“You are unusually quiet, Mrs. Dews,” Lord Caire observed in his deep voice.
“How would you know what is usual with me, my lord?” she asked. “You hardly know me.”
He breathed a soft chuckle behind her. “And yet I sense that you are a loquacious woman when you are with those you are comfortable with.”
She halted and turned, arms crossed to hold in her heat, but also perhaps to reassure herself. “What type of game are you playing with me?”
He’d stopped as well, much too near to her. His queue was coming undone, and strands of his long silver hair blew across his face. “Game, Mrs. Dews?”
“Yes, game.” She glared, refusing to be afraid of him. “You tell me that you’re searching for someone in St. Giles, but when I take you to Mr. Hopper’s shop, you ask about a murdered woman, and now at Mother Heart’s-Ease’s, you ask about a gutted murdered woman.”
He shrugged, broad shoulders moving under his cape. “I did not lie to you. I do seek someone—her murderer.”
Temperance shivered as the wind blew icy droplets of rain against her frozen cheeks. She wished she could see his eyes, but they were hidden under the brim of his hat. “Who was she to you?”
His wide, sensuous mouth curled up into a half smile. He did not answer.
“Why me?” she muttered low, a question she realized belatedly that she should’ve asked the night before. “How did you find me? Why did you choose me?”
“I’ve seen you about,” he said slowly, “as I’ve searched in St. Giles. You were always hurrying, always in black, always so very… determined. When I saw you last night, I followed you to your home.”
She stared. “That’s it? You chose me on a whim?”
“I’m a whimsical man. You are cold, Mrs. Dews. Come.”
And he set off again, this time leading the way, his steps assured.
“Where are we going?” she called after him. “Don’t you want to find Martha Swan?”
He halted and turned toward her. “Mother Heart’s-Ease said she frequented Hangman’s Alley. Do you know the direction?”
“Yes, but it’s half a mile or more that way.” She gestured behind them.
He nodded. “Then we’ll save Mistress Swan for another night. It’s late and it’s time you were home.”
He started off again without waiting for her answer.
Temperance trotted after him like an obedient terrier. He’d answered her questions but in a way that made new ones crop up in their place. There were hundreds of women in St. Giles. Granted, many were prostitutes or engaged in other illicit activities. But had he wished, he could’ve found a dozen or more willing women to lead him about. Why had he chosen her? Temperance frowned and hurried to keep step with him. He might be a stranger with dark secrets, but she still felt safer walking these alleys with him by her side.
“I don’t know that we can trust Mother Heart’s-Ease,” she said, gasping a bit as the cold wind snatched away her words.
“You doubt there is a Martha Swan?”
“Oh, she’s probably real enough,” Temperance muttered. “But whether she actually has any information is a different matter.”
“How is it you know Mother Heart’s-Ease?”
“Everyone knows Mother Heart’s-Ease. Gin is the demon of St. Giles.”
He glanced back at her. “Indeed?”
“Young and old drink it. Some make it their only meal.” Temperance hesitated. “But that is not the only reason I know her.”
“Tell me.”
She raised a hand to pull her hood more closely about her face. “Nine years ago, when I first came to the home, Mother Heart’s-Ease sent us a message. She had a young girl of about three years of age. I don’t know where she got the child from, but it was certainly not hers.”
“And?”
“She offered to sell the toddler to us.” Temperance paused, for her voice had begun to shake—not from fear or sorrow, but from rage. She remembered her hot anger, her contempt at Mother Heart’s-Ease’s mercenary cynicism.
“What happened?” Lord Caire’s voice was soft, but she heard it clearly. It almost vibrated in her bones.
“Winter and Father were against buying the child. They said it would only encourage Mother Heart’s-Ease to sell more orphaned children.”
“And you?”
Temperance inhaled. “I hated to pay her, but she made it quite plain that she would find another buyer if we did not give her the price. Someone who would not care for the child’s welfare at all.”
“A whoremonger.”
She glanced swiftly at him, but his face was in profile to her, cold and remote. They’d crossed into a larger lane, one in which she could walk beside him. This wasn’t the way she’d taken Lord Caire to Mother Heart’s-Ease’s cellar. Idly she wondered if he was lost.
Then she faced forward again. “Yes, a whoremonger, most probably, though Mother Heart’s-Ease never actually said the words. She simply hinted horribly.” Temperance’s head was down, remembering that ghastly negotiation. She’d still been a little naive then. She’d had no idea how black a woman’s soul could be.
She wasn’t paying enough attention to the way. Her toe caught on something, and her hands shot out as she stumbled, trying to regain her balance. There was an awful second when her belly dove, and she knew she was going to hit the ground.
And then he caught her, hard hands—painful hands—gripping her elbows but keeping her safe. She looked up and he was there, right in front of her, his blue eyes gleaming like a demon’s. He drew her closer, almost into an embrace. Like a friend. Like a lover.
All her worst desires clamored to the surface.
He whispered, his breath brushing her lips, “So you bought the babe.”
