Whispers of Heaven by Candice Proctor Page A

good year before Lucas and Daniel's arrival. But the Fox and Lucas had known each other before, since that day over two years ago now when they'd been thrown together as messmates in the dark, dank, foul-smelling hold of the transport ship that was to bring them both across the oceans to Her Britannic Majesty's southern colonies. If Lucas were the Fox's employer, he wouldn't dream of trusting him with a spare load of fence posts or the payment for the nurseryman's delivery boy. But the Fox would give his last crust of bread to a friend, and it hadn't taken Lucas long to realize that.
    "I can tell you right now," said the Fox, curling down to perch on the edge of the veranda, his bony forearms resting on his drawn-up knees, "if I have to make my escape clinging to the back of some four-footed beast, then I fear I am destined to tend Mrs. Beatrice Corbett's prize roses until I'm too old to hold a watering can." His feral-looking, yellow eyes gleamed as he cast a contemptuous glance back at Daniel. "And if that great clumsy oaf has ever sat a horse in his life, then you're an English lord, and I'm the archbishop of Canterbury."
    "A body'd think you were an English vicar at the least," said Daniel, his fists tightening around the worn wooden arms of his chair, "to hear the mouth on you."
    Daniel didn't like the Fox's affected ways any more than the Fox liked Daniel's unpredictable temper and hot-headedness, and Lucas knew it. But he was getting used to these kinds of exchanges, and only laughed softly. "It's a carriage we'll be needin' then, from the sounds of it."
    "What we need is a boat," said Daniel.
    "That we do." Lucas smiled. "But there's no point in worrying about getting our hands on one until we find someplace to hide it."
    "Where in the name of the Virgin—" Daniel began, then broke off, his head jerking around at what sounded like a child's gasp of pain, followed closely by a man's rude laughter and a single, choked-off sob.
    His back still pressed against the veranda post, Lucas shifted toward the yard, his eyes narrowing at the sight of the stableboy, Charlie, held fast in the grip of a black-haired, bearlike Englishman from Newcastle called John Pike. Pike was the estate's blacksmith, and he had one of his beefy fists clenched in the boy's shaggy hair, yanking his head back at a painful angle while he twisted the boy's right arm awkwardly behind his back in a way that brought the boy to his knees in the dirt. Tear tracks streaked the boy's dusty cheeks as his wide, terrified gaze fastened on a green glass jar sitting in the dirt some two or three feet in front of his face. Through the wavy round glass, Lucas could see something moving. Something big and brown and hairy that he realized after a moment was a spider. A huntsman spider.
    Lucas straightened slowly. The Fox shot up. "It's not our affair, Lucas."
    "No," agreed Lucas, a smile tightening his mouth. "It's not."
    "You like spiders, lad?" Pike was saying. "Because I've one here, waitin' for you. And there's plenty more, where this one come from." The big man's grip shifted, causing the boy to wince, although he didn't cry out again. "The way I see it, you've two choices. You already know what the first one is. And the second?" Pike brought his face down until it was level with the boy's own. "Well, your second choice is to eat this here big, hairy mother for breakfast tomorrow morning. And the next day? Why, there'll be another just like him, waiting for you. And then another, and another. Every day. Think about it, lad. I ain't never gonna run outta spiders. When do you think you're gonna run outta the guts to keep tellin' me no?"
    Lucas stepped off the veranda, his rough boots thudding softly in the hard-packed earth of the yard. "Let the boy go," he said, his voice low and lethal.
    CHAPTER FIVE
    John Pike's head fell back, his protuberant black eyes shifting sideways to meet Gallagher's cold stare across the ten or so feet of beaten earth that separated