Joseph Tinbox sat slumped in a chair, his eyes closed, his breathing soft and regular.
Winter’s heart twisted at the sight. Had the boy waited up for him?
He laid a gentle hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Joseph.”
Joseph blinked, his eyes sleepy and confused. Winter was reminded suddenly of the two-year-old toddler he’d found on the old home’s front steps nearly ten years before. He’d been towheaded, his little face streaked with tears and with an empty tin box tied to his wrist. The little boy had sighed deeply when Winter had picked him up, and he’d laid his head against his shoulder with all the trust in the world.
Joseph Tinbox blinked again and sudden awareness came into his face. “Oh, sir, I was waitin’ up for you.”
“I can see that,” Winter said, “but it’s past your bedtime now.”
“But, sir, it’s important.”
Winter was well used to what boys considered “important”—squabbles with other boys, lost spinning tops, and the discovery of kittens in the alley.
“I’m sure it is,” he said soothingly, “but—”
“Peach talked!” Joseph interrupted urgently. “She told me where she came from.”
Winter, who’d been on the point of chastising Joseph Tinbox for interrupting, paused. “What did she say?”
“I think she should tell you for herself,” Joseph said with the solemnity of a lord in parliament.
“She’ll be asleep.”
“No, sir,” Joseph said. “She’s frightened. She said she’d wait for your return.”
Winter arched his eyebrows. “Very well.”
Joseph Tinbox turned and led the way up the back stairs.
Winter followed with the lamp and his bag, still over his shoulder.
The house was quiet this late at night, the lamp’s light flickering against the plain plaster walls of the staircase. Winter wondered what secret would keep a child from talking for over a week. He eyed Joseph’s narrow back. He had the feeling the boy had had to use all his considerable powers of persuasion to get Peach to talk to him tonight.
Joseph stepped out onto the dormitory floor. It was quiet here, too, but now and again faint sounds could be heard: a murmured word, a sigh, and the rustling of bedclothes. Joseph glanced over his shoulder at Winter as if to make sure he still followed, and then tiptoed down the hall to the sickroom.
When Joseph cracked the door, Winter saw that the boy was quite right: Peach was wide-awake. The lass lay in the exact middle of the sickroom cot, the covers pulled to her chin, one arm around Dodo the dog. A single candle was lit by her bedside.
Winter looked at the candle and then Joseph.
The boy reddened. “I knows you say that a candle left burning might start a fire, but—”
“I don’t like the dark,” Peach said quite clearly.
Winter looked at the girl. She stared back at him, frightened but defiant, her brown eyes so dark they were nearly black.
He nodded and dropped his bag to the floor before taking the chair by the bed. “Many dislike the night. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, Pilar.”
“I likes Peach, if you please, sir.”
Winter nodded and watched as Joseph Tinbox went to the other side of the bed and took Peach’s hand. “Peach, then. Joseph tells me that you have something to say to me.”
Peach nodded once, her pointed little chin digging into the white covers. “ ’Twas the lassie snatchers what got me.”
Winter felt his pulse quicken, but he remained calm and casual, as if what the girl had said weren’t of great import. “Oh?”
Peach gulped and clenched a hand in Dodo’s wiry fur. The dog twitched, but otherwise showed no sign that the girl was pulling at her fur. “I… I was on a corner by th’ church.”
“St. Giles-in-the-Fields?” Winter murmured.
The girl scrunched up her forehead. “I guess. I was beggin’ there.”
Winter nodded. He didn’t want to interrupt the flow of Peach’s story, but there was something he needed to know. “Were your parents there, too, Peach?”
Peach hunched a shoulder and turned her face away. “They’re dead. Mama died of fever an’ Papa of the cough, an’ little Raquel, too. They all died.”
Winter felt his heart contract. He’d heard this story so many times before—families devastated by disease and poverty, leaving orphaned children forced to somehow make their way in an indifferent world. It didn’t make this hearing any easier.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.