“Yes.” She glared at him, this unfeeling aristocrat. Why did he want to hear this story? Why did he insist on ripping open old wounds? Why was he searching for a dead woman’s murderer? “Yes, I paid the price. I sold the only bit of jewelry I had—a gold cross my husband had once given me—and I bought the babe. I named her Mary Whitsun for the Whitsunday on which I first held her.”
He cocked his head, his blue, blue eyes asking the question.
She sobbed, fury and sorrow welling up from that place where she carefully controlled all the emotions she couldn’t afford to feel. Temperance trembled as she tried to beat her passion down. Trap it and conceal it.
He shook her as if to dislodge the answer he waited for.
“Winter was right,” she gasped. “The baby girl was safe, but two months later, Mother Heart’s-Ease came to us again with another baby, a boy this time. And his price was twice what the girl’s had been.”
“What did you do?”
“Nothing.” She closed her eyes in defeat. “The price was too high; we hadn’t the money. We—I—could do nothing. I begged, I got on my knees and pled with that witch, and she sold him anyway.”
She bunched the edges of his cloak in her fists, shaking them as if to impress the awfulness of the memory on him. “She sold that sweet baby boy, and I could do nothing to save him.”
One moment she was crying in fury up at him and the next he’d swooped down and caught her mouth. Hard, with no mercy. She gasped at the shock. He ground his mouth against her soft lips. She felt his teeth, tasted his hot tongue, and that part of herself, that wretched, sinful, wrong, part broke free and went running. Reveling in his savagery. Rejoicing in his blunt sexuality.
Completely out of her control.
Until he raised his head and looked down at her. His lips were wet and slightly reddened, but otherwise he showed no sign of that devastating kiss.
He might’ve just relieved himself against a wall for all the emotion he displayed.
Temperance tried to pull from his grasp, but his hands held strong.
“You are such a passionate creature,” he murmured, examining her from beneath half-lowered eyelids. “So emotional.”
“I am not,” she whispered, horrified at the mere notion.
“You lie. I wonder why?” He raised his eyebrows in amusement and let her go so suddenly she stumbled back a step. “She was my mistress.”
“What?”
“The murdered woman, the one gutted like a pig at the butcher’s. She was my mistress of three years.”
She gaped at him, stunned.
He inclined his head. “Until tomorrow evening. Good night, Mrs. Dews.”
And he walked away, disappearing into the night shadows.
Temperance turned, her mind whirling, and saw it, not twenty steps away. The door to the foundling home.
Lord Caire had brought her safely home after all.
Chapter Three
King Lockedheart lived in a magnificent castle that sat on the top of a hill. In his castle there lived hundreds of guards, a swarm of courtiers, and a multitude of servants and courtesans. The king was surrounded day and night, and yet none were close to his heart. In fact, the only living thing that was important to the king was a small blue bird. The bird lived in a jeweled golden cage, and sometimes it would sing or chirp. In the evening, King Lockedheart fed the bird nuts through the bars of its cage….
—from King Lockedheart
The sun never seemed to shine in St. Giles, Silence Hollingbrook reflected the next morning. She glanced up and caught sight of only a handspan’s width of blue amongst the overhanging second stories, signs, and roofs. St. Giles was far too crowded, the houses built one on top of another and the rooms divided and then subdivided again until the people lived like rats in warrens. Silence shivered, glad for her own neat rooms in Wapping. St. Giles was a terrible place to live one’s life. She wished her elder brother and sister could find another place for the Home for Unfortunate Infants and Foundling Children. But then St. Giles was where Father had founded the home, and St. Giles was where the poorest of the poor lived in London.
She stopped before the worn stoop and knocked loudly on the thick wooden door. The foundling home had had a bell until last Christmas, when someone had stolen it. Winter had not had a chance to replace it yet, and sometimes she knocked for several minutes before being heard.
But today the door was opened almost at once.
She looked down into scrubbed pink cheeks, black hair scraped back from a wide forehead, and sharp brown eyes. “Good morning to you, Mary Whitsun.”
Mary bobbed a curtsy. “Good morning, Mrs. Hollingbrook.”
Silence entered the narrow hall and hung up her shawl. “Is my sister about?”
“Ma’am is in the kitchen,” Mary said.
Silence smiled. “I’ll find her, then.”
Mary nodded solemnly and marched up the stairs to whatever work she’d been interrupted at.
Silence hoisted the flat-bottomed basket she’d brought and walked back to the kitchens. “Good morning!” she called as she entered.
Temperance turned from a huge pot boiling over the fire. “Good morning, sister! What a nice surprise. I didn’t know you were to call today.”
“I wasn’t.” Silence felt her cheeks heat guiltily. She hadn’t been to the home in over a week. “But I bought some dried currants at market this morning and thought I’d bring some over.”
“Oh, how thoughtful! Mary Whitsun will like that,” Temperance said. “She has a fondness for currant buns.”
“Mmm.” Silence set the basket on the old kitchen table. “She seems to have grown another inch since I last saw her.”
“She has indeed.” Temperance wiped at the sweat on her temples with her apron. “And she’s quite lovely, though I don’t tell her so to her face. I don’t want her to become vain.”