Page 6 of Plucked By the Orc

“Some blokes like him can put on a good show and then act differently when it comes down to it,” Lot remarked.

Iris raised her eyebrows.

“Not because he’s an orc, lovey,” Lottie added. “Because ‘e’s a man.”

“I don’t know that I like the idea of throwing my fate in with ‘igh society and all,” Iris said. “No matter who’s makin’ the offer.”

Lottie flopped on her bed, as usual. But then she quieted, which wasn’t heard of at all. When she spoke next, it was with an uncharacteristic solemnity.

“If you think he’s an honorable sort and he can get you out of selling flowers on the street, you ‘ave to try. A girl has to try, don’t she?”

Iris didn’t like considering matters in such stark terms, but Lottie made a solid point. “I’m not sure I square with the idea of dependin’ on a stranger.”

“You’ve always wanted more, though,” Lottie told her. “Opening a shop at all. No one’s lending money to the likes of us. What if this is your chance? What if this is youronlychance? Yer mum would ‘ave wanted that for you, bless her soul.”

Iris reached for the tiny amethyst hanging from a tarnished chain around her neck. The purple gemstone was a secret all her own. Iris kept it hidden underneath her cloaks and gownsbecause she had no intention of ever selling it or letting anyone steal it either. It was all she had left of her mother, just as the dagger was all she had left from her father. Her entire legacy in the world.

Her thoughts returned to Duncan Higgins. There was a quality to the orc’s deep voice--and his presence that took up at least twice the space of an average bloke--which sparked a feeling inside of her she thought long since banished.

Hope, certainly. But something else as well that she couldn’t quite identify.

Iris nodded at Lot before making her nightly trip to the privy—no more than a bucket kept down the hall, but it helped keep the smell of a full chamber pot from the existing stink in their room. When she returned, Iris tucked herself under the thrice-mended blanket.

While she had thought she was doing well enough, surviving and all, she knew deep down that Lottie was right. Iris wanted more. She wanted something better.

And if she bettered herself, she could help Lottie as well.

“I’ll pay a call to the bloke tomorrow, Lot,” Iris whispered into the dark room. “If he can help, maybe we’ll get the means to open a shop someplace respectable. Like we talked about before. A place the ladies send their staff to collect flowers for their vases and the like. And no gent would dare assume we’re selling anything else.”

Lottie usually fell asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow. But she managed a sleepy “sounds grand” before slipping away from the world for the night.

Meanwhile, Iris remained wide awake, staring at the cracks in the ceiling, thinking about what she might accomplish in this life were she to have the manners of a lady. Someone who would be called “Miss Gabbert” and even have a hat or two tipped herway by gents on the street. This used to happen with her mother when Iris was a little girl, and they were out walking together.

To make this change, she had to trust Duncan Higgins.His grace. The Duke of Barrington. Who quoted poetry and cut quite the figure in his fancy greatcoat and posh cravat. She’d need to look up to meet his intense gaze. And sense the depth of emotion in his deep-set, brown eyes.

Trusting him was a risk and not necessarily sensible. But if this gent could help her regain the respectable life her mother would have wanted for her, Iris thought the riskwell worth it. She’d swallow her pride to see if this Duncan Higgins could truly work this miracle and make her a lady.

Not until Iris approached the Mayfair address provided on the back of the Duke of Barrington’s calling card did doubts start to nibble at her insides.

She’d risen with the pale winter sun, having not gotten more than two licks of sleep the night before. After a quick wash of her face and a glance at the looking glass to make sure her presentation was tidy, Iris scribbled a note for Lot, still snoring happily on her side of the bedsit. Then she gathered a few essentials in her worn reticule, grabbed the gent’s card from her basket, and headed out, determined to accept Duncan Higgins’s offer.

The duke’s townhouse was impressive enough, that was for sure. Three stories of stained glass windows, wrought-iron balconies, and capped turrets topped with dragon-like stone gargoyles, as she’d seen in pictures of the old Church of Notre Dame in Paris. Imagine that! The street was scented by his grace’s winter garden of hollyhock and ivy spiraling around clean white trellises. When she and Lot opened their shop, shewanted to have something like that. Add a touch of refinement to the establishment.

The ominous front gate was fashioned from a metallic material she couldn’t place, with tiny pointed spears atop each post. To keep riff-raff such as Iris Gabbert away, she supposed, lest they get too close to one of those big bay windows with the thick drapes drawn tight.

Iris brushed a bit of fluff from her pelisse. She’d found the cloak on the street if a soul could believe it. A perfectly good one tossed aside and forgotten by some lady or another because it was a year or two out of fashion. Iris turned the garment over and wiped her hands discreetly on the muslin, pleased with how clean they looked today.

Nothing left to do now but square her shoulders and face whatever came.

She lifted her skirt to navigate the puddles left over from last night’s rain and ambled up the five front steps to the enormous Gothic-looking doorway. Under a half-moon window, a thick board bore the metal house number. Rising to her tip-toes, she grasped the brass rung on the door and gave it three sharp knocks, prepared to charm her way past whatever butler or footman greeted her—human, gnome, or winged fairy for that matter.

When the door finally creaked open, she stood before Duncan Higgins, the Duke of Barrington.

Iris had expected to find him both large and imposing, as he had been the night before. And yet, there was a gentleness about him.Only for a fleeting moment, though, until his exterior was restored to the cool fortification she remembered from when she met him yesterday.

Duncan Higgins dressed less formally than he had for the theater, naturally enough. He wore a plain white shirt with neither waist nor frock coat and his cravat undone. And no snuffbox for this bloke. He clasped a pipe in his mouth, the russet-colored bowl at its base carved with a lone wolf in profile. The sweet-spicy tobacco from the chamber smelled far more pleasing than that her father used to partake.

He took the pipe by its stem and removed it from his mouth. Then he looked her up and down, his prominent and sharp front teeth overlapping with his lips. She found her gaze drawn to this feature, which some on the streets derisively called “fangs,” but it would have been rude to stare.

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