Lady Rogue

by Theresa Romain

  He’d lived in the quarters above this shop from the day he was born until the day he’d turned twenty-one. It was familiar as ever, but how quickly it had lost the feeling of home. Though James Street was no more than a brief walk from Callum’s lodging or the Bow Street court, stolen purses and bullet-shot corpses were a world away from the grocery’s cookery and coziness.

  Maybe that was why he’d chosen to work for Bow Street.

  Next to the shelves behind the shop counter, a door led to the family’s upstairs lodging. The door opened just then, revealing the oldest Jenks sibling: Anna, as red-haired and blue-eyed as Callum’s brother Jamie and their mother. With a smile for the customer and her mother, she lifted the hinged bit of counter and stepped into the shop—then halted.

  “Lionel! I didn’t know you were down here.”

  Lionel turned red. “Miss Jenks.” He fumbled his braid, sending an onion tumbling to the floor. It rolled across the smooth wooden planks, jerking to a halt a dozen feet away. “I—I am down here.”

  “Let me get that for you.” Anna darted forward, picking up the fallen onion. As Lionel sprang to his feet, she rose and handed him the vegetable. For a long moment, they stared at each other over the onion as though it were a magical pot of gold.

  Callum could only roll his eyes. At age forty-two, Anna must be at least ten years older than Lionel, but the difference in their ages had never stopped the two from bashfully flirting. When, or whether, they’d ever move beyond handing each other produce and giving each other hungry looks, he couldn’t guess.

  Callum’s own progress with Isabel was a bit better. Slightly? Greatly? She had kissed him. Or he her. Perhaps it didn’t matter.

  As Anna turned away from Lionel, cheeks flaming as red as her hair, Callum stuck out a boot. She shrieked at the unexpected thump, then darted over to cuff him. “Rascal and rogue! I didn’t know you were here.”

  “People are always here. If you had the place to yourself, it wouldn’t be much of a business.”

  She pulled a face at him, then sweetened her expression to dart a look back at Lionel. “I know that. I only—oh, never mind. Mum’s got some things to ask you about this week.”

  “I expected as much.” Callum dragged his foot back, setting it beside its twin. He got to his feet, glared at the stove, and glared at Anna for good measure.

  She arched a brow. “Grumpy as a bear, aren’t you? Must be you need feeding.”

  “Sure,” he said. “That’s it. I need feeding. I’ll get a pie on my way home.”

  She looked puzzled. “You’re not going to eat with us?”

  “No.” At her hurt expression, he softened his reply. “Jamie and Dad aren’t even here, are they? It’ll be a while yet before you eat. I need to get home; I’ve work early in the morning.” And late at night tomorrow.

  “Right.” She looked mollified. “If you insist. But I think—”

  “Ho, ho, hullo!” The door’s bell jingled to let out the latest shopper just as his father and brother walked in. Alun Jenks, dark like his youngest son, was bandy-legged and ever-cheerful, while Jamie . . . well, Jamie was a stern grump who always sat too long at the best table in the Boar’s Head.

  Though Jamie would probably describe Callum the same way.

  The thought made him smile as he greeted his father and sole living brother.

  “Ah, it’s a Jenks party!” said Alun, as if this gathering didn’t happen almost every week. “All we need is our Edward and Celia, and we’ll be set.”

  “Edward’s still haggling with the tea merchants,” Jamie said of the other shop assistant. “I told him he was doing a bad job of it, but he would continue. Still. Brought another sample of the newest sort from Ceylon.” He patted his coat pocket, then looked around, eyebrows raised. “Ah . . . where’s Celia?”

  The casual note in his voice would not have fooled a baby. No one, Callum was quite sure, missed the longing in his eyes or voice as he asked this question.

  Celia Lewis, the late Harry’s fiancée, had moved into the family quarters on the upper floors after Harry was killed since she had no family of her own. She shared a chamber with Anna, taking over the family’s sewing. At twenty-five, she’d been widowed before she was wed, and she was sweet but faded. There was no ring on her finger to justify her grief to the world.

