Thief of Hearts Read online

  With those words, she squared her shoulders and stepped into the light.

  Two seconds later she was enveloped in an enormous hug. “Dan, you scoundrel. We haven’t seen hide nor hair of you for weeks. I thought you’d done a runner. Where have you been hiding?”

  Miriame extracted herself from the large woman’s embrace before she gagged on the heavy musky perfume she was drenched in. “You know me, Nicole,” she prevaricated. “I’ve been here and there, out and about. Not staying too long in any one place.”

  “It’s agreed with you for sure,” Nicole said with appreciation, holding her at arm’s length to get a better look. “You’ve filled out a bit and got a bit more flesh on your bones. You used to be such a skinny mite a strong wind could’ve blown you away. Half starved you were.”

  Miriame laughed and flexed her recently grown muscles. Training with Renouf every day had filled out her puny arms until they looked quite respectably strong, even for a man. “Only on a good day. The rest of the time I was three quarters starved.”

  “You were, you were indeed.” Her eyes flicked past Miriame to Jean-Paul, who was standing just behind her. “Who’s this handsome fellow you’ve brought along with you tonight? Has he come for a taste of our girls?”

  She was glad to see out of the corner of her eye that Jean-Paul’s face went red as he stammered out a hasty denial.

  She shook her head. “We’re here on business tonight – not pleasure, I’m afraid.”

  Nicole raised her eyebrows and gave a fat chuckle. “Business? You’ve come up in the world, young Dan. Time was the only business you ever had with me was begging a crust of bread.”

  Miriame shuddered as she remembered how desperate she had been for a scrap of food, a spot in front of a fire, or even a kindly word. Nicole’s casually thrown kindness, the smile that accompanied the crust of bread or morsel of cheese, had meant more to her than the woman would ever know. Thank the Lord that those days were behind her now – never, she vowed, ever to return.

  Nicole was looking at her strangely. She gave herself a little shake to bring herself back from her evil memories. No good ever came from dwelling on the past.

  Jean-Paul stepped forward and pressed a couple of gold pistoles into the woman’s hand. “We’re looking for somebody. Three somebodies, in fact. We hoped you might be able to tell us where to find them. They’re worth that again if you can tell us where they are.”

  Nicole bit on the pistoles with her few remaining teeth, and satisfied they were real, she tucked them into her bodice with a gleam in her eye. “Who are they?”

  “I don’t know their names, but I can tell you what they look like right enough.”

  Nicole shrugged. “Names ain’t much use to me anyway. I never can remember them, though I’ve got a knack for not forgetting a face once I’ve seen it. Comes in handy in my line of business.”

  Jean-Paul described the three men who had attacked them in the street some weeks before.

  Nicole listened carefully, but at the end of his recitation she shook her head. “There’s so many that would answer to that description. Just about every rogue in Paris, I’d warrant. Was there nothing in particular that set them apart from other men?”

  Jean-Paul shook his head. “That is all I can give you. The night was too dark to see more.”

  Miriame clenched her fists into tight balls. She’d hoped that this moment would not come, though all along she’d known it would. “Yes, there was one more thing about them. Their leader. You may have known him. He was tall and thin, angular almost. His skin was as white as a ghost and he had black hair that fell in a greasy mass to his shoulders. His fingers were long and white and he carried a knife.” She shuddered at the memory of those fingers. “He was a cruel man. His name was Andre.”

  Nicole’s ear pricked up at this description. “He talks like he was a gentleman? As if he’d been born in the King’s Court, but his voice makes your blood run cold?”

  Miriame nodded. She felt icy as death even thinking about him.

  “I know the man, though I haven’t seen him around here for some time, thank Heaven. We had to turf him out on his ear last time he came. He had Jeni round the throat with those long, white fingers of his and was trying to choke her to death. She couldn’t scream. She couldn’t even breathe.

  “Lucky I had some customers who’d paid to watch the two of them together and they ran to tell me, otherwise the poor girl would never have made it. The lads got to her only just in time. They had to pull him off with main force and kick him out the door. Since then I’ve lived in terror of him coming back again.”

