Page 15 of My Deceitful Duchess
“There is someone on the street just there,” Mr. Knight whispered. “This area can be rough, especially after nightfall. We ought to turn back.”
Jenny squeezed his arm. “I’ve walked these streets often,” she said. “There is nothing here that will endanger me. But perhaps you ought to remain here.” She let her hand slip from his arm and walked slowly toward the lone figure tucked up against the side of a building, shying away from the halo of a lamp.
“Hello, Louisa,” she said softly to the woman there, who peered up at her with sunken eyes in a face aged beyond her years. She was just fifty years old, this poor soul lost within the prison of poverty and neglect, but she looked to be eighty at least. Jenny had tried to get her off the street numerous times before, but the woman had never accepted. “Have you got anyone for me tonight?”
Louisa’s stringy hair flew as she shook her head. “No one,” she said, in her feeble croaking voice. “Right sorry, ma’am. There was a girl, I thought—but she had a good cry and then went for Madam Rosewell’s.”
“Well, if you see her again, please tell her where she might find me,” Jenny said, and she bent to tuck a few coins into the withered palm that Louisa extended toward her.
“You got a gennelman?” Louisa asked as her hand closed around the coins, and Jenny realized that Mr. Knight had crept up behind her, as if wary of leaving her to fend for herself.
“A friend,” Jenny said firmly. “Just that.”
A wicked grin twisted Louisa’s wrinkled lips. “A friend,” she said. “Aye, and I’d like to have a friend like that.”
Jenny disguised a startled laugh with a cough, which she smothered behind her hand. “Good evening to you, Louisa,” she said, and grabbed Mr. Knight’s elbow once again to steer him away.
They had made it perhaps ten paces before he said, “Madam Rosewell’s is a brothel.”
“It is.” It had not been a question.
“Who are you looking for in a brothel?”
“Any woman who wishes not to be.”
“Ah,” he said, and it was laden with a wealth of understanding. “They don’t find you.Youfindthem. I had wondered.”
“Notquitetrue,” she said. “Some of them do, indeed, find me. A week can be a long time for a woman in a precarious position, and I can only come on Saturdays. Louisa—amongst others—keeps watch for me, for any woman who might have no other place to turn. You have yourpeople,” she said, patting his arm, “and I have mine.”
∞∞∞
For an hour they walked, through the deepest part of the night—through parts of London that no woman should be exposed to once the sun had set. Sebastian had never given much thought to what peopledid, precisely, because people were incomprehensible beasts whose actions were quite beyond his understanding the vast majority of the time.
But to think of Jenny out here on the streets, keeping company with prostitutes and beggars made something twist uncomfortably in his chest. Fear, or worry, or concern, he supposed. Not a feeling to which he was accustomed to feeling for someone else, and he’d slipped his hand into his pocket and fidgeted with his watch until the familiar motion and Jenny’s amiable chatter had eased at least a portion of that wretched anxiety from where it had sat heavily on his chest. Still, there must have been something about her that beat back the worst dregs of humanity that had come skittering out beneath the darkness. Only a few dared approach her, and she greeted them by name, had a brief conversation, and then handed over a coin. A weekly ritual, he supposed—they had learned to trust her, to pass along whatever information they might have, even if it was nothing, and she rewarded their efforts.
But still, anyone might have learned her schedule. Anyone might have noticed that she had a purse of coins tucked within her pocket. Only days ago, he had seen a man who had been murdered for less—and in a far finer part of London.
She risked her safety—her very life—each time. For the hope of saving someone else. Someone so low, so downtrodden that they would not have been missed had they simply disappeared from the streets. He’d seen them, occasionally, the wretched creatures she brought back with her but rarely. Women in dire straits, beaten bloody, abused, spiritless beneath the weight of the lives they had led. But he didn’t think it mattered to her from whence they had come—only that she had offered her help, and they had accepted.
“Is it always this path?” he asked, as they slipped from beneath the cover of a street lamp, keeping toward the shadows.
“Yes,” she said. “Although not always the same people,” she said. “I haven’t seen Florence in nearly a month.”
“Florence?”
“One of mypeople,” she said, and her hand curled into his elbow. “Her husband is a drunk. Most days, he has dreadful rages—she’s more frequently found out of her home than within it.” The careful little silence that followed suggested that the woman found a more comfortable situation on the street than she could within her home. “She lives near a few brothels, and tells me when she sees women she thinks would prefer another situation.” A little roll of her shoulders. “Sometimes—like tonight—there is no one. But occasionally—”
Occasionally there was a woman who needed a guardian angel to come to her in the darkness. “Would you allow me to walk with you again?” Sebastian asked, cognizant that their time together was drawing to a close. They had moved in a large circuit, and at last they were back in familiar streets—Ambrosia was just ahead.
“For what purpose?” Jenny asked, and the last flickers of lamplight cast a pale corona over her hair. She looked different in the shadows, he had noticed. As if she were more comfortable in the dark embrace of night than she would be in full sun. Perhaps those dark parts of her which lingered beneath her lovely veneer craved them. For all that her surface was sunshine and moonbeams, he suspected it was only a thin layer papered over secrets and shadows. He did not begrudge her these things—most people had secrets aplenty—but he had never wanted to reveal anyone’s so much as he had hers.
“For the pleasure of your company,” he said; a polite, bland response—truthful…but not quite the whole of the truth.
That dimple etched itself into her cheek, all the deeper for the shadows gathering beneath it. “Why, Mr. Knight,” she said, a light, teasing inflection woven through her voice. “Are you worried for me?”
The question landed upon his ears uncomfortably, and he could not say he liked the strange, skittering sensation it evoked in his chest. “Iamworried,” he admitted. “And I do notliketo be so. Had I known you were—” He let the words drift away abruptly into silence, because what could he have done? He had no sort of power over her, no authority. “I would rather accompany you,” he said, somewhat stiffly. “If you would place yourself in danger, I would at least be present to protect you.”
And she—she wascharmed. He didn’t know why; he was not a charming man. But she was, nevertheless, somehow charmed. He could hear it in her voice; that particular tone that denoted pleasure. As if he had said something exactly right, even though he had long ago given up on any hope of mastering the finer points of conversation.
