Unraveled Page 3

  Still, she’d felt her skin prickle the entire journey back, as if the long arm of the law still hovered over her.

  That, she told herself briskly, was merely the last remnant of her conscience speaking. She leaned against the brick at the mouth of the alley where she lived and pulled off the bonnet she’d been wearing, and then the wig. Her hairpins underneath caught; she wiggled them free carefully, counting as she removed them. She couldn’t afford to lose a one.

  Her own hair—a too-recognizable orange—spilled over her shoulder as she stuffed the weight of that blond wig into a sack she pulled from her skirt-pocket.

  Lord Justice obviously had his suspicions about the fresh-faced Miss Daisy Whitaker. But he’d be looking for a young, golden-haired girl staying at the Lamb Inn, not a redheaded seamstress, a sometime wig-maker who lived in a garret beside a glassworks. She was safe once again. At least for today.

  Miranda shut her eyes and raised her face to the rain. It felt freeing to have her skin washed clean of its suffocating layer of rice powder and rouge. She pulled a handkerchief from her basket and wiped her brows, her cheeks. The remains of Daisy Whitaker disappeared in a smear of rouge and the coal dust she’d used to darken her lashes.

  She let her handkerchief fall, opened her eyes—and jumped back. A man was standing directly in front of her. She hadn’t even heard him approach.

  “I do beg your pardon,” the man—the gentleman, by that haughty accent—said.

  He didn’t sound as if he was begging her anything. From the proper tone of his speech, he’d never had to beg at all—just buy. There was something familiar about his voice, though. As if to reinforce that sense of familiarity, he reached out and placed a gloved hand on her wrist.

  She sized him up in one instant, taking in the thick, fine wool of his greatcoat and the snow-white of his cuffs, peeking out beneath well-made sleeves. His shoes were polished black, with no creases worn in the leather. His cravat had been fastidiously starched. She couldn’t find even a solitary piece of lint on his clothing, a surer sign of wealth than even his shiny brass buttons. He was handsome in an austere sort of way, his features sharp, his eyes clear and blue in contrast with the ebony of his hair. Incongruously, a dusting of white powder touched the shoulders of his coat.

  He wore no hat, which didn’t fit at all.

  Still, she had his measure. Rich. Handsome. And not very intelligent, if he’d ventured into an alley in Temple Parish wearing shoes like that.

  No doubt he was looking to buy himself a little pleasure. Pleasure often made men stupid.

  “Let go of me.” She let her own accent creep toward the common—consonants sliding together, vowels eliding.

  The stranger relinquished his hold on her wrist and stepped into a doorway, just out of the rain. He didn’t take his eyes off her, though. There was something arrogantly peremptory about the way he perused her from head down to toe, and then back again.

  She raised her chin. “The whores are all back by the Floating Harbour. I’m not for sale, and so I’ll thank you not to eye me like a piece of flesh.”

  He did not appear the least put off by her vulgarity. “I’m not looking for a whore from the harbor.”

  “Well, I’m not like to take you.” She snorted. “What’s wrong with you, then? Must be something dreadful, if a pretty thing like yourself is forced to pay for a tumble.”

  “Pretty?” He shook his head in bemusement. “I haven’t been called pretty in years. I’m afraid you have the matter entirely backward. I came here looking for you, darling.”

  “Darling?” Miranda bristled. “I’ve not given you leave to address me by something so familiar.”

  “If ever I address you with an intimacy, you’ll know it. Darling is your name, is it not?”

  Her face was turned toward the glassworks, where heat radiated out the open door. Still, she felt suddenly cold all over. How did he know her? What did he want?

  And there was the indisputable fact that he was taller than her. Bigger. Stronger. She had safe passage from the thieves and the bullyboys, but the Patron had no control over gentlemen.

  Miranda took a step backward. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, mister.”

  “Mister.” A half-smile crossed his face, and he took a step toward her. Up close, that grin looked like the self-satisfied expression of a shark closing in on a hapless fish.