Peach shrugged and chanced a peek at him. “Papa asked Mistress Calvo to take me in before ’e died. I stayed there a bit. But Mistress Calvo said she already ’ad too many mouths to feed an’ that I must leave.”
“Coldhearted witch,” Joseph muttered angrily.
Winter gave him a chastising look.
The boy ducked his head, but he still scowled.
“Please continue, Peach,” Winter said gently.
“Well, I tried to find work, really I did, but there weren’t any,” Peach said. “An’ beggin’ wasn’t much better. Kept ’avin’ to move so’s the bigger ones wouldn’t beat me.”
There were gangs who ran stables of beggars and others who preyed upon beggars by demanding a percentage of their daily take. A child alone like Peach wouldn’t have stood a chance against the gangs.
“Tell him what happened then, Peach,” Joseph Tinbox whispered.
The little girl stared up at the boy as if drawing courage from him, then took a deep breath and looked at Winter. “Th’ second night I were at th’ church, they got me. The lassie snatchers. Woke me up and carried me away. I thought”—the little girl gulped—“I thought they might kill me, but they didn’t.”
“What did they do, Peach?” Winter asked.
“They took me to a cellar. An’ it were full of girls, it were, all sewin’. At first I thought it weren’t too bad. I don’t mind work, really I don’t. Mama said I was a good ’elper. An’ Dodo was there, though no one ’ad named her and they kept trying to chase ’er away.”
The little girl hid her face in Dodo’s neck as the terrier licked her ear. She whispered so low that Winter had to lean forward to catch her next words. “But they didn’t feed us ’ardly anything at all. Jus’ gruel and water and there was bugs in the gruel.” Peach began to sob.
Joseph Tinbox bit his lip, looking worried and anxious. He hesitantly reached out a hand to the girl, but then stopped, his fingers hovering over her thin shoulder. He glanced at Winter.
Winter nodded at the boy.
Joseph awkwardly patted Peach’s back.
Peach shuddered and lifted her head. “An’ that weren’t the worst. They beat us, too, if’n we didn’t work fast enough. There was a girl called Tilly. They beat her so long she fainted, an’ the next morning she weren’t there no more.”
Peach looked at Winter, her eyes huge and haunted. She didn’t say the words, but somewhere in her childish mind she knew that her friend Tilly must be dead.
“You were very brave,” Winter said to the little girl. “How did you escape?”
“One night,” Peach whispered, “the lassie snatchers came with a new girl. They argued with Mistress Cook—she was the one who made us all work. But they left the door unlocked behind them. I saw it was open a crack. So me an’ Dodo, we ran—ran as fast as we could, until they weren’t shouting behind us no more.”
Peach panted as if she were reliving the terror of running through the night, chased by people without mercy.
“Brave, brave girl,” Winter murmured, and Joseph nodded fiercely. “Do you know where the cellar was, Peach?”
The girl shook her head. “No, sir. But I know it’s under a chandler’s shop.”
“Ah,” Winter said, trying to beat down his disappointment. There were dozens of tiny chandler’s shops in St. Giles. Still, it was better than nothing. “What a smart girl you are, Peach, to make note of such a thing.”
Peach blushed shyly.
<
br /> “Now, I think it’s to bed for the both of you,” Winter said as he stood. He watched as Joseph gave Peach one last reassuring pat before following Winter to the door. Winter opened the door, but then paused at a thought. “Peach?”
“Sir?”
“What were you and the other girls making in the cellar?”
“Stockings.” Peach said the word as if it tasted foul. “Clocked lace stockings.”
WINTER YAWNED WIDELY the next afternoon as Isabel’s butler let him into her town house.
The butler raised a disapproving eyebrow a fraction of an inch. “Lady Beckinhall is waiting for you in the small sitting room, sir.”
