A brief knock, and Emerson stepped into the room. “Miss, I’m to tell you they’re all at table. The master won’t give the order to serve until you take your place.”
“I’ll have a tray in my room tonight.”
“Ah, miss, I can’t! ’Twas Pike who told me, but I caught a glimpse of the master’s face as I passed the dining room. You’d best go down.”
She’d walk straight out into the dark with naught but the clothes on her back before . . .
Stoo-pid.
Courtesans—even ex-courtesans—knew the code. They honored their debts.
After a swift change to evening wear and allowing Emerson to tame her hair, Cecy pinched her cheeks and descended the stairs. Anne Boleyn on the way to the chopping block.
The dining room was so still Cecy could swear she heard Fetch breathing. As for the others, they might as well have been part of Lord Elgin’s collection of marbles. The seething silence continued until a footman popped through the door, clutching the handles of a large soup tureen, which he set on a sideboard.
An infinitesimal nod from Nick Black and the soup was served. Though certain she wouldn’t be able to swallow a drop, Cecy picked up her spoon, a signal that the others might begin to eat. Her hand shook, however, clinking the spoon against her soup bowl. The noise seemed loud as a cannon. Cecy lowered her spoon, ducked her head, and clasped her hands tight in her lap. Every other soup spoon followed hers into the bowl. Except Nick Black’s. He continued to dip up soup and swallow as if the atmosphere were not so tense it was a wonder he could move his hand.
Finally, he paused, his spoon in mid-air. “Miss Lilly, Gentlemen, is the soup not to your liking?”
“A bit hot, Guv,” Fetch called from his place next to Cecy. “We wuz jes lettin’ it cool.”
“How odd that I find it barely warm enough.” Collective sucked-in breaths echoed through the room. “Miss Lilly,” Nick added on a less biting note, “perhaps you would be good enough to attend me in my study after dinner. We have unfinished business.”
“Yes, of course,” she managed, though a shiver penetrated all the way to her soul.
“And now,” Nick snapped out, “we’ve starved long enough.” Soup spoons clinked. There was even a surreptitious slurp or two. The footmen were serving the third course, a fine roast fowl with rosemary dumplings, before conversation returned to some semblance of normal.
Nick never took his eyes off her as she sailed into the bookroom, head high. She hadn’t called for a carriage yet—the stables had his orders about that—but he was certain she wanted to run. She always ran. Cecilia Lilly’s solution to any problem: run away. Well, not this time. He needed her. No . . . his plot against Longmere needed her. He didn’t need anyone.
“Cecilia, sit.” He waved his hand toward her customary chair in front of her desk.
A slight flutter of her eyelashes was her only acknowledgment of his use of her given name. “We need a truce, you and I. At least long enough to finish our business with Longmere. After that . . .” He crossed his arms, leaned back in his chair, allowed his lips to curl into a grimace. “After that we will settle our–ah–more personal business.”
A shiver, followed by a rush of excitement, shot through with terror. Cecy squeezed her eyes shut, swallowed, but words refused to form. Meekly, she nodded.
Apparently satisfied, Nick sat up and plunged directly into the matter of Jason, Marquess of Longmere. “Darius Wolfe tells me he believes Longmere is about to fall into his trap—investing far too much in an African diamond venture that is solely a product of Wolfe’s imagination.”
“Does Mr. Wolfe not risk his reputation on such fraud?” Cecy asked.
“Not if he allegedly loses as much as Longmere, both of them being fooled by the elusive person who set up the scheme.”
“A-ah.”
Her thoughts were all too clear to him. Cecilia Lilly had no difficulty accepting that Nick Black and Darius Wolfe knew every in and out of setting up such machinations. “I have also seen to it that Longmere is the subject of a number of rumors. It seems he has suffered severe losses at gaming, the race track, a cock fight. Enough that he may have resorted to cheating at cards. And,” Nick added in the insinuating manner of a proper gossip, “his latest mistress believes he may be poxed.”
“That’s diabolical!” Cecy cried. “And on top of that, you’re going to steal his money. I almost feel sorry for him.”
“I never do anything by halves,” Nick assured her. “Nor does Wolfe.”
“He’s your brother.”
“So my mother said, but I’ve always wondered if she really knew.” And where had that bit of honesty come from? The truth was, he’d never know for sure. “To get back to business,” Nick announced abruptly, “I need you with me, looking adoring—no matter how much you might wish to slit my throat. You are the crowning touch to our plot—not some passing fancy but a woman I have taken for my own. To have and to hold, and all that nonsense.”
Her wince was slight, but he caught it. He’d done it again—put his foot in his mouth. He could negotiate with the most devious criminals, with members of parliament, even cabinet ministers, but when it came to Cecilia Lilly, his brain withered and died.
“Very well,” she was saying. “I am not insensible to what I owe you. And I am glad enough to play my part.” She frowned. “Though I would wish you to not be too ruthless. Except for that one time, Longmere was not a bad man.”
“Women who think like that,” Nick snapped, “crawl back to their men and end up dead.”
“You’re probably right,” Cecy murmured, clearly making an effort to adhere to the truce he’d requested. “Mr. Black?”
