White and voluminous, a mockery of priestly vestments, and hooded with a deep and death-pale hood which covered half his face when he lowered it down, the semi-Druidic robes had been sewn to his specifications years previously by a sweatshop seamstress who had possessed no other way to pay for the divinations she’d come to him to cast for her. He slipped into the robes, shook back the deep hood for now, and busied himself with the same efficient industry which had brought him out of the misery of the streets overhead and into the life he now sought to protect at all cost.
John Lachley searched the boy’s appallingly filthy, empty pockets, then felt the crackle of paper beneath Morgan’s shirt. When he stripped off his victim, a sense of triumph and giddy relief swept through him: Morgan’s letters were tucked into the waistband of his trousers, the foolscap sheets slightly grimy and rumpled. Each had been folded into a neat packet. He read them, curious as to their contents, and damned Albert Victor for a complete and bumbling fool. Had these letters come into the hands of the proper authorities . . .
Then he reached the end and stared at the neatly penned sheets of foolscap.
There were only four letters.
John Lachley tightened his fist down, crushing the letters in his hand, and blistered the air. Four! And Eddy had said there were eight! Where had the little bastard put the other half of the set? All but shaking with rage, he forced himself to close his fists around empty air, rather than the unconscious boy’s throat. He needed to throttle the life out of this little bastard, needed to inflict terror and ripping, agonizing hurt for daring to threaten him, Dr. John Lachley, advisor to the Queen’s own grandson, who should one day sit the throne in Victoria’s stead . . .