Page 84 of The Spy Who Loved Her
“Will run screaming in the opposite direction at a single glance,” she said solemnly, though her lips twitched just at the corners with the stirrings of mirth.
A scratch at the door dragged her attention away from him, and a tiny frown etched itself between the delicate arches of her brows.
“Probably Neil,” he said, gently easing away to snatch up his discarded trousers from where they had landed on the floor, stepping into them one leg at a time.
“But it is so late,” she said. “He should have been in bed by now.”
In truth, it was half past midnight already. He had grown accustomed to a certain amount of privacy here, within Emma’s wing of the nearly-palatial estate, so rarely did the staff intrude upon it. The sanctity of it was inviolable; unless directly summoned, they tended to stay clear.
Rafe padded to the door, pulling his shirt over his head as he went, and Emma disappeared beneath the thick counterpane just as he eased the door open a crack.
“Pardon the intrusion,” Neil said, keeping well clear of the crack in aperfect show of circumspection. “It’s just that Dannyboy has arrived.”
A tiny gasp from somewhere behind him, followed by a rustle of bedclothes.
“I thought it best to put him in the green salon for the moment,” Neil said tactfully. “I thought you’d want to know right away, of course.”
“Yes!” Emma said, and from the corner of his eye, Rafe saw her streaking across the room, snatching up discarded garments as she went. “Yes, of course,” she said. “I’ll be down at once.”
“I’llbe down at once,” he said. It would take Emma more than a few minutes to make herself presentable. And if Dannyboy had arrived at this hour of the night, he didn’t want to make the lad wait longer still.
He slipped out the door, and Neil fell into stride beside him as they made for the stairs at the end of the long hall. “He’s well?” Rafe asked. Nearly three weeks now, since they’d last seen the boy. Not even for only a brief visit over breakfast.
“Yes,” Neil said, the tiniest tremor of hesitation threading through his voice. “That is, he’s well enough, given the circumstances.”
Circumstances? A strange knot of anxiety formed in Rafe’s stomach. “And what circumstances are those?”
Again, Neil hesitated a fraction of a second longer than necessary—long enough for a distant whimpering to become audible at last, an irritable, high-pitched, and keening sort of sound steadily pitching toward a full-blown wail. Rafe charged ahead, taking the stairs two and three at a time, no longer requiring Neil’s clarification upon the matter.
He knew, already, what the man meant to have said. Dannyboy had not come alone.
∞∞∞
Rafe was certain he looked like a madman as he crashed through the door of the green salon—his hair unkempt, the tails of his shirt still untucked, his feet bare. Dannyboy gave a horrible little jerk from his position on the couch, where he had been fruitlessly attempting to soothe the caterwauling which emanated from the blanket-wrapped bundle held across his lap.
The poor boy looked wretched, like he’d not slept more than a handful of hours in the last few weeks. His breath hitched in his chest, and his voice rose into a pitiful, plaintive wail to rival that of the bundle across his lap. “I’m s-sorry,” he said on a frantic sob. “We ain’t got nowhere else to go.”
“It’s all right.” Rafe hadn’t the talent for soothing children that Emma did, for the words had come out far too gruffly, and Dannyboy’s facecrumpled into despair.
“I’m sorry,” the boy said again, through a succession of hiccoughs as Rafe rounded the back of the couch to crouch down before him. “She’s ‘ungry,” Dannyboy said. “And mum—mum—” A fresh burst of tears, leaving fresh salty tracks down his cheeks. “I thought I could do it all m’self,” he said. “She’s just little. I thought it’d be easy.”
She. A little girl, probably no older than a week or two, perhaps three at the most. Dannyboy had wrapped the baby up tightly within a thick layer of blankets until only a sliver of the tiny face was visible. And it was screwed up in rage and indignation; the sort that was unique to infants. Rafe clasped Dannyboy’s knee in one hand. “You did well,” he said. “You did so well for her. You’ve done everything you could.” But he was only a little boy himself. He could not possibly have been prepared for a task of this magnitude.
Neil arrived in the doorway at last, standing uncertainly within the frame of it. He looked as if he would have quite liked to slam his hands over his ears to drown out the baby’s plaintive wails, though somehow he resisted what must have been a compelling inclination.
“Have you eaten?” Rafe asked Dannyboy.
Scrubbing one fist across his damp cheeks, Dannyboy shook his head. “Ain’t had time,” he gasped through tremulous breaths.
“Tea, Neil, if you please. And something proper filling to go with it.” It was so late that there wasn’t much hope of anything beyond perhaps some wedges of cheese and finger sandwiches, but still it would likely be a sight better than anything else Dannyboy had had recently. “Do you mind if I try to soothe her?” he asked the boy as Neil slipped out of the room.
Pure relief slid across Dannyboy’s face. “You gotta hold ‘er like this,” he said, sliding his hands beneath the baby’s head and back. “Else ‘er ‘ead flops back.”
Rafe had held his brother’s son more than a few times as an infant, and though it had been well over a year since such caution had been required, he remembered it well enough. Carefully he eased the little bundle of blankets off of Dannyboy’s lap and into his arms. The baby squirmed within the tight confines of the blankets wrapped around her, but the wailing softened to a mere whimper.
The furious scrunch of her face eased. Tiny blue eyes blinked up at him with a baby’s curiosity at the advent of this new, unexpected face thrust suddenly into her own. The abrupt descent of silence from the chaos of moments ago made Dannyboy wilt upon the couch, as if every ounce of hisexhaustion had dropped down upon his shoulders at once.
“It’s going to be all right, Dannyboy,” Rafe said. “Tell me what’s happened.”