  Miriame dug her nails into the palms of her hands. Why had Jeni been saved, and not Rebecca? “You won’t see him again.”

  Nicole gave her a piercing look. “Why not? Where’s he gone?”

  She thought about the thunk his body had made as it hit the floor. “To Hell,” she spat, “where he belongs.”

  Nicole looked as though a real monsieur, pockets bulging with gold, had just walked in through her door. “He’s dead?”

  “As a doornail.”

  “You sure we’re talking about the same man?” She looked suspicious, as though Miriame’s news was too good to be relied upon. “He was live and kicking not six weeks ago.”

  “As sure as can be.” She shrugged uneasily at the look of uncertainty that still haunted Nicole’s face. The woman deserved the truth. “I was the one who killed him. I slit his throat and watched him die at my feet.” She no longer felt sick to her stomach at the thought. She’d managed to distance herself from the act. It seemed almost as though someone else had killed him, and that she had merely been a spectator to the grisly deed.

  Nicole’s face cleared. “By God, Dan, but you’ve done the world a favor, and me in particular.” She put her hand into her bosom and pulled out the gold pieces she’d tucked away there earlier. She pressed them into Miriame’s hands. “Take your gold back and welcome,” she said, in a voice of heartfelt thanks. “Heaven help me if I ever take a penny of yours. Jeni will be that glad to hear of his death. She’s not been right in her mind since he abused her so. Now, then, these others you was looking for, they’re friends of Andre’s?”

  Miriame nodded. “They followed his lead. One of them will have been hurt bad and limping lately, from the last time we tangled a few weeks ago.”

  “Limping, you say?” Nicole’s face burst into a smile. “By God, I think I know the three you mean.” She bustled to the door. “Here, come with me and take a look. You’ll see right enough if them’s the ones.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Miriame saw Jean-Paul visibly gulp. “You mean they’re here now?”

  “If them’s the ones I’m thinking of, then they’re right here upstairs with the girls. Come here a lot they do, when they’ve the money to pay for it. One of them in particular likes summat a bit special, and there’s not that many girls in Paris who are as willing as our Eloise. Course, she makes a fortune out of it. She’ll be able to retire young, that one will.”

  Flickering rush light in her hand, she led them up a pair of back stairs to a narrow corridor. “You might want to take off your boots about here,” she said in a low whisper as they reached the top of the stairs. “The floor’s as bare as my old granny’s bones and the noise carries something terrible.” She gave a low chuckle. “It would never do to disturb the paying customers as they go about their business. I takes a great deal of care of my customers. The girls they can get anywhere - it’s the care that I takes of my customers that keeps ‘em coming back.”

  Miriame stopped and took off her boots in the darkness. Behind her, she could feel Jean-Paul stop and do the same. Boots in hand, they tiptoed quietly on.

  Nicole stopped at the first black curtain and twitched it aside for a moment before muttering to herself and passing on. The second curtain she passed without any comment, and the third also. The fourth she twitched back again, and then held the rush light up and beckoned Miriame and Je
an-Paul towards her, her finger to her lips. “Is this one your man?” she whispered.

  Miriame stood close to the wall and peeped through the hole that had been placed strategically opposite the mattress in the bare chamber. At the sight of the couple entwined on the bed, she opened her eyes wider than she thought possible and gave a gasp of shock.

  Nicole could not quite suppress a wheezy laugh as Miriame stepped back again and let the curtain fall. “A few strange ones around, aren’t there?”

  Miriame nodded, speechless. She hardly counted herself a prude, but still...

  “Is he the one you want?”

  “I don’t know,” she confessed. “I didn’t get around to looking at his face.” By Heaven, her imagination would never have come up with that on its own.

  All the same, her awareness of Jean-Paul was heightened as he gave a grunt of annoyance and stepped up to the curtain in his turn. His arm brushed against her breasts and she felt the tips of them tingle at his touch.