  The smattering of powder on his greatcoat was too evenly distributed to be dandruff. She of all people should have recognized it: it was wig-powder. But the only people who powdered their wigs these days were actors. Actors and—

  Miranda felt the blood run from her face. He reached out and took hold of her wrist again, and this time, he drew her close.

  “It’s simple,” he said, “Miranda Darling is the first name you gave me, and it would be best for you if that much turned out to be true. You’re certainly not Daisy Whitaker, no matter what you claimed today.”

  He was supposed be fat. He was supposed be old. He was supposed to be back at the bleeding Council House.

  “And as we’re establishing what we call one another,” he continued, “the proper form of address for me is not mister. It’s ‘Your Worship.’”

  “Lord Justice,” Miranda heard herself say. “Oh, shite.”

  Chapter Three

  SMITE HAD ASSUMED THAT Miss Miranda Darling was young—no more than the fifteen or so years of age that she’d acted earlier in the morning. Impressionable enough that he might frighten her into compliance with a stern little speech. But up close, he could see that she was not coltishly slender, just undernourished. Not desperately so—she wasn’t starving—but he very much doubted she ever ate to her satisfaction.

  Aside from that one expletive, she had a presence to her, a self-possession that young girls lacked. He could feel the pulse in her wrist hammering against his grip, but she raised bright green eyes to him with just a hint of defiance…and something else.

  If one judged age by the eyes, she was ancient.

  One could never determine age properly in the more squalid districts. She might have been anywhere from nineteen to nine-and-twenty.

  Her eyes widened; her pupils dilated. But she merely tossed her head, and the bright mass of reddish-orange hair slipped down her shoulder.

  Most women in her situation would have lied, never mind that the falsehood would have been transparent.

  She simply shifted her stance, angling away from him. “Well. What do you want?”

  “You can start by thanking me.”

  She glanced at his hand on her wrist, and curled her lip. “Am I supposed to thank you in some particular fashion?” Her gaze fell to his trousers.

  “No.” He dropped her hand. “That’s appalling.”

  “I hadn’t realized I was entirely repellent.”

  “I’m not that sort,” he countered. “I wouldn’t take advantage.”

  But he could see why others might. Objectively, she wasn’t pretty. She was too thin, and it pinched her features: her cheeks were a touch on the hollow side, her hands too scrawny for real elegance. A smattering of freckles covered her nose, and a flush rose over her skin—not pink and demure, but red and angry.

  Not that plainness would have mattered. In the back slums, it would only have mattered that she was female and alone.

  She wasn’t beautiful, but she had a vast store of defiant vitality that was all too attractive. He grimaced, and filed that observation away in the back of his mind.

  “Let me spell matters out for you,” he said slowly. “You came into my courtroom in disguise, bearing a false name. There is only one reason you aren’t languishing in custody at the moment.”

  “Your forbearance?

  “My interference. I didn’t let them swear you in. As it is, you merely told lies. Perjury, by contrast, is punishable by six months in prison.”

  She went utterly still.

  “If you had actually committed that crime, it would have been my duty to
act on the matter.”

  Miss Darling licked her lips and looked away. “Thank you, then.” She glanced down the alleyway. “I can explain.”

  Smite cut her off with a chop of his hand. “You can excuse. I’ve heard it all before. You didn’t have a choice. You did it for the common good.” As he spoke, he ticked off fingers. “You were hungry.” He shook his head. “I’m not interested in your pathetic reasons. This isn’t a hearing.”

  “What is it, then?”

  “A warning. Don’t tell tales in my presence. Don’t disguise yourself in my court. If ever I see you before me again, dressed as someone else and spouting falsehoods, I will have you arrested on the spot. And I won’t give this—” he snapped his fingers “—for your excuses.”

  She took a deep breath and eyed him. It was a canny look, that, one that sized him up and found him wanting all at once.