“Nick.”
“Nick . . . I wondered if I might take Fetch with me on my next visit to Soho. He has friends there who ask about him.”
“No.”
Her head jerked up. She stared. “What do you mean, No? That’s absurd.”
Truce. She had agreed to stay on, at least until the plot against Longmere had run its course. Which, devil take it, meant he too was obliged to compromise. “His friends may not be the right influence,” Nick offered, well aware his argument was weak.
“You’re touting Fetch as a model of propriety?” He’d swear the girl’s eyebrows met her hairline.
“Fine! He may go. Just make sure he returns with you.”
“As if he wouldn’t. The boy fair dotes on you, and well you know it.”
“He’s not mine, if that’s the latest maggot you’ve got in your head.”
“He could be.”
Nick stood, placed his palms flat on his desk and leaned in until they were nearly nose to nose. “Fetch was all of twelve before he came to my attention. Believe me, if he were mine, he would have had a roof over his head and good food in his belly from the day he was born. And never doubt it.”
“I beg your pardon,” she murmured, pushing back her chair. “We seem doomed to being forever at sixes and sevens.”
As she walked to the door, her shoulders not quite as stiff and defiant as usual, Nick sank back into his chair and closed his eyes.
Three days later Cecy found herself begging dispensation for children bolting from their classrooms with joyous shrieks and hollers as they caught a glimpse of Fetch. Merciful heavens, it must be true. Fetch was their leader, their hero, and he not yet fifteen.
Mrs. Bailey, the matron, heaved a sigh. “Happens every time,” she said. “Which is why Mr. Nick’s only brought him twice before. Wants him to forget his old life, he does. Truthfully, I’m surprised he allowed him to come again.” She favored Cecy with a knowing look. “But then I reckon even Mr. Nick’s got a soft spot for a pretty face.”
Cecy barely heard her, her gaze fixed over the matron’s shoulder at Fetch and the girl he’d just winkled away from the others, scooting her into a far corner where they stood facing each other, so close they looked more like a courting couple than a pair of fourteen-year-olds. Mrs. Bailey followed her gaze. “Our Cathy,” she said. “Cried herself to sleep for a month after Mr. Nick took the boy. Told me she knew it was the right thing for him, but nobody could keep her from grieving, now could they?”
“Is she his sister?”
“No.” The matron primmed her lips, abruptly excusing herself to shoo children back to their classrooms.
She did not, Cecy noticed, go near Fetch and his Cathy.
Cecy did a quick tour of the children’s sleeping areas, whose renovation she planned to tackle next, but when she looked back on it later, she realized she didn’t remember a thing she saw. The image of Fetch and Cathy nearly nose to nose wiped out all other memories of the day’s visit.
“Your friends were delighted to see you,” she said to Fetch as their carriage turned back toward Princes Street.”
“A fair treat it were. Thankee, miss.”
“Your English, however, has suffered a relapse.” Cecy ameliorated the sting with a teasing smile. Fetch cut his eyes in her direction, but the expected defiant grin wasn’t there. “Fetch,” she continued carefully, “I saw you talking privately with a girl. Is she a special friend?”
“My dollymop.”
“Beg pardon?”
“Special friend. All the boys had them, even the youngest. That’s the way it is in the rookeries, miss. The way to survive.”
“I–I don’t think I understand . . .” At least she hoped not.
Fetch blew out a breath, cast a glance at the carriage ceiling as if seeking help from the Almighty, or maybe just wishing for counsel from Nick Black. “There’s some on the streets, miss, scarce bigger than toddlers. The only way they survive is if someone takes ’em in. Some are snatched up for climbing boys, some fer kitchen slaves, some fer kiddy brothels, some fer training up as cracksmen, pickpockets, and God knows what.”
Fetch drew breath, his face grim. If a kid is lucky, he’s taken in by a gang of other children, where he don’t get used fer bad things by grown-ups. And cuz life is hard, there’s a lot of pairing up within the gangs. I mean, miss”—Fetch paused, clearly searching for the right words before he suddenly rushed ahead. “Everybody needs somebody, don’t y’ know? Not just being part of a gang, but having someone of your very own. I guess you could call it a companion. We go out on the streets and try all the harder because we know there’s someone else goes hungry if we don’t bring home somethin’ to eat. Do y’ see, miss? Do y’ see?”
She did, God help her. Children taking responsibility for other children because that was the only protection they had—each other.
“And you became Mr. Black’s . . . ah, apprentice, in return for your gang being safely tucked up in the home in Soho?”
“I wanted to go with him, miss. It was an honor to be chosen, and they all knew it. Not a peep out of them, I promise you. But . . . sometimes, like today, it’s hard. As I said, miss, everyone needs a special friend. I don’t want to be like Nick, all alone up there, with no one to warm my bed. Or my heart.
“’Course I have hopes,” he added, his face lightening. “If you’d just stop pickin’ quarrels with the man and give ’im a bit of what yer good at—”
“That’s enough!”
“Yes, miss.”
They rode the rest of the way to Princes Street in silence.