  He didn’t seem to notice the effect he had on her, or the way her breathing had quickened. He picked up one corner gingerly and peeked through. His shoulders straightened and the back of his neck suddenly went rigid. “Yes, that’s one of them,” he said with a look of disgust on his face as he dropped the curtain again.

  Nicole padded along a few steps on her slippered feet and pulled back another curtain. Miriame and Jean-Paul followed, walking side by side in the narrow corridor, taking great pains not to touch each other.

  Miriame peeked through where Nicole held back the curtain, a little more prepared in her mind for what she might see this time. “Ouch,” she whispered with feeling once the curtain had gone down again. “I recognize that one. You’d think his legs would have given him pain enough without paying extra for a woman to whip him. If I’d known he actually liked being hurt, I would’ve gone more gently with him.”

  A couple of curtains later and the third of the party was also located, in an equally compromising position.

  Miriame and Jean-Paul followed Nicole back down again to the kitchen. Nicole sat herself down in a large armchair in front of the fire. “So, you’ve found them,” she said with satisfaction in a thick voice, wheezy from climbing up and down the stairs. “What are you going to do with them?”

  Jean-Paul paced up and down, his brows knitted together in a frown. “How often do they come here?”

  “Once a fortnight or so, I suppose, though not always all three of them at once like tonight. They’re good enough customers on the whole, though the girls don’t like ‘em much, specially after that business with Andre.”

  His boots rang hollowly on the flagstones as he continued to stride up and down. “We can’t afford to wait another fortnight or longer for them,” he said at last. “We’ll have to take them now. Tonight.”

  Miriame felt a familiar curl of excitement start to unfurl in the pit of her belly. By Heaven, if she could not tumble Jean-Paul on the flagstones of the kitchen and make violent love to him as she wished, then a good fight was just what she could wish for instead. A good fight would put all thoughts of Jean-Paul out of her mind. At least for the moment it would. When the excitement of the fight was over, that would be another matter...

  She turned towards Nicole, excitement brimming over in the pit of her belly. “Do you mind if we take the three of them with us? We have some unfinished business to settle."

  “You could do away with a dozen of my best customers and I’d not mind, seeing as Andre is dead and gone. What are you going to do with them?”

  Jean-Paul was muttering to himself. He lifted his head to ask, “Do you have some strong rope?”

  “As much as you need.”

  “Good,” was all he said before he went back to his muttering.

  A prickle of unease suddenly attacked Miriame. She didn’t want innocents to be caught up in their vendetta and be frightened or harmed. “Will the girls not be alarmed if we burst in on them without warning?”

  Nicole shook her head. “We’ll get them one by one, quiet-like, so as not to startle the others. I’ll go with you to take care of the girls. As long as I’m there, they’ll know everything is fine.”

  “I’ll go first,” Miriame offered. “I’m the quietest. They’ll never hear me coming until I have my dagger on their throat. Then you can come in behind me and tie them up.” Indeed, in the fever of excitement she was in, she would find it easier to fight than to be silent.

  Jean-Paul looked like he was ready to argue the point, but Nicole’s enthusiastic agreement settled the matter.

  Miriame didn’t bother to take off her boots again before she climbed the stairs once more. She could move as silently as a cat, boots or no. Now that they had everything ready, she was eager for the action to start.

  The chambers had no locks or bolts to contend with – they didn’t even have doors. Only a thin curtain was draped across each opening to give a modicum of privacy.

  Miriame drew back the first curtain without a sound and stole quietly into the room.

  The first of the men had finished his business with the whore and was lying, stark naked, on his back on the grubby mattress in the corner, his eyes closed and a blissful smile plastered over his thick-set face.

  The smile turned to a look of abject fear when Miriame squatted by his ear and dug the point of the knife into his throat. His eyes sprang open and he made a choked noise. “Don’t make a sound,” Miriame advised him in a hissing whisper. “That might annoy me, and I’m unpredictable when I get annoyed.”

  The man’s eyes bulged out of their sockets and he swallowed any noise he was going to make before it could come out of his mouth. A dribble of pee spurted out of his limp cock to run over his naked hips and into the mattress beneath him.

