The next morning they met in the entryway just as the sun rose over London. Sara had to bite back her smile when Ross descended the steps. They’d been thinking along the same lines in their choice of attire. He was wearing worn trousers and a coat that had seen better days. It even had patches on it.
Sara raised a brow. “Has your valet seen your attire?”
Ross raised his arms out to the sides and smiled. The smile nearly stilled her heart, it was so warm and beautiful. So different from the dour expression she was used to seeing.
“My valet created this attire.”
Sara put a hand to her heart. “Say it isn’t so. No respectable valet would ever outfit his lord in something so…”
“Simple?”
“I was thinking unpretentious.”
“That, too.”
They smiled at each other until Ross’s smile slowly faded and he looked away to clear his throat. “I see you were thinking along the same lines.”
Mimicking his movements, she held her arms out to the sides. “It’s the oldest, most worn gown I have with me. If I were home, I could have found a better one.”
“It’s brown.”
Sara couldn’t hold back another smile. “It is at that.”
They stared at each other for a moment. Sara had never heard silence speak so loudly. It was as if all the words she wanted to say hung in the air between them. What were these strange feelings she had for the Duke of Rossmoyne? She’d never thought much about him other than his betrothal to Meredith. And after that, she had hardly thought of him at all, except for those times the gossip columnists mentioned him. If she’d had an opinion of him, it was that he was charming and the life of a party she was not invited to.
Now was an entirely different set of circumstances. The party was long over, and the duke had changed in so many ways. Apparently, so had she.
“Shall we leave?” he asked.
Thankful to be shaken from such strange thoughts, Sara nodded. She was surprised to find no carriage waiting for them.
“We can’t arrive at a nethersken in a ducal carriage,” he said as he offered his arm and they walked down the street. It was early enough that no one except servants were up and about, but it was still strange to stroll the street on the arm of the Duke of Rossmoyne in a dress she would never wear in public.
“You’ve thought of everything,” she said.
“Not everything.”
“Tell me about this nethersken.”
“It’s run by a woman named Mrs. Kettles. It’s a rather large nethersken, dominated by a variety of thieves and displaced servants.”
“Hopefully none of your servants.”
“I have found that if you treat them with respect and kindness, they remain loyal.”
“Some would say that is a strange concept.”
“I’ve been called strange before. It’s nothing new to me.”
“As have I,” she murmured.
“Strange is not all bad.”
“Only if one is not in society. Then strange is very bad indeed.”
“Do you really care what society thinks?”
Did she? “Society has never paid me much mind. I was always Meredith’s shadow, more a chaperone than anything else. Someone to be pitied.”
He gave her a sideways look. “I wouldn’t say pitied.”
“You are correct. No one thought of me long enough to pity me.” She shook her head. “It sounds as if I’m feeling sorry for myself when that isn’t so. It’s never bothered me overmuch. I’m not a great conversationalist, and the act of making small talk makes me anxious. I prefer to sit in the shadows and watch people.”
“I didn’t think you were feeling sorry for yourself. In fact, I envy your ability to fade into the shadows.”
“You do?” She looked up at him in surprise.
“Don’t sound so surprised.”
“You’re a duke. I would think a duke would expect to attract attention and would crave it.”
“Oh, I expect attention, but I don’t necessarily crave it.”
She thought of all those appearances Ross and Meredith had made at social events. As soon as their engagement had been announced, they had nearly been mobbed wherever they went.
“I can see why it would get tiresome.” Sara liked peace, and she enjoyed being by herself. She could not imagine the life Meredith had led, always being the center of attention. Callers had flocked to their house one after another, and Meredith had basked in it. Not Sara. She’d begged off more than a few times, leaving the socializing to Meredith.
She had assumed that Ross was the same as Meredith. It was shocking and fascinating to learn differently. She wanted to know more about this man who turned her beliefs upside down every time she talked to him, but they arrived at the hackney stand, where he hired a vehicle for them.
He helped her up into it and grimaced when he settled across from her, lifting his feet from the days-old straw at the bottom and staring at the muck.
“It’s a good thing your valet gave you old boots to wear,” she said with a straight face.
He shot her a disgruntled look. “Do these drivers not clean their conveyances?”
“Not often enough, apparently.”
He looked around with a frown. He may have been dressed as a displaced noble, but he was still acting a duke. How he thought he was going to convince this Mrs. Kettles that he was a commoner was beyond Sara. Once he spoke, the ruse would be over.