Winter nodded wearily and fell into step behind the butler. He’d been on the streets of St. Giles at first daylight, searching for a chandler shop with a workshop in the cellar beneath, but so far he hadn’t been able to find the place. Nor had anyone heard of a Mistress Cook. Peach may’ve been mistaken about the chandler’s shop—she’d been terrified, after all, when she’d fled Mistress Cook and the lassie snatchers—or Mistress Cook may’ve moved her illegal workshop.
Of course, there was a third—more disturbing—possibility. Several of his usual sources of information had been quite nervous and cagey. Perhaps the denizens of St. Giles were too afraid of the lassie snatchers and Mistress Cook to give away their location.
The butler opened a yellow painted door, and Winter braced himself as he entered the small sitting room. Isabel was standing by one of a series of tall windows on the far side of the room, her face in delicate profile, the sunlight glinting off her dark glossy hair.
His chest squeezed hard, the first glimpse of her almost a physical blow. Usually repeated exposure to an irritant dulled the shock after a time. Yet with Isabel, each sight quaked him anew, seized both limbs and mind. He very much feared that repeated exposure to her merely made him crave her more intensely.
“Mr. Makepeace,” she said as she turned toward him. She was silhouetted now against the bright frame of the window, her face in shadow. “I had wondered if you would come at all today.”
Ah. She had not forgiven him for his tardiness the night before.
“Indeed, ma’am?” he said, cautiously advancing. “But I see that you already have tea laid.” He indicated the service spread on a low table. “I did say I would arrive at four of the clock and it is, by the clock on your mantel, exactly that.”
She stepped away from the window, and he saw by the look on her face that she was hardly pacified by his words. “A new—dare I say unique—circumstance for you, Mr. Makepeace.”
“Isn’t it time you call me Winter?” he murmured, trying another tack—he certainly wouldn’t win any arguments on his punctuality.
“Is it?”
“It is.” He smiled hard. “Isabel.”
She frowned. “I don’t—”
Just then, a tiny sob came from the direction of an ornately carved sideboard.
Both he and Isabel looked at the piece of furniture, and oddly her expression turned from anger to uncertainty. She started forward, but then stopped.
She made no further move, so Winter strode to the sideboard, crouched with one knee on the floor, and opened the door to the cupboard underneath.
A tear-stained face peered out.
“Christopher,” Winter said, remembering the boy’s name from the first time he’d come here. He glanced over his shoulder, but Isabel seemed frozen. He looked back at the boy. “Is it comfortable in that cupboard?”
The boy drew a velvet sleeve across his nose. “No, sir.”
“Would you care to come out?”
The boy nodded mutely. Winter gently reached in and lifted the child in his arms. This close he could see that Christopher was a handsome boy of only four or five. Winter stood, still holding the boy, and turned to Isabel. Many women were naturally inclined to take a child from a man—the maternal instinct being considered stronger than the paternal, perhaps—but Isabel made no such move. Indeed, she’d folded her arms as if to keep herself from reaching for the boy.
Winter raised his eyebrows at her and she shook her head as if coming to her senses. “I’ll ring for Carruthers.”
“Want to stay,” Christopher whimpered.
Isabel swallowed. “I… I think it best that you return to your nanny.”
When had Lady Beckinhall ever been unsure of herself, let alone stuttered? There was something here that he was missing.
Winter cleared his throat and murmured to the boy, “I was thinking of trying one of those scones on the tea tray. Would you like one, too?”
Christopher nodded.
Winter sat on a settee by the low table, the boy on his knee, and gave one of the pastries to Christopher before selecting one for himself.
He bit into the flakey scone, eyeing Isabel’s stiff back. She’d gone to stand by the window again, completely ignoring him and the boy. Strange.
“Good, isn’t it?” he said to the boy.
Christopher nodded and whispered rather wetly, “Cook’s scones are the best.”
“Ah.” For a moment they munched in companionable silence.
“Where is Carruthers?” Isabel muttered from across the room.
Christopher, who had been about to take another bite of the scone, lowered the pastry and gripped it between sticky fingers in his lap. “She doesn’t like me much, most of the time.”