  Jamie had fallen for her the first time he’d seen her, though he hid his feelings—poorly—under the guise of brotherly tolerance and gruffness.

  “Celia is upstairs, of course,” said Anna. “Mending the heels in your old stockings.”

  Jamie blanched. “My stockings? You’re joking, aren’t you?”

  “Never mind that, never mind that.” Mrs. Jenks drew out a cylindrical object from the capacious storage built into the back of the counter. “Callum! Look what we’ve come into.”

  Callum crossed the floor to peer at the object on the shop counter. “Very nice. A metal barrel too small to be of any use.”

  “No, indeed! It’s not a barrel. It’s called a tin, and it’s full of beef. The container’s made of tinned iron and sealed closed.”

  He poked at the side, then the top. “How do you know there’s truly beef in the can, then?”

  Davina looked much struck. “We canna open it to see, for then it’ll be spoiled.”

  “In that case, you could say it’s full of unicorn meat and charge ten guineas. If no one’s ever going to check.”

  “And you half Scottish!” She swatted him on the arm. “Never say you’d cut up a unicorn.”

  “I never will,” he said dutifully. Honestly. Meat in a can—the world was a strange place. “So. What do you need from me today?”

  “Ah, you’re a good son. That’s what I was meaning to tell you when you walked in.”

  “That I was a good son?”

  “That I needed a few things. But ye are a good son.” She tugged a pencil from behind her ear; she always kept one there and another in the knot of her graying red hair. Pulling a list from the pocket of her apron, she ticked off each item. “Last night, Edward got a fine for being drunk in front of the Bow Street court. He canna pay it until the next quarter day when he gets his wages. If you could talk to the magistrate—”

  “Fine.” Callum picked up the scoop in a basket of lentils, digging it deep, then letting the dry little beads rush back down again. “Fox will probably forgive it, as long as he doesn’t see Edward again for a few months. What else?”

  “A bit of pork from that butcher you know two streets over? He always gives you the best price, since you found the thief who was stealing from his—”

  “I know what I did. That’s fine. I can probably get seven pence the pound.” He knew he was being terse, but he didn’t care.

  “Make it forty pounds, then.” She hesitated.

  “What? Is there something else?”

  “There is,” Jamie said as he slouched over. “Leave the lentils alone.”

  Deliberately, Callum dug the ladle in again, then let lentils stream from it. “Surely that’s not what you wanted to tell me.”

  “No, no. It’s nothing, really.” Alun was looping the braided chains of onions about his arm. “Just that the building next door is for sale. Your mum thought you’d be interested.”

  Jamie jerked. “You know about that?”

  Callum shot him a hard look. “Of course I am interested,” he said through his teeth, stressing the last few words for Jamie’s benefit. Shut up if you want me to poke about in secret. “You mean the tea seller, I’m guessing, and not the confectioner?”

  “The tea seller, yes. Morrison hasn’t the sense of a baby.” Davina clucked. “Giving credit for everything, never keeping records! One trusts one’s neighbors, ay, but a man can’t live on promises to pay soon, soon.”

  “Might be we could buy ’un,” said Alun. “If there’s anything we like.” He hung the tidy lengths of onions over a hook, beside the potato barrel.

  “Buy the shop?” Jamie’s head snapped up. “You
want to buy the shop?”

  “Nae, o’course not,” said Davina. “What would we be wanting with a tea shop? But his stock would be worth a look. Callum, I want you to find out what happened there. Was there a crime, and can we get his goods cheap?”

  Business as usual. Callum let another ladleful of lentils dribble down. “There’s no crime in a man wanting to sell his building.”

  “Aye, I know. But if there was a crime, we’d like to know. Being his neighbors and all.”

  “Hmm.”

  “So ye’ll find out?” she pressed.

  “Fine.” Near on eight o’clock. He could go now, having done his duty to the family for one more week. He flung the ladle back into the lentils. “I have to leave now. Give my love to Celia, Jamie, won’t you?”

  His brother flushed, then caught his arm. “Look. Callum,” he said in a voice pitched low. “I want you to check into the building next door.”

