Page 41 of Eliza and the Duke
“Who’r you?” she asked, her brows drawn together.
“Anna—Anne,” Eliza answered, stumbling over the name she and Simon had decided she should have in Whitechapel.
“We already have one of those.” The woman’s gaze narrowed.
“I can change my name.”
The woman huffed and disappeared back into her room without another word. Eliza stared for a moment at the other doors, wondering if Simon had gone into one of them. Maybe he was even now undressing to take one of the occupants to bed. She hadn’t thought he was someone who would visit a prostitute. Not these poor women, anyway, who were likely forced into the job by circumstance rather than choice. She hadn’t thought he was someone to take advantage of that, having seen the genuine desperation from the other side, but perhaps she had been wrong. Though, honestly, it wasn’t only that that disappointed her. It was that he could touch her the way he had last night and then come here today.
What was she supposed to make of that?
That it is none of your concern and that you should return home.Eliza pushed that voice of reason aside. She’d come too far to turn back now.
A footfall echoed on the stairs, and she looked up to see a man’s shoe go past on the landing above. Perhaps it was him. She hurried around and up the next flight of stairs to the top floor. She got there just in time to see the man, presumably Simon, disappear up a narrow set of stairs set into the wall that led to the attic.
She followed, her heartbeat pounding in her chest, and quietly walked down the short corridor to the bottom of those stairs. A quick peek confirmed that the man was Simon. She pressed her back to the wall and waited as he knocked on the single door at the top of the stairs. It opened and she glanced again to see a dark-haired girl who couldn’t have been more than fifteen inside the attic room, her face pale and thin. Her eyes lit up when she realized Simon stood there, and she stepped back to let him in, then the door closed behind him.
Cold prickled over Eliza’s scalp and down her spine. Thegirl was so young. Why would Simon be visiting her? He couldn’t really mean to bed her, could he? Before she could properly consider all of the reasons, one of the doors on the corridor opened. An older man stepped out, adjusting his clothing as he did. She closed her eyes as she turned her head away.
“Are you new?” he asked in a tone that indicated he was entirely too interested.
“No, I’m not new. Get out of here,” she snapped, keeping her voice low so that it wouldn’t travel up to the attic.
He frowned but finished tucking in his shirttails as he walked toward the stairs to go down.
She waited for him to disappear from sight before she glanced back up the steps to the closed attic door. She wavered for a moment before ascending the steps. She had already come this far; she wasn’t about to turn back now.
Once at the top of the attic stairs, Eliza raised her hand to knock, but decided not to. She didn’t want to give them time to pretend they were doing something else. If he was sleeping with this girl, then Eliza needed to know. She needed to see the seduction with her own eyes. Then she would berate him for being a cad and leave. At least it would settle the question of her future.
Sick to her stomach, she pushed gently and the door opened inward, as nothing had been latched from the inside. The room was not as small as she had thought it would be.
A narrow window was directly across from her; late-afternoon sunlight spilled across the bare wood floor. A small bed was pushed to the wall on one side of the window with a table on the other side. The bed was empty. The girl sat at the table and Simon sat adjacent to her. A third set of eyes looked over at her as well. An even younger child in Simon’s arms. Both he and the girl came to their feet at the sight of her.
“Eliza?” he said.
The girl’s eyes went wide with fright. The blanket she had been mending plopped to the ground, a needle poking out of it with a tail of red thread falling limply to lie on top of the blanket.
“Simon?” Eliza’s gaze was wrenched back to him and, more specifically, the child in his arms.
The little girl wore a simple yellow knee-length dress. Her light-colored hair had been neatly combed and left to fall in airy ringlets down her back. She couldn’t be more than three years old.
“Who is that, Papa?” the child asked in the soft tone of a toddler. Her blue eyes, so like Simon’s, were wide with curiosity.
Papa. The little girl had called Simon Papa. Eliza wrenched her gaze away from the child to Simon. He looked as stunned as she felt. His face was a frozen mask of shock, and he hadn’t moved since he’d catapulted to his feet.
“Simon.” This time it wasn’t a question. Eliza was too stunned to ask questions.
Simon had a child. A daughter. Had she been prone to fainting, she would have fallen dead away and rolled down the stairs.
Twenty-One
“Papa?” Daisy reached up herplump baby hand to cup Simon’s cheek.
He looked down at her sweet face, her round eyes large with concern, and tried to recover himself. Though he didn’t think he’d get over seeing Elizahereanytime soon. “This is my friend Eliza.”
Daisy nodded and smiled, seemingly pleased by this answer. The spell that held them all still had been broken. Eliza realized that perhaps standing with the door open wasn’t appropriate. With a sheepish look on her face, she stepped fully into the room and closed the door. The other option was to turn around and leave, but having come this far, he didn’t expect her to leave until she got answers. He knew her well enough to guess correctly which option she would choose.
Eliza stared at him. Her eyes were soft now…almost vulnerable, exactly the way he felt. No one had ever seen Daisy from his other life, the life he lived outside of Whitechapel. It wasn’t that he wanted to hide her, but that he was forced tohide her away here. Eliza was the first person he cared about to meet her. Because Daisy lived here, the room had always had a reverent aura to him. Eliza had stumbled upon this sacred space, and he couldn’t decide how he felt about it. It felt as if she was seeing a very tender part of him.
