Unraveled Read online

  “We both know how Joey gets his money. He’s working with the Patron. I don’t want to see you hanged.”

  “Ha,” Robbie repeated.

  Smite was unsure what Robbie was, but he was fast building up a list of things that he was not. He was not an adult. He was not Miss Darling’s lover. He was not a stunning conversationalist.

  “If you go to work for the Patron, Robbie, so help me I will toss you out on your ear. It is not safe. Now promise me you won’t even try.”

  Sullen silence. Then—“What, I’m not even allowed to try a little dipping, but you can do whatever you wish?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Why else would you be so angry when I hit that cove? You were planning to sell it to him.”

  Miss Darling gasped, and a slap echoed. That sound made the silence that followed all the more pressing. Smite could barely make out the details of the scene—Miss Darling, holding one hand in the other, looking down at her fingers as if she couldn’t believe what she’d done, and Robbie, his own hand rubbing his cheek.

  “Right, then,” Robbie rumbled. He shoved away from the table and opened the door. Smite felt a breath of cool air against his face. “Charge him double. After all, he brought company.”

  “Where are you going? You haven’t eaten.”

  Smite turned his face toward the draft, but his head throbbed and he shut his eyes, dizzy once more.

  “Going to smoke with Joey,” Robbie said. “And don’t give me that look—at least smoking’s healthful. Everyone says so.”

  The door slammed, and the reverberation echoed through Smite’s throbbing head. But pain or no, he could reconstruct what had happened. Robbie had come upon Smite accosting Miss Darling, and had struck him a blow from behind. Presumably, the two of them had brought him up here, rather than leaving him facedown in the streets. Whoever Robbie was, he was looking for trouble…and dragging Miss Darling into it, right alongside him.

  A mess, and Smite had landed himself squarely in the middle of it. He exhaled covertly.

  Miss Darling was alone now. Her hair caught the last rays of the sun through what appeared to be a garret window. It seemed to catch into a brilliant orange—like a stack of foolscap thrown on the fire, bursting into flame.

  She covered her face with her hands. “Oh, God,” she moaned. “What am I going to do?” Her body curled in on itself. She brought her knees up on the seat beside her and hugged them close, rocking back and forth. It was still impossible to judge her age. She looked young now. Alone and unprotected.

  Not a comfortable realization, that. She hid her vulnerability so well that his discovery felt curiously intrusive. As if he’d seen her stripped to her chemise, and she hadn’t yet realized he was looking. He shut his eyes, giving her the privacy she thought she had.

  He didn’t think she would want him to watch her weep.

  Instead, she sighed and he heard the rustle of fabric, the sound of steam being released, and the dull clank of wood on metal. Stirring the pot on the hob, he guessed.

  “No,” she said aloud. “You can’t have any. I’ve already got laundry to send out because of you.”

  Another poor choice on her part. She had to eat. It was a foolish economy to skimp on her own meals to feed her surly charge; if she wasn’t eating, it was hardly surprising that she made bad decisions.

  “You really don’t want any,” she continued. “Don’t give me that look. Dogs don’t eat gruel.”

  Dogs?

  His eyes flew all the way open and he half sat up. From this new vantage point, he could see everything: the carpets on the floor, so worn he could see the wood beneath them; the whitewash flaking from the walls. What furniture there was consisted of old trunks and barrels with blankets tossed over them. Miss Darling stood at the hob, spooning something white and porridge-looking into a bowl.

  And yes, a dog sat next to her, watching with a hopeful expression that Smite knew all too well. Not that he could see it at this distance. But he recognized that expectant quiver in the dog’s haunches.

  Of course, it was not just a dog; it was his dog. Suddenly Robbie’s line about bringing company made sense. Ghost had tracked him down. Smite’s eyesight blurred, and then focused on the creature’s silhouette. Gray muzzle. Gray chest. Paws… Damn. No longer white and pristine.

  That smell he’d dismissed as a consequence of living in the slums? It wasn’t caused by poor sanitation. It was his dog. His own disgustingly filthy animal. Ghost appeared to have found every pile of horse manure between here and the Council House.

  “Ghost!” Smite said sharply. “Get away from there. Stop your begging this instant.” His own voice sent a pulse of pain through his head.

  Ghost turned, saw Smite sitting up on his elbow, and launched across the room. His paws were positively black, his chest spattered with drying mud—yes, Smite was going to call that dark filth mud out of grim optimism. Ghost, of course, had no idea that he was in disgrace, and so gave him a delighted bark, beating the air enthusiastically with his tail.

  Turner shook his head. “What did you do with yourself? Drag yourself through a tour of the middens of Bristol?”

  Ghost made an abortive attempt to leap onto him—the better to share the smell of those middens—and Smite made a sharp gesture, sending the dog to his haunches.

  “You’re a disgusting animal,” Smite said, “and I’ll most likely rid myself of you in the morning. Now behave yourself. I’ve got someone I need to talk to.” He pushed himself up to a sit. His head spun dizzily, but so long as he balanced himself on his arms, he could hold himself upright and look over at Miss Darling.