  “For God’s sake. I told you yesterday I would. And I just told Mum I would, too.”

  “Not like that.” He bent even closer, his close-cropped beard brushing Callum’s ear. “I want you to find out how much it would go for. Not what Morrison’s asking, but the least amount he would take.”

  “Let me guess. You still don’t want Mum and Dad to know.” A needle of tension crept into his voice. It always seemed to poke out when he and Jamie spoke. They’d never got along with each other the way Harry had with both of them.

  “Are you going to help or aren’t you?” From Jamie’s tone he might as well have been saying, Are you going to bugger off or aren’t you?

  Callum sighed. “You’re in a better position to find out than I. Talk to the shop assistants. Or the servants.”

  “The creditors would have a better idea.”

  “Well, you know them too.”

  Jamie rolled his eyes. “Be reasonable. I’ve a shop to run.”

  “And I’ve a city to police.” He peered over his elder brother’s shoulder. By now, their mother was watching them curiously. “I’ve got to go.”

  “Callum. Please. It’s just you. Your time is your own.” Jamie’s blue eyes were sincere. Pleading.

  Shit.

  As the youngest in the family by far, Callum had grown up running the errands everyone else thought too unimportant to handle themselves. If they only flung him a kind look, he’d fly to do their bidding.

  Because it was only Callum, after all, and he ought to be doing what he could to help.

  It seemed his weekly visits weren’t the only family tradition.

  “I’ll help you if I can, Jamie. But my own work comes first.”

  “Taking care of strangers before your own family.” Jamie’s manner was as bristly as his beard. “Never thought I’d see the day.”

  “Everyone in London is family to someone.” As Jamie granted this with a shrug of his shoulders, Callum had an idea. “Let me have some more of that new Ceylon blend, will you? I know someone else who’d like it.”

  “I’d like it.” But Jamie relented, tugging the small parcel from his pocket. “Fine. Here. Let me know what you learn, all right?”

  “I will. Probably next Friday, unless you want to come by court before then.” As he headed for the door, George the linnet fired a trill of song at him.

  “I could use help with a few errands meself,” Alun called after him. “If you don’t mind. Will ye be in the East End for—”

  “Just make a list. Whatever you need. Make a list, and I’ll fetch it next time.” The jingle of the bell over the shop door saw him out.

  He turned his steps toward Bow Street, to the magistrate’s court he knew as well as the building he’d just left. Which one felt more like home? Which one was his home?

  Maybe he didn’t have one, at that. But maybe he didn’t need one. There were streets aplenty to pound up and down; questions to ask of informants and criminals—and those who were a bit of both.

  That was the blessing and the curse of being an Officer of the Police: since his work was never done, there was nothing he needed besides work.

  * * *

  “Cass, you never forget a bit of gossip,” Callum said to his friend. “What do you know about the Ardmore line?”

  “Cass hasn’t worked with them,” Charles scoffed. “But I have, a time or two. Unofficially.” He winked. “The duke pays well when he’s got something that needs doing, or something someone needs not to notice.”

  “Charles!” Cass’s admonishment cut through the hubbub of the courtroom, which at this hour was more subdued than usual. Fox held regular hours, yes, but the officers came and went all day and night.

  Callum had been hoping to encounter his friends in the courtroom, and here they were, having just dragged in a pair of drunken lordlings who had dropped their trousers during a theatrical performance. Charles was none the worse for wear, but Cass’s hair was decidedly disheveled. She sat on one of the long benches with a dazed expression. Maybe one of the drunken men had tried to kiss her. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d been pawed in the course of her—really, her brother’s—duty.

  “I don’t mean anything serious by it.” Charles flicked a falling lock of his sister’s coppery hair, then slouched onto the bench beside her. “It’s not as if the duke chops up people and puts them in a pickle barrel. But he enjoyed smuggled brandy for years. Think he lost his taste for it when it became legal to ship brandy into England again.”

  “Oh. That.” Who didn’t trespass against the law a bit in the ton? It was still wrong to accept smuggled goods, but there was so much that was wrong-er, like Sir Frederic Chapple leaving his plush cell in Newgate.