  Miriame wrinkled her nose at the acrid smell of his fear and beckoned the others in.

  The girl by his side had huddled in the corner at the first sign of trouble, keeping out of the way of both of them. She seemed neither particularly curious nor particularly afraid at the interruption – just glad that whatever quarrel going on was nothing to do with her.

  Miriame kept the knife at his throat while Jean-Paul hauled him roughly to his feet, hacked off a length of rope, and tied his hands behind his back. He gave the other end to Nicole. “We’ll be back in a moment. Slit his throat if he makes a noise.”

  Nicole gave a wide grin that showed her cracked and missing teeth. “Be glad to. I haven’t killed a man for all of five or six years. I’ll be going rusty if I don’t keep my hand in.”

  The trickle of pee started again, dribbling down the captive’s leg and on to the floor.

  Nicole made a noise of disgust and gave the rope around his hands a sharp tug. “Quit pissing on my feet, you filthy bastard, or I won’t wait for you to make a noise before I knife you.”

  The trickle became a flood.

  The girl meanwhile had flung a wrap around her shoulders and was sidling out of the chamber. “Don’t go yet, Kate,” Nicole said. “Come here and hold the rope for me a minute. There’ll be more before they’re done.”

  The girl shrugged, but did as she was requested.

  The second man was captured with almost as much ease. Jean-Paul hauled him into the first room and gave the rope to Nicole to hold. As an afterthought Miriame tossed in the horse whip she’d found there as well. She’d wager that a few flicks of the whip on their bare skin would be enough to keep them quiet if they started protesting.

  Time for the third man – the first one she had spied on through the hidden holes in the walls. She swallowed as she pulled back the curtain, hoping they had given him enough time to finish what he had been doing.

  They had not. She turned back to Jean-Paul. “We can’t go in and get him now. They’re still at it.”

  Jean-Paul grunted. “We haven’t got all night. Sooner or later the other two will get restless. Nicole and the girl can’t hold them there for much longer.”

  Miriame poked her head through the
curtain. No, she couldn’t do it. Jean-Paul would just have to go first. With all the noise their quarry was making, there was no need for silence anyway. It wouldn’t matter if Jean-Paul stomped in with hobnailed boots on. She held the curtain back and gestured him through. “After you.”

  He grinned at her as he passed. “Embarrassed? You?” he whispered. “I never thought I’d see the day.”

  Miriame made a rude gesture at his back. She didn’t look again until the grunts and groans had been replaced first with a cry of horror and then a tense silence and some banging and shuffling as both parties righted themselves. Finally a low call of “All clear” came from Jean-Paul.

  Even then she gave it another few moments before she dared to lift the curtain and stride in.

  The man’s face, as he crouched sobbing gently on the ground, was gray with shock. The girl stood by looking mostly bored as she nimbly unbuckled the leather harness she wore around her waist and tossed it on to the ground in front of her.

  Her face averted from his naked backside, Miriame bent over and tied the man’s hands behind his back.

  Jean-Paul picked the harness up off the floor and turned it over in his hands. “I’ve never seen one of these before,” he remarked, with a grin in Miriame’s direction. “Interesting. Very interesting.”

  “Costs ya double,” said the girl, reaching to take it out of his hands again. “Wanna try it?”

  Jean-Paul shook his head. “Thanks, but no.” He flicked a couple of coins at the girl. “I’ll be taking it with me, though.”

  Miriame made a strangled noise. “You what?”

  Jean-Paul’s grin grew wider as he hung the harness around the man’s neck so that the protuberance on it stuck up into his face. “It’ll be a grand decoration for his night in the stocks.”

  The man started to whimper. “No, not the stocks. Anything but the stocks.”

  Jean-Paul tugged the rope so their prey had to get to his feet and follow him out of the chamber, or be dragged out on his knees. “I don’t recall giving you a choice in the matter.”

  As they reached the curtain to the chamber, the man started to whimper more loudly and pulled against the rope. “What have I ever done to you?”