“Please, John,” she whispered.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
A nightingale sang, and Felicity looked up at the strange sound, so unexpected here, in the yard of a rookery warehouse. When she found nothing out of the ordinary, she turned back to John, who was . . . smiling.
Her brow furrowed. “John?”
“Lady Felicity.” A growl came from above and she looked up to see Whit coming down the side of the warehouse to land next to her.
“I am going to require trousers if I’m going to run with you lot, aren’t I?”
He inclined his head. “It’s not the worst of ideas.”
His tacit acceptance of her premise filled her with joy. “I was just telling John that I love your brother quite madly.” One of Whit’s black brows rose. “As a result, I fully intend to pick this unpickable lock and go in there and tell him he’s cabbage-brained for not loving me back. But that will take some time, and when one decides one would like to fight for the man one loves, one likes to do it as quickly as possible, you can imagine.”
“I can. But he isn’t here. He’s at home.”
She shook her head. “No, he isn’t; I went there first.”
He grunted disapprovingly.
“So you can see why I would appreciate it if you would let me in.”
His brow furrowed. “Did you knock?”
“I did.”
He raised a fist and pounded a thundering knock on the door. “And he didn’t answer?”
Felicity did not like the look on his face. “No.”
His key was in the lock instantly, the door opening to the cavernous warehouse in seconds. Silence and darkness greeted them. “Devil?” he called out.
No answer. Felicity’s heart dropped. Something was wrong. She turned back to John. “Light. We need light.”
The big man was already turning to fetch a lantern.
Whit called after him. “Did he leave?”
John’s reply was firm and clipped. “No one’s been in or out since you lot left.”
“Devil!” Whit called out.
Silence.
John passed Felicity a lantern, and she lifted it high. “Devil?”
“He must have left,” Whit said. “Goddammit, John, there’s a hundred thousand pounds worth of goods down there and you lot are sleeping at the watch enough that you didn’t see someone leave through the only damn door to the place.”
“He didn’t come through that door, Beast,” John protested. “My men know their work. And they do it well.”
Felicity stopped listening to the two men spar, heading deeper into the darkness to the far corner of the space. To where the door inset in the warehouse floor stood open, a yawning blackness below.
Devil had been adamant that that door never stand open. That it being open underscored that there was something below the warehouse itself.
“Devil?” She stood at the edge of the hole and called into the void for him. He wouldn’t be down there. He hated the hold. He hated the darkness.
And still . . . she knew he was down there. Without question.
She was down into the darkness instantly, running along the long, dark tunnel, holding her lantern high, her heart in her throat. “Devil?” she called again.
And that’s when she saw it. The flash of light on the ground in front of her. The gleam of silver. The lion’s head at the handle of his walking stick. The weapon, discarded on the ground.
Next to the door to the ice hold.
She reached for the handle. Pulled. It was locked. From the outside. Six heavy steel padlocks in a neat row.
She pounded on the door in great, heavy blows. “Devil?”
No answer.
More pounding. “Devil? Are you in there?”
Again, no answer.
“Devil?” She knocked again, pressing her ear to the door, unable to hear anything over the pounding of her heart.
She dropped the lantern to the ground and reached for her hairpins without hesitation. She knocked on the door again, as hard as she could, shouting, “Devil! I am here!” before calling for Whit and John. But she could not wait for them.
Instead, she dropped to her knees and began working the locks. All the while talking to the door, hoping he would hear her. “Don’t you dare die in there, Devon Culm. I’ve things to say to your face, you terrible, wonderful man . . .”
The first lock clicked open and she pulled it from its latch, tossing it down the corridor and immediately setting to work on the next.
“. . . you think you can simply turn up at my brother’s home and tell him you love me without telling me first? You think that is fair? It’s not . . . and I’m going to punish you by making you tell me every minute of every hour for the rest of our lives . . .”
The second lock came loose and she immediately set her picks to the third, calling out, “Devil? Are you there? Love?” She banged on the door.
Silence. She tossed the third lock to the side.
“I love you, do you know that?” She slid her picks into the fourth lock, then the fifth.
“Are you cold, my love?” She shouted for Whit again. And John. “I’m coming,” she whispered, now on the sixth lock, feeling for the latch inside the springwork within—this one different from the others. She scraped the tools together, whispering again, “I’m coming.”
Done. She tossed the lock to the side and opened the door, heaving the great heavy slab to the side, the air instantly colder as she revealed the inner door, another line of locks. She immediately came to her knees in the cold mud there.
She couldn’t even see the locks anymore; she worked them by touch. Calling out to him. “Devil? Please, love—are you there?” Her heart pounded and she refused to allow the tears to come. Refused to believe she might have lost him. “Devil, please—I’m working as fast as I can. I’m here.” She repeated it. “I’m here.” Again and again.
And then, barely there, almost impossible to believe, she heard it. A knock. As light as butterflies’ wings. As a moth’s. Her moth.
“Devil!” she shouted, banging on the door. “I hear you! I shan’t leave you. I’m never leaving you again. You’ll never be rid of me.”
One lock. A second. A third. Her hands were steadier than they’d ever been, the picks flying through the lockwork.
“Goddammit. No one keeps ice behind this many locks, Devil. You’re definitely a smuggler. Probably a thief, too. God knows you’ve stolen my heart. And my future. I’m here to take it back.”
The lock sprang and she was on to the fourth. At this point, any of her hairpins would have been bent or broken, rendered useless. But these pins were perfect. He was perfect.
“You’re going to have to marry me, you know. I’m through letting you make decisions related to our mutual happiness because when you do, I am only left sad, and you are left . . .” She tossed aside the fourth. Moved to the fifth. “Well . . . locked inside ice dungeons. I assume this is the work of my former fiancé?”
A pause, while she discarded the fifth lock and set her picks to the last. “Just one more, Devon. Hold on. Please. I’m coming.”
Click.
She flung the lock away and threw the heavy latch at the bottom of the door, pulling it open with all her strength. It came with a blast of frigid air and Devil, falling through the door, into her arms.
She clutched him to her and they both fell to their knees under his weight. He trembled with cold, his face pressed into the crook of her neck. He whispered one word, over and over, like a benediction. “Felicity.”
Her arms wrapped around him, desperate to hold more of him. Desperate to warm him. “Thank you for my lockpicks.”