  “Ah.” He took a step closer to her. “You think you can fool me. That you need only don the right disguise and I’ll look right past you. You’re wrong.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “I saw you first on October the twelfth, a little more than one year past. You spoke on behalf of Eric Armstrong, a thirteen-year-old boy accused of striking a patrolman. I actually think you were telling the truth then. You were wearing a gown of dark crepe.”

  Her mouth fell open.

  “I glimpsed you in the hall eight months later. Then, you were dressed as a boy. I checked the records after; I believe you testified that one Tom Arkin was not the same boy who served as an apprentice to the chimney sweep.”

  He could see her swallow, could trace the contraction down her throat.

  “I remember you precisely,” he told her. “I’ll be looking for you. You can’t disguise yourself from me. Don’t even try.”

  This time when she looked at him, he finally saw what he’d been waiting for. Fear. Real fear.

  “You are inhumanly precise,” she finally said.

  “Yes.” No point in quarreling over the truth. What did it matter, how inhuman his memory was, if it served his purpose? He’d scared her, and she would stay away. If he was successful, he’d never see her name on the gaol delivery lists. His inhumanity was a small price to pay for that.

  “Enjoy the rest of your day, Miss Darling.” He reached up to tip his hat to her, but then remembered that he hadn’t brought one. He converted the gesture into a meaningful tap of his forehead and turned to leave.

  He had taken four steps away when she spoke again. “Do you recall all your witnesses in such vivid detail, Your Worship?”

  He paused, not looking back at her. “Yes,” he said. “I remember everything.” It was close enough to the truth to serve. His memory felt like dry leaves, pressed flat between the pages of some heavy book. The essence was preserved, but what remained was a poor facsimile for reality. He never could recall scents, and without those nothing seemed real.

  He glanced at her over his shoulder. “I particularly remember you, Miss Darling.” He met her eyes.

  He hadn’t meant it that way, but she raised her fingers to her lips, and a different sort of flush pinked her cheeks.

  Nobody would call her beautiful, but she was striking. And perhaps some dormant part of him belatedly decided to notice that she’d called him pretty before she’d known who he was.

  A woman. Wouldn’t that be nice?

  No. Not this one. And definitely not now.

  He shook his head, more at himself than to her, and left before his imagination could cause him any more trouble.

  OLD BLAZER WASN’T IN. Miranda could tell in one breath when she opened the door to the little shop on Temple Street. No heavy pipe smoke greeted her. Only a faint, lingering bitterness, hours old.

  Old Blazer was in less and less these days.

  Miranda sidled past the secondhand gowns that hung on pegs, waiting for new owners. Spools of cheap ribbon and bolts of middling quality calico were displayed atop barrels and boxes.

  She did not look to her left. If she did not see how she had fared, she couldn’t get any bad news.

  She wasn’t sure if she should be happy about the old man’s absence. Only a faint, sour hint of pipe smoke remained to remind her of his presence. The two customers who were in the store were silent, looking through the wares. That, most of all, made the shop seem smaller and gloomier than usual. Usually, Old Blazer was chattering away. And unless he’d been set off on one of his famous rages, someone would have been laughing in response.

  Miranda clutched her basket to her chest and tiptoed to the back of the store. The counter there, usually stacked with goods, had been cleared of everything but a red pincushion.

  Jeremy Blasseur—Old Blazer’s grandson—was sitting on a stool, needle in hand. He was slender, and had a shock of sandy brown hair that curled of its own accord. He was frowning at a seam, which gave him a somewhat abstracted expression. It almost made her want to laugh, which would have been very wrong, because Jeremy was one of the most intensely sober individuals she had met. Especially these days.

  He looked up at her approach, and his face lit. “Miss Darling. You survived. How did it go?”

  “As well as you might expect.” And that was all he was going to get from her. “I do hope that Old Blazer is well.”

  Jeremy gave a halfhearted shrug. “He’s got a bit of a head-cold. Or, at least, that’s what he said. Mama says he’s just malingering. But you haven’t told me anything. I worry about you.”

  Old Blazer wouldn’t have worried about her. He would have been worried about the gown she’d borrowed, and he’d have been grumbling already about the length of time she’d had it.