  Ghost danced around again, spinning in circles—

  “You’re making me dizzy,” Smite told him. “Lie down and wait.”

  There were a great many complaints one could make about Ghost. Palter, in fact, had made most of them. But when the animal was given a direct command, he obeyed. On that, he lowered himself to the floor and fixed his gaze on Smite.

  Miss Darling was watching him, too, and unlike Ghost, she did not seem overjoyed to see him. Her eyes were red but dry.

  “Are you going to arrest me, Your Worship?” she asked directly.

  “No.” He rubbed his head and looked up. “My head is pounding too much to consider it.”

  She walked to him. As she came closer, Ghost stood up and crossed to investigate her, gray head lifted, sniffing gently. She didn’t seem to notice the dog; instead, she sat on the straw tick beside him.

  “You shouldn’t be sitting up, you know. You’ve had a head injury, and they can be quite perilous.” She was inches from him.

  “I’m perfectly well,” he said.

  She frowned dubiously at that. “You can never be sure. I knew someone who hit his head and then dropped dead the next day.”

  She reached to touch his cheek, and he grabbed her hand.

  “I said, I’m perfectly well.”

  But he wasn’t. A flutter of…of something passed through him. Something barely recognizable. His hand fit around hers. She was warm, and he could feel calluses on her fingertips. She wasn’t a lady, no matter how exalted her accent at the moment; he could feel the evidence against his palm. Her rough hands should have reminded him of the gulf between them.

  There were too many differences: he was wealthy; she was not. She’d appeared in his courtroom; he might have to see her again.

  But when he took hold of her hand, he was most aware of the other sharp distinction between them. He was a man. And she was, undoubtedly, a woman.

  She looked down at him, at his grip on her, and slowly, he let her fingers loose.

  She pulled away. “Well. My apologies for interfering.”

  His hand still tingled where he’d touched her; he made a fist of it. “If I’m going to drop dead, I’ll do so regardless of whether you prod at me.”

  “Yes, but if you drop dead here, I’ll be stuck disposing of your body.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “I have enough
to worry about.”

  It hurt to smile, so much so that he winced when he tried. “Well, then. I’ll do my best to drag my sorry carcass away if I feel the sudden urge to keel over.” He ran his hand over his face. “Why did you go to the records room?”

  “Looking for records,” she muttered evasively.

  “What sort of records?”

  She paused and looked up to her right. “I have a friend,” she said slowly. “George Patten. He was put away two months ago, and due to be released yesterday, yet he’s disappeared entirely. He wasn’t let go. He’s not in gaol. I don’t know where he is.” There was a twitch in her cheek.

  “Those records would be kept at the gaol,” Smite said. “You don’t imagine that the records of daily dealings at the gaol would find their way to the Council House a mere day after the events in question. Tell me the truth, Miss Darling.”

  She raised her eyes and let out a long exhale. “Someone asked me to get a list of all the men employed by the police force,” she said quickly.

  Likely, that was the truth.

  “I don’t think you should have anything to do with someone,” he said.

  “Of course I shouldn’t.” She stood up and paced away. “Especially as he didn’t even want the list. I don’t like having games played with my safety. But—”

  “But you’re in over your head, and you’ve someone else to watch over. It’s not easy surviving by yourself.”

  “I—yes.” She looked at him, her eyes crinkled in puzzlement. “I wouldn’t have imagined you would understand. It is, after all, just one of those excuses that you decried the last time we spoke.”

  Smite had his own experience of Bristol life, decades old now. But he simply shook his head. “It’s always difficult when responsibilities tug you in different directions.”

  “Difficult.” She let out a sigh. “I feel like Antigone, operating under two incompatible directives.”

  Smite froze. “Antigone.” He glanced up at her. “How do you know Antigone?”

  She waved a hand. “I was raised by actors. You shouldn’t be shocked that I have some passing familiarity with plays.”

  “Passing familiarity, yes, but… Antigone has not yet been translated from the Greek.”

  “One of the members of our troupe was translating it.” She delivered this airily, with no sense of how remarkable that might have been.

  There were only a handful of scholars who could have even attempted such a thing. Men who translated ancient Greek were fellows at Oxford. They didn’t traipse about the countryside putting on performances for rural audiences.

  It wasn’t often that Smite was rendered stupid. “But… You were truly raised by actors?” It didn’t come out as quite a question. He’d already noticed that over the course of their conversation, her accent had drifted toward the learned tones of an Oxonian. Her vocabulary was far beyond what he would have expected from a poor seamstress.

  “It’s not so hard to understand.” She peered at him. “Are you sure you’re well?” Before he realized what she was doing, she reached out and set her hand against his forehead. A brief flicker of her fingers against his temple—nothing more—and he was transported to a darker place. He was spitting out cold water, his hands rigid and aching from holding fast to wood. The light above him danced and dazzled—

  “Ouch!”

  Her cry brought him back to the present. He was warm and dry, no matter how quickly his heart raced. He wasn’t there. He was in a garret room, sitting next to Miss Darling. She