  Or Andrew Morrow selling forged paintings as genuine articles, holding the reputations of two women in his dead hands.

  “And then there was a bit of procurement,” Charles mused. “A woman or two for the duke. But only occasionally.”

  “Charles!” Cass exclaimed again.

  “Joking, joking.” Benton rolled his eyes, and when Cass turned away to answer a question from one of the Watch, peering in as he went about his rounds, Charles whispered, “Not joking. Ardmore likes them buxom.”

  Cass turned back just in time to see her brother holding his hands before his chest, palms flat and fingers curled as if to indicate enormous breasts. “I’m not even going to ask.”

  Callum shook his head. “Best not. So. What needs doing tonight?”

  “Slow night for criminals,” Charles sighed, putting his boots up on the back of the bench in front of him.

  “You could join the foot patrol,” Cass said brightly, stabbing pins into her tumble-down hair. “We’ll put you in one of those pretty red waistcoats.”

  “Not my best color. Thanks anyway.” Callum had a better idea.

  There wasn’t much he could do, or needed to do, about the Duke of Ardmore right now. So instead, he would probe the other matter that occupied his mind. He would scratch for more information about Andrew Morrow’s sudden death.

  So many investigations began with questions to the city’s prostitutes. They went everywhere, they were ignored by the elite and so overheard much, and they met everyone from rag-pickers to nobles.

  And two benches away, sitting in the courtroom as if it were the finest place in the world to locate a cully, was his old informant Janey.

  “Excuse me,” Callum said to the Bentons, and sidled away from their seat to find one beside Janey. “How goes your day, Janey darling?”

  “Jenksie again!” She grinned, showing crooked but clean teeth. “Today’s a good ’un. Found me this apple right on the street, like, and not a bruise on it!”

  She polished the fruit with the fingerless gloves she wore to her wrists in summer. Just as she had been the night before, she was all but covered in clothing: head scarf over brown hair, shawl, pinafore, round gown, high-topped boots. All the better to hide her take—not that he asked about that.

  “Found an apple right on the street?” Callum lifted a brow. “That was lucky.
It was nowhere near a costermonger’s cart, I assume.”

  “Nowhere near,” she sniffed, as if the idea of her pinching a fruit from a peddler were inconceivable. She took a great bite of the apple, crunching it as she asked, “Wha’s on your mind, Jenksie?”

  “Since you ask . . .”

  She laughed. “I always ask, because there’s always something.”

  They had known each other for the nine years he’d worked for the public office, since he was young and she far younger. Janey—he had no idea of her last name—had taken to the street for her living at a horribly young age. Unlike many women who did the same, she’d kept most of her teeth and, as Isabel had noticed, even some of her youthful prettiness. Stealing was easier on the body, and probably on the spirit, than selling oneself. Selling information might be easier yet.

  Callum asked her, “Do you remember the death of a man named Andrew Morrow? It was about a year and a half ago.”

  “Lot o’ death goes by since then.” She took another bite. “Who was ’e?”

  “An art dealer. Rich man, lived on Lombard Street. Died from a shot to the head.”

  Janey looked interested. “Murder?”

  “Officially, an accident.”

  “Right. Like them official answers is worth the breath it takes to speak ’em. You think it was murder after all?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Janey swung her legs, chewing at another juicy bite. “What’s he to you?”

  Callum hesitated. That wasn’t an easy question to answer. Sir Frederic Chapple’s release had been a personal matter, a wrong against a loved one that had gone unpunished. But the death of Andrew Morrow . . .

  He had wronged Isabel in everyday ways, every day of their marriage. But what had that to do with Callum? If he cared for Isabel’s well-being, shouldn’t he let the man’s reputation alone?

  He did care for Isabel’s well-being. But he cared for the truth, too. And there was something wrong about that house, that death. It was like a rotten tooth that still looked fine and white on the outside. He had warned Isabel: he was blunt by nature. He wanted to crash through that pleasant surface and learn the truth of what lay below.