heath when I returned from Kingsdon Cross.”

Bram frowned. “I knew something had happened, but you didn’t tell me
then
either.”

“I didn’t want to upset you. I never thought they’d come
here.
And these men today — they told me we’d have to leave. All of us, or accidents would start happening.” With her dusty boot Silver kicked at a mass of charred branches, all that remained of a once-thriving lavender bush. “Accidents like
this.”

Bram’s eyes glittered as he looked at the ruined bush. Then he said a rough word. A hard word that Silver hadn’t even thought he knew. After that he grinned, apologetic and boyish and pleased at the same time. “Never mind. We’ll show them! Tinker and I will set Cromwell on them.” He reached down and petted the big, drooling Pyrenees sheepdog lolling at his side. “Then we’ll set traps that will make those swine sorry they ever came up here.” His eyes took on a gleam of vast anticipation.

And with that he was suddenly a boy again. Only a boy. With a hundred wild schemes and a thousand bright hopes.

Silver sighed and tugged a sprig of crushed lavender from her hair. She bit back a gasp as pain burned down her arm and leg. If only it were so easy, she thought wearily.

Beside Bram the great yellow sheepdog barked expectantly. His bushy tail banged hard against the earth.
Thud-thud. Thud-thud.

It sounded like her heart, Silver thought.

A moment later Tinker’s lanky form appeared at the crown of the hill, flanked incongruously by lavender and fire-red roses. Cromwell began to bark madly.

“What in the devil’s amiss here, you two? I saw the smoke from the valley and I—” The old servant went very still as he took in Silver’s torn shirt, the dirt on her sleeve.

The blood drying above her right temple.

“By God above, I’ll kill him. I’ll hunt the man down and gullet him end to end, just you see if I don’t! I’ll tie his hands back, hoist him up on a rope and—”

“You’re wrong, Tinker.” Silver spoke quickly. There were some things her brother was still too young to understand and Sir Charles Millbank’s lust for his sister-in-law was one of them. “It was four men. Four
strangers.”
She glanced significantly at Tinker and waited for this to sink in. “They warned us off Lavender Close.”

Tinker opened his mouth, then closed it again. He scowled at the charred chaos around them and the smoke drifting over the hill. “Big, brave men to take on a dozen surly lavender plants and an unarmed woman.” He kicked at a clump of still-smoking lavender. “What I want to know is why.”

Silver circled Bram’s shoulders. “This could be our best harvest yet, Tinker. Maybe they want control of the lavender and the money it will bring.”

“Mebbe.” The older man frowned. “And mebbe not.”