A Wicked Conceit by Anna Huber (best young adult book series txt) 📗

We pulled to a stop, and my muscles strained with the desire to flee. But when the door was wrenched open unceremoniously, flooding the carriage with light, it was to allow someone to peer inside, not for me to exit.

Lennox’s sharp gaze took in the sight of Gage bleeding in my lap and my pale, distressed face blinking back at him, but he didn’t spare us an iota of remorse. “You should have steered clear of this one, Lady Darby. You should have let Kincaid have his due.”

He turned abruptly to the gap-toothed man. “Don’t leave the job undone this time. Had Kirkcowan revived . . .”

“Costs extra,” the man replied.

“I paid plenty,” Lennox snapped. “If you’ve a problem with your cut, speak to McQueen.”

Then the door was slammed shut, taking with it all the fresh air that had rushed inside, and a shout went up for us to roll forward.

I warred with myself over whether to try to reason with the gap-toothed man. To ask where we were going. To offer more money for him not to harm us. But speaking meant breathing more air, and I was perilously close to vomiting all over Gage and myself.

When we jerked to a halt a short distance away, I wasn’t sure what it meant until the gap-toothed man descended from the conveyance. “Get down,” he ordered me, crowding close, but not offering me any assistance as I struggled to descend without tripping and falling.

The other men hauled Gage from the hackney while I turned to look around me. We were in a dark enclosed space between two tall buildings of some kind. They appeared to be tenements, for I saw a number of faces staring cautiously from the windows above down at us below. None of them interfered. They simply watched. A group of lads clustered nearby, and I stared at them, begging them with my eyes to help us lest my words earn me a blow to the stomach.

“Isna that the butcher’s wife?” I heard one of them murmur.

I felt a pulse of hope, not even caring that he’d called me by one of the cruel epithets the papers had dubbed me with following the revelations of my assisting Sir Anthony. If they knew who I was, perhaps they would go for help. But one of McQueen’s men barked at them, and they backed away, lowering their gazes.

My right arm was clasped in a tight grip, which would leave a bruise, and I was propelled through a doorway and down a dark, cramped corridor and up a staircase. Another contraction rippled through me, and some of my attention was pulled away from my surroundings as I breathed through it, despite the air here not being much sweeter than in the carriage. We entered a dim chamber, passing through it into another room, and then what I thought would be another, but the scent and the feel of the air around us alerted me to the change. I gazed around me at the dark rugged stone arching overhead, at the uneven colors and textures revealed in the light of the battered lantern the gap-toothed man was given by one of his men, and I suddenly realized where we were.

Horror lanced through me. We were being led into the vaults below South Bridge—that underground labyrinth of damp, darkness, and disease. Even now, the sour stench of dank stone and musty air assailed my nostrils. I resisted the gap-toothed man’s efforts to pull me forward, my feet rooted to the spot in fright. But he tugged harder, nearly pulling me off my feet as he led me through the tunnels of rock.

My heart fluttered in my chest as I tried to memorize the path he led us on through the warren of rooms and tunnels, but I soon lost track. Occasionally hollow-eyed faces would stare back at us from the darkness, or a groan or cough would reach my ears, but as before, no one spoke to us, no one interfered.

The farther we walked, the lower my hopes became, for how would anyone ever find us? And if they did, would they find us alive or merely corpses? Lennox had ordered them to finish the job, and I held no illusions about what that meant. I cringed as a fat rat scampered down the corridor past us with seemingly little concern about being seen.

In my panic, I couldn’t tell how long we’d been walking, but we appeared to have reached the bowels of the place. The deeper we’d gone, the fewer people there had been, and I soon understood why. The floors were damp, the corners black with foul growth. Even the rats didn’t appear to want to live here. I shivered in my pelisse, not simply from revulsion but also the cold.

A wall loomed up before us, and I could see now that we’d come to the end. Along the far edge, a stagnant puddle had formed into which the water running down the walls from above dripped. The men dumped Gage onto the floor, and I turned to face them, wary of what was to happen next. But it appeared they had no stomach to actually kill us. Or perhaps they’d decided the effort was unnecessary.

My throat constricted with fear as they began to back out of the chamber.

“Best pray it doesna rain,” the man in the brown coat quipped in a rough voice, making me stiffen with dread that perhaps this area actually flooded to above our heads.

I turned my wide eyes to the gap-toothed man, who was the last to leave, taking his lantern with him. I was petrified with the realization that there would be no light without it, leaving Gage and me alone in the pitch blackness. Something of my terror must have penetrated his heart, for he paused and reluctantly returned to pass me the light.

He hesitated a moment longer, reaching into his pocket before tossing something on the floor. “Ye may wish for this afore the end.”

Then he