Samuel made a mental note to refrain from belittling her intellect in any future sparring and returned his attention to his meal.
“I assume you have a plan in mind for tomorrow?” he asked after a time. She’d want to go into Bethnal Green and Bow probably. He wondered if he could convince her to let him go in her stead.
“I need to go back to Spitalfields. I need to find the little boy who gave me the note.”
“No.” And he wasn’t going to be civil about it.
“Yes.”
“The man who sent that note knows who you are, Esther.”
“He thinks he does. That is why I must find the little boy,” she replied reasonably. “He can tell me who gave him the note, and I can find out what, exactly, is known.”
“I saw the man at the station. I can look for him in Spitalfields. Alone.”
“That man knows he was seen. He might avoid Spitalfields.” She pointed the tines of her fork at him. “He’ll certainly be avoiding you. But a small boy is unlikely to have the wherewithal to leave his neighborhood, and he’ll not be actively hiding from you. It would be faster and smarter to look for him than to look for the young man.”
“It would be safer and wiser for you to leave London immediately,” he grumbled.
“We’ve already discussed this. I’ll not go home until my business is concluded. Besides, I’ll not be in immediate danger going back to Spitalfields. If the man wished to attack me on the street in broad daylight, he’d have done so already. It is very unlikely he will attempt to do tomorrow, in front of you, what he would not attempt yesterday when I was alone.”
“Describe the boy to me. I’ll go to Spitalfields and find him.”
“I can’t describe him. Not well. He gave me the note and dashed down a side street before I could ask him a single question. I would recognize him, but I couldn’t tell you what he looked like, other than to say he was a small boy, possibly near eight years of age, with very large eyes and hair that was nearly black.” Her face screwed up in thought. “I might be imagining the eyes. He may have just had long lashes.”
“Sketch him for me. You’ve some skill as an artist.”
“I have every skill as an artist,” she corrected. “But I can’t do it. I can’t sketch well from memory, even if I know the subject well. I need to see it before me.”
“Damn it, Esther.”
“I don’t see why this should be a point of contention,” she said, reaching for her wine. “You walk about London openly every day. There must be dozens of men who would like your head on a platter. Why is it you are allowed to thumb your nose at danger, but I am not?”
“It’s different.”
She took a long sip of her drink and set the goblet down slowly. “Is that a euphemism for ‘because you are a woman’?”
“No.” Possibly. He might give it some thought later. “You have family, Esther. They care about what happens to you.”
“And yours do not?”
He said nothing and hoped she would assume she had won the argument. He wasn’t going to discuss his family.
“My family,” Esther continued, “is the reason I will wear that miserable veil when I leave this room and the reason I will leave London and never return—after I have found the boy, the person who wrote the note, and my father.” She cocked her head at him. “Are you going to break your promise to help me?”
“I promised to help you with your business. I did not promise to help you put yourself in unnecessary danger.”
“It isn’t unnecessary,” she returned. “Not to me. Are you going to break your promise, then?”
She repeated the question almost casually, as if it was of no consequence to her one way or the other. But that eerie stillness had returned. She held herself stiffly, and her expression was shuttered tight.
She didn’t want him to break his promise, he realized. But she expected it. A woman like Esther, who had been raised by a man like Will Walker, would always expect to be betrayed. And she would guard herself accordingly.
He wished he could prove her right in this instance, but refusing to keep his word would do neither of them any good. She would find a way to Spitalfields with or without him. “I’ll not break my promise.”
This time when she smiled, it didn’t look as if she’d swallowed bad meat.
“Excellent,” she chimed and went back to her meal.
Samuel pushed his own plate away, his appetite lost. He shouldn’t have made the promise, but there’d been nothing else for it. If Esther was determined to be in London, she would be in London. Frankly, it was a miracle the contrary woman wasn’t dead set on remaining in London alone.
It had been a mistake, however, to offer his promise before he’d secured her agreement to follow his orders. Then again, some errors were easily got around. Most, in fact. Which made him wonder…
“Esther?”
“Hmm?”
“Why didn’t you simply agree to take orders from me and then find a way around the agreement?”
She glanced up at him. “Why didn’t I lie, you mean?” She shrugged. “I didn’t want to. Why didn’t you agree to help me and simply plan to make me follow your orders whether or not I cared for the idea?”
Again, he said nothing.
“Oh, that is what you’ve planned, isn’t it?” She made a disgusted sound. “I told you, I’ll not follow your orders.”
“And if the orders are sensible?”
“I don’t need you to tell me how to be sensible.” She pointed her fork at him again. “And don’t you dare contradict me on that point, Samuel Brass. We agreed to be civil.”
“Is that an order?”
Rather than answer, she jabbed her fork into an asparagus stalk and bit the tip off in a most uncivilized manner.
He decided to take that as a yes.
* * *
The remainder of the meal passed in relative peace, primarily as neither party felt it necessary to speak. Esther supposed silence was as good a route to civility as any.