  But Jeremy was so serious, so intent on doing everything right. Nothing made an easy friendship more awkward than a man who wanted to help.

  “Don’t,” Miranda said. “Nothing happened.”

  He had enough to worry about as it was. The last thing he needed to hear, after that unfortunate business with George, was that Miranda had found herself hip-deep in trouble with a magistrate.

  He gave her a sad-puppy look. “If you really don’t want to talk of it…”

  “It’s over,” she said shortly. “I survived. I’d rather forget it all.”

  It was impossible to forget. When Lord Justice had taken hold of her today, he’d not caviled about the matter. He’d grabbed her wrist with a firm, strong grip. She could still feel the warmth and pressure of his hand.

  In contrast to Lord Justice’s dark, fine coat, Jeremy was dressed in serviceable—but fading—brown. He didn’t frighten her. He hadn’t threatened to toss her in gaol.

  “Did you like the gown?” he asked.

  “It suited the occasion.” She dipped into her skirt pocket and slid a half-shilling across the counter. That practically gutted her remaining stash of coins.

  “No, no.” He shook his head. “I can’t possibly charge you for the loan. It was just a few hours that you had it.”

  “You’re running a business, Jeremy. I’m a customer. I have to pay you, or you don’t make any money.”

  “But I know how much you needed it.”

  “When a customer needs something, good business sense requires you to charge him more, not less.” Equal in importance was the fact that Miranda owed enough favors. Owing favors had landed her in this tangle in the first place.

  “But…” He sighed and ignored the coin. “You’re a friend. You don’t need to be a customer. I have few enough friends as it is.”

  “We’ll be better friends if I act like a customer when I’m a customer. I don’t want to impose on anyone. You, least of all.”

  “It’s not—” He cut himself off, shook his head. “Bother. You don’t have to trade for everything.”

  She ignored this. “We still have business to do, Jeremy.” She reached into her basket. “I’ve brought another wig.”

  He drooped. “Um…we haven’t sold the last two yet.”

  “This one is the best so far.” How
she managed to speak so calmly, Miranda didn’t know. The payment for Robbie’s schooling would be due in a few weeks. Shortly after that, she’d need to hand over the rents. Dread coiled inside of her, but she refused to let it show. Instead, she reached into her basket and pulled out her latest creation. “The hair is blond. It’s long, and it’s got the loveliest curls. I’ve fixed the hair up, but I can redo the style.” She held it out to him. “Some vain, elderly lady will want to reclaim her youth with this.”

  Jeremy didn’t reach for the wig. “I…well, there’s no way to say this. Old Blazer is talking about getting rid of the wigs altogether. If they’re not going to sell, he says there’s no point in giving them valuable room in the store.”

  “They’ll sell,” Miranda said airily, even though her breath jarred from her. Smile, and make it look easy. “And what’s more, they sell the hats. I should charge you a commission on the hats your customers purchase—they’re so much more appealing atop a head of hair, don’t you think? The instant a woman walks in the shop, she can imagine what the hat will look like on. Once you have a customer thinking of what she’ll look like in an article of clothing, you’re that much closer to a sale.”

  “That’s true.”

  Miranda stifled a sigh. Old Blazer would never have admitted that. He’d have bargained to the end.

  “I’ll just set this one up, then, next to the others.”

  Jeremy didn’t object to this piece of importunity, and so she arranged the wig—her third unsold wig. Her arrangement with Old Blazer paid her a percentage of each sale. Well enough in good months—more than she’d get selling her wares directly to shopkeepers. But in bad times… She had enough sewing work that they wouldn’t starve. And Robbie made a few pennies—that would pay for coal.

  But they were looking at lean weeks ahead. Lean weeks, with winter coming on. If her luck didn’t turn, they might get down to thinning out the gruel until it was more water than sustenance.

  In response to that, her stomach growled.

  Behind her, Jeremy cleared his throat. “It’s been weeks since your last sale. You…you don’t need money, do you?”