Winter wished he could deny the boy’s words, but he’d never believed in lying to children, and Isabel was across the room, obviously trying to pretend the boy wasn’t in it. He leaned forward and poured some of the milk from the pitcher into a teacup and added a couple of drops of hot tea. He held the teacup up for the boy.
Christopher dropped the scone—onto the floor, regrettably—and took the teacup with both hands, eagerly drinking. When he lowered the cup, milky tea stained his upper lip. “She told me a corker of a story last night, though.”
The boy looked wistfully at Isabel’s back.
The nursemaid, a rather plain woman of middling years, ran into the room. “Oh, my lady, I am so sorry.” She came over to scoop up Christopher from Winter’s arms before turning back to Isabel. “It won’t happen again, my lady, I promise.”
Isabel still had her back to the room. “Please see that it doesn’t.”
Poor Carruthers blanched before curtsying and hurrying out the door with Christopher.
Winter thoughtfully poured himself a cup of tea.
“You think I’m mean,” Isabel said.
Winter looked at her. Her back was straight, but he could tell by the bow of her shoulders that she’d folded her arms about herself as if to shield her center.
“I think,” he said slowly, “that I would like to know who Christopher is and what he means to you.”
There was a long moment of silence in which he wondered if she was going to answer him; then her voice came, steady and without emotion. “Christopher is my late husband’s son.”
Winter’s brows knit, but before he could ask the question, she turned and paced to the middle of the room.
Her beautiful mouth was compressed into a straight line as if to contain some overwhelming emotion. “His mother was Edmund’s mistress.”
“I… see,” Winter said, though he didn’t. “And he lives here with you? Was this your husband’s wish?”
She shrugged. “I never knew about Christopher and Louise—his mother—until after Edmund’s death. He appears to have made no provision for them.”
He simply looked at her, waiting, wishing the distance between them weren’t so wide.
Isabel clasped her hands at her waist. “Louise came to me a month after I’d buried Edmund. She said that Edmund had set her up in a little town house, but with his death, the lease on the house was no longer paid. She had no money. I’ve since learned that she doesn’t understand even the most fundamental basics of managing her funds. She asked me for some money and I…” She trailed off, shrugging again.
Sh
e looked so forlorn standing alone in the center of the room, her hands clasped as if for an unpleasant but necessary recital. “Isabel, come have some tea.”
To his great relief, she came toward him, sitting on the settee opposite him, watching numbly as he poured her a dish of tea and added plenty of milk and sugar.
“You shouldn’t pour for me,” she said absently as she accepted the dish.
He gave her an ironic glance. “No one pours for me at the home, I do assure you.”
“Oh.” She took a sip of her tea. “Yes, of course.”
He watched her uneasily. There was something here that he was missing. Something she hadn’t yet told him. “Did you know your husband kept a mistress?”
She shook her head as she lowered the dish of tea to her lap, holding it there between both her palms. “No, not really, but I wasn’t at all surprised. Edmund had been widowed for many years before we wed and he had his needs.”
He took a sip of his own tea, grown cold now. “You told me before that you were faithful to your husband. It must have been a betrayal to find he was not to you.”
Her look was cynical. “You forget that such things—a man keeping a mistress—are considered almost de rigueur in my circles. I was surprised to learn of Louise, but not shocked. Ours was not a love match, after all. Edmund always showed me the greatest courtesy. He provided for me even after his death. What more can a woman ask from a man?”
“Faithfulness. Passion. Love,” Winter said too quickly. Too sharply.
She looked at him, her cynical expression dissolving into curiosity. “Truly? Is that what you think marriage is made of?”
“Yes.”
Her eyes shuttered. “Then it’s a pity you’ve decided never to marry, Mr. Makepeace.”
It was his turn to look away. “Why didn’t you simply give Louise money?”
She circled the rim of her tea dish with one finger. “I did, but… she moves from place to place and my house is big.” She bit her lip. “Christopher was little more than a baby at the time, and Louise seemed an absentminded mother.”
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