At least Samuel didn’t look quite so put out as he had earlier. He didn’t look particularly pleased, mind you, but he never really did around her. She imagined that, with her, he would always be something of a curmudgeon. Sir Samuel Brass, the curmudgeonly giant. Yes, that fit him quite well.
She finished her meal as quickly as she could without making a spectacle of herself and sent up a small prayer of thanks when the maids who came for the dishes turned out to be older and faster than the first three.
Samuel glanced at the clock as she stepped out from behind the screen. “You haven’t any plans to leave the hotel tonight, I presume?”
“No.” In fact, she was very much looking forward to finally crawling into bed. She pulled her chair out from the table and took a seat. “But if that should change, I’ll come to you directly.”
You see? Sensible.
“You’ll stay in this room.”
She decided in the interest of their truce that he was asking a question, not delivering an order. “Yes. And I’ll not answer the door for anyone except you.” Sensible again. “Do you mean to stay inside as well?”
“Yes.”
“Well then, good night.”
“Good night.”
She frowned after him as he walked to the door. Something had been niggling at her all evening: a doubt, or a question she’d not been able to place. Suddenly, she realized what it was.
“Samuel?” She waited for him to turn around again. “Why are you here?”
“I don’t understand the question.”
She scooted so she could see him properly over the back of her chair. “You sought me out in Derbyshire because Lottie and Renderwell asked you to check in on me whilst they were away, didn’t you?”
There was a small pause before he answered. “Yes.”
“I thought so. When you discovered I’d left, why didn’t you simply wire Renderwell in Edinburgh and be done with it? You weren’t obligated to track me down. Nor are you required to help me now.”
She wasn’t his sister or even his friend. She wasn’t his responsibility. So why trouble himself over her safety?
“Renderwell is my friend,” he replied. “Your sister is his wife.”
“And word of my disappearance would have upset her, thereby upsetting him,” she guessed.
“Essentially.”
She didn’t know why she should find that explanation a little disappointing. “Well then, thank you for thinking of my sister, however indirectly.”
His only response was a single grunt. Then he left. This didn’t surprise her particularly. He always grunted when she thanked him for something. Like when he’d rescued her from the stable fire, and when he’d rescued her brother from the kidnapper. She’d not yet figured out whether the grunt meant You’re welcome or I don’t wish to discuss it or Devil take your gratitude, troublesome wench, but she rather thought it might be the last.
She told herself it didn’t matter. It simply did not matter what Sir Samuel Brass thought of her.
All her life, she had twisted herself into knots worrying over the good opinion of others. Not an unusual predicament, really, else there’d be a sight fewer women running about in itchy crepe. Nearly everyone gave some thought to what their friends and neighbors thought of them. Most people, however, sought acceptance through conformity.
She had stolen it through deceit.
Esther had learned at a very young age that she would never be able to compete with her sister’s cleverness nor Lottie’s natural bond with their father. She would always be the second-best daughter in Will Walker’s eyes. But she’d had talents and gifts of her own. She was nimble of finger and sharp of eye. She could throw a blade with pinpoint accuracy and draw a pencil or brush over paper with enviable skill.
And she could act. Brilliantly. Give her a role, any role, and she could fill it with aplomb. Cunning thief? Simpering flirt? Proper lady? Obedient daughter? She could play any one of them at the drop of a hat.
And she had. She’d played them all and dozens of others over the years. Until that had become all that she was—a woman who played at being someone else.
I can be whatever you like. I am exactly who you want me to be. Just tell me who that is.
It wasn’t who she wanted to be now.
She would not play the chastised child for Samuel. She would be herself, and that would have to be good enough.
Four
Commercial Street was a broad thoroughfare lined with tall, thin brick buildings pressed together like matchsticks stood on end. Most of the buildings had shops or warehouses on the ground floor and offices or rooms to let above. It was normally a bustling street, crowded with vendors, pedestrians, and street traffic, but a hard early morning rain had kept most people indoors. When Esther and Samuel arrived at midday, the residents were just beginning to emerge from their shelters to sweep the sidewalks or set out their wares.
“His shop was somewhere about here,” Esther said, motioning at a building of relatively new construction. “It was torn down two years ago to make room for the new building.”
“Where were you when the boy came with the note?” Samuel inquired.
“There.” She pointed down the street. “At the old clothes shop next to the booksellers on the corner.”
Though it was generally regarded as ungentlemanly to allow a lady to walk nearest the curb, Samuel put himself between Esther and the shops as they walked down the street. It wasn’t Commercial Street that worried him. It was the peripheral maze of winding, twisting alleys and lanes that broke away from the thoroughfare that posed the greater threat. It was in the crumbling old Huguenot mansions with people crammed inside like livestock, where misery, deprivation, and disease culminated in the desperation that too often bred violence.
A desperate man could slip in and out of the maze in the blink of an eye.
