The Scoundrel in Her Bed (Sins for All Seasons #3)(2)
The women with whom she corresponded were only willing to meet at night, in the darkest of alleyways and mews, the latest of hours, when the streets were ominous with the click-clacking of rats’ paws, the odd song with words slurred by too much ale, the occasional grunt, the rare screech. And the feeling, always the feeling, of being watched.
The fine hairs on the nape of her neck suddenly stood on end. She abruptly halted and listened. Tightening her hold on the wolf’s head, she quickly lifted the walking stick, grabbed it midway with her other hand, and had the rapier partially free of its cleverly disguised scabbard as she swiftly swung around, her eyes scouring the area intently. No one was about save what appeared to be a beggar curled on the stoop of a building across the way. She’d not seen him before because the alcove hid him from view of anyone coming from that direction. He was only visible—and barely—from her current position. She waited, watching, listening, hearing his occasional snuffling snore. Deeming him harmless, she slid the steel back into place and carried on.
She’d been delighted to find the weapon in a pawnshop and equally relieved the pawnbroker had been willing to take the earbobs she’d worn on the day she was to wed in exchange for it. When she was nineteen, she had been tutored in fencing, loved the challenge of it, and become quite skilled. Her brother had only ever engaged her in a duel once. Being a sore loser, he hadn’t taken kindly to being bested, although he had confessed to being surprised by her mastery of the sport. But for her, it had always been more than a sport. It had been a way to survive and retain her sanity in a place that catered to madness.
She shook off the unsettling thoughts. All that mattered was the future, moving forward one step at a time. Forgetting what couldn’t be forgotten. So she concentrated on her present and her surroundings, aware she must remain ever alert if she was to meet with success during the possible confrontation that awaited her.
Usually revelers were about after finishing their evening at a pub or tavern, but tonight’s meeting was occurring a bit later than customary in an area more deserted than that to which she was comfortable. But nothing could deter her from her purpose. It was all she had now, all she wanted. It nurtured, sustained, and gave her cause to crawl out of bed in the morning.
She was nearing the cross streets that had been written in the missive telling her where and when the meeting was to occur. Carry on to the other side, she reminded herself, fighting to ignore the sense of foreboding, concentrating instead on following to the letter the words inked in barely decipherable scrawl. Turn left into the first alleyway you find. Halfway down—
She stopped where the light from the streetlamp did. To go farther would be to step through a curtain of blackness. Her courage and foolhardiness had limits.
With discreet, barely perceptible movements, she slowly glanced around the narrow confines, hemmed in on two sides by the brick walls of buildings, the windows dark, the rooms beyond probably uninhabited. These assignations usually occurred in desolate areas where no witnesses could observe the transactions. In the event she was being watched, she fought not to give the impression she was quite suddenly having misgivings regarding this arrangement.
She kept her breathing steady, even though she could feel her palms beginning to sweat and heard the pounding of her own heart. The sisters had warned her more than once that she shouldn’t go out alone, but she couldn’t accomplish her objectives if she remained hidden away like a frightened child, and she’d spent far too much of the past eight years in hiding, concealing her true wants and desires from not only herself, but from others. She was weary of it. Done with the past. She was starting over, determined to lead her life as she felt it should be led.
It was the very reason that three months earlier she’d left a good man standing at the altar in St. George’s. Not that her abandonment of the Duke of Thornley hadn’t worked out in his favor as far as she was concerned because he’d quite recently taken to wife a woman he dearly loved. The last time she’d seen him—secretively and to beg his forgiveness—he’d expounded on the virtues of Gillian Trewlove, and she’d heard in his voice the raw emotion of a man who had well and truly fallen. It hadn’t surprised her to learn soon after that he’d taken her to wife. Much better than taking one he couldn’t love and who, with time, as he learned the truths about her, would come to despise, as she so very often despised herself for her past failures and weaknesses.
She heard a scrape, a footstep. Spinning around, she faced a woman of bulk with a hat very much resembling that of a farmer’s brought low over her brow shading a good bit of her face. The click click click of additional steps as two more women, one as thin as a matchstick, the other as tall as a tree, entered the alleyway, the three of them hemming her in with only the dark unknown at her back. Her appointment was with only one.
“I’m here to meet with D. B.” She was rather pleased she’d managed to keep her voice calm and level.
“Last week ye met with Mags. She were arrested the followin’ morn. Word is she’s likely to ’ang for the farmin’ she done,” the bulky one said.
Which meant, in all likelihood, the authorities had somehow managed to already discern that she’d murdered at least one of the children who’d been placed in her care.
“I don’t know any Mags.” She knew them only by initials. Was Mags the M. K. who’d handed over three little ones to her last week in exchange for the five quid Lavinia offered her? Most farmers were paid in full when the by-blows were dropped off by a parent or someone close to the mother who sought to spare her shame. Oh, a few paid in weekly installments—those who had an interest in the child’s welfare—but many simply disbursed the higher one-time fee and walked away expecting—wanting—to never encounter or be bothered with the child again. Since no more money was to be had after that, those infants were often neglected and then perished, buried without ceremony in unmarked graves so no one would suspect those caring for them of nefarious deeds. To many, one babe looked like another. Who bothered to keep tally of the number in a particular household, especially when there was soon another to replace the one lost? “I certainly didn’t report her to the authorities. I’m interested only in the babes and their welfare.”