“I must confess that I know very little about netherskens except that they are dangerous,” she said as the carriage rattled away. The driver must not have believed in quality springs. She would have a sore bum when the ride was over.
“They are rooms for let, although that is not quite right, either,” Ross said as he grabbed for the edge of the seat after a bad rut in the road. “A person will rent space from the proprietor to stay for a day or a night. From what I understand, they are quite overcrowded with unsavory characters.”
“And what are we hoping to find?”
“Thomas said a person by the same description of the one who delivered your letter is residing there. Or at least he was as of yesterday. Netherskens are notorious for drifters.”
“So this man could be long gone by the time we get there?”
“Could be.”
The scenery went from stately mansions to smaller townhouses to small houses built willy-nilly and nearly on top of each other. The people changed accordingly. Here everyone was up and about, if they weren’t at their jobs already. Children ran unattended through the streets, while women hung the wash out the windows and men leaned negligently in the doorways.
The smell made Sara’s eyes water. Decay and desperation. Everything was blackened by smoke spewing from hundreds of cooking fires, and the sun dared not peek through the cracks between the buildings. Every once in a while they passed a dead dog or cat. Rats scuttled from here to there, hugging the walls and sticking to the shadows.
Sara had always thought she had an open mind when it came to social issues, but she found herself leaning away from the window and swallowing the bile that rose in her throat. The children affected her the most. They reminded her of Thomas. How many of them would fall into a life of crime, driven by the simple need to eat? How many of them would not live to see next year? She turned her head away from the window.
“If we’re lucky, Mrs. Kettles will be able to tell us a little more about the man we’re seeking,” Ross said.
“If this place is notorious for housing criminals, then this Mrs. Kettles is probably in league with them. How do we know she will tell us anything, and how do we trust what she tells us?”
Ross inclined his head toward her. “Not only beautiful but smart as well.”
She stared at him in surprise. He thought her beautiful?
He thought her beautiful?
She had been told she was smart, but not in the appreciative way Ross had said it. To be smart was not exactly a trait to be admired in a woman. It scared off suitors, because no man wanted to think a potential wife was smarter than he. Ross, it appeared, didn’t seem to mind. Then again, he was not thinking of her as wife material.
“My hope is that she can be bribed.”
“If her tenants discover she’s snitching on them, she could lose her business.”
He raised a brow. “Snitching?”
She shrugged.
“We have to at least try. It’s the only lead we have.”
The carriage slowed and Sara looked out the window. The street, if it could be called that, was so narrow that the hackney could barely fit through. It was eerily deserted.
“It’s strange,” she murmured, still looking out the window.
“Strange?”
“It’s like Grosvenor Square, only the opposite.” At Ross’s puzzled look, Sara indicated the scenery outside the window. “These people. They exist because people like you and I exist. They live our hours because that’s the time to steal from us or sell their bodies to the gentlemen who seek that sort of entertainment. Would they be here if it weren’t for us?
“Or would they prey on others? Do they live our hours because we’re susceptible? Because we think we are so important or so far above them that they are inconsequential, and that makes us vulnerable to them?
“If we weren’t here, would they turn their attention to other, better pursuits?
“More honorable pursuits? I don’t know. Maybe some would. But some people are simply born bad. I think they would turn their eye to even less honorable pursuits.”
“Maybe. We will never know, because there will always be people like us for people like them to live off of.”
The carriage stopped. There wasn’t enough room for it to pull to the side. If another hackney wanted to get by, it wouldn’t be able to. Then again, she hadn’t seen another hackney in a while.
Butterflies started up in Sara’s stomach. It was one thing to say she would accompany Ross to a nethersken and quite another to be there. She had never ventured this far into the belly of the city. If her father knew, he would have a fit. If James knew, he would have apoplexy. Then she thought of the letters, and that strengthened her resolve.
Even dressed in their worst clothes, they stood out as being finely dressed. People stopped to stare at them. Men eyed them not out of curiosity but as if calculating their worth. Sara tried to hide her shiver of alarm. “We should have brought James with us.”
“You don’t trust that I can keep you safe?”
“I put my life in your hands, Your Grace.”
“Don’t call me that,” he whispered harshly.
“So are you saying I should not curtsy, either?”
He stared at her for an incredulous moment before he burst out in laughter, attracting more attention from people who had come out of their homes to see the newcomers.