“We might have better luck looking for the boy at one of the markets,” he commented. “Better spot to nick a watch or purse.”
She stopped and turned to face him, and though he couldn’t see her features clearly beneath the veil, he was fairly certain she was scowling at him again. “That is a terrible thing to say. You don’t know he’s a thief. You don’t know the first thing about him other than that he had the misfortune to be born into poverty. He could be a perfectly honest, perfectly lovely little boy. You should be ashamed of yourself, insulting a child.”
“I didn’t think you’d consider ‘thief’ to be an insult.” Not in this particular instance.
“You don’t know the first thing about me either,” she said softly and turned away to resume her walk up the street in stony silence.
Samuel fell into step beside her.
He wasn’t going to apologize. He’d not said anything wrong.
He’d made a reasonable assumption about the boy, and about Esther. A hungry child might reasonably be expected to pick a pocket if it was the surest way of putting food in his mouth. Samuel didn’t condone the theft, but neither did he blame the child. He had assumed Esther would agree.
He looked down the next alleyway and spotted a pair of very small girls laboring over a washbasin set on the cobblestones. Even the youngest children worked in neighborhoods like this. They ran errands or took in laundry to earn a few coins. A few honest coins.
Uneasy, Samuel looked away. Maybe he hadn’t been completely reasonable in his assumptions. Maybe he was, on occasion, a bit hasty in his judgments.
Very well, he was routinely hasty.
“You’re right,” he admitted. “He might not be a thief.”
Esther nodded once but said nothing.
“I should not have prejudged him,” he admitted.
When she remained silent, he gently caught her arm and brought them both to a stop. He didn’t know why it was suddenly so important that he explain himself to her—it just was.
“I’ve spent years chasing the worst sort of men through slums like this. And years ferreting out people’s darkest, ugliest secrets.” Vice, infidelities, betrayals of every imaginable variety. And before that had been the war. Since the age of seventeen, he had been swamped in the worst humanity had to offer. “It has made me suspicious. And hard.”
“Suspicious, certainly.” She tilted her head at him. “But you’re not such a hard man, I think.”
“I am.” He wasn’t apologizing for it—he was merely stating a fact.
“Hard men aren’t nearly so quick to admit the flaw,” she countered, and a hint of a smile entered her voice. “Or chase a woman they don’t like across an entire country because her disappearance might interfere with the happiness of a friend.”
“I didn’t chase you. I tracked you.” And he hadn’t done either strictly for Renderwell’s sake. The truth was, he’d checked in on Esther at her cottage because he’d wanted to. He’d followed her to London because he’d been worried.
She snorted at his comment, then twirled her lacy black parasol against her shoulder. “It occurs to me that if this boy tries to pick your pocket, I’m going to feel like a fool.”
“You shouldn’t.” He offered his arm and was absurdly gratified when she took it. “There is nothing shameful in assuming the best of someone.”
“Shameful, no. Foolish, yes. It is surely wiser to hope for the best, rather than expect it, but it feels wrong not to give people, especially children, the benefit of the doubt.”
Samuel agreed with her, but he still searched the last alley they passed before the old clothes shop with a sharp eye.
The woman at the shop remembered speaking with Esther but had no recollection of a small boy with dark hair and large eyes carrying a note. Might be littl
e Jim Hanning or Michael Landsworth or Sean Jennings. Could be any one of dozens of children who passed by her shop every day.
They tried the neighboring shops next, then several shops across the street, but no one remembered seeing the lad.
“We’ll just have to walk the street,” Esther decided as she maneuvered around a shoe shiner. “See what we can find. We can speak with everyone I visited on Tuesday.”
To Samuel’s dismay, it appeared as if Esther had visited nearly everyone in Spitalfields on Tuesday. They stopped in a cobbler shop, a butcher’s shop, two apothecaries, a draper’s shop, and several emporiums of useless bric-a-brac. They even stopped to talk to a man selling peppermints from a cart.
“Why would you speak with a street vendor?” Samuel demanded as they stepped away. “Did you honestly imagine he was selling his goods in that very spot over a decade ago?”
“No. I just wanted a peppermint. No harm in asking him about Mr. Smith whilst I was at it. I thought perhaps the vendor might have lived here all his life.”
He lifted a brow in question.
“He’s from Leeds,” she admitted with a shrug and moved on.
* * *
Esther wrinkled her nose as she veered around a puddle with a suspicious layer of foam on its surface. In the country a soaking rain left everything fresh and renewed, but London was like a filthy dog: you could dump a bucket of water on it, but that didn’t make it clean. It just made it wet.
On the whole, however, the excursion down Commercial Street was a far more pleasant endeavor than it had been when she’d come on Tuesday. People had looked at her askance then. Those she had spoken with had leaned close, trying to peer through the veil. She’d been nervous, wary of everyone she met, every person she passed. After she’d read the note, she’d been afraid.
A Gift for Guile (The Thief-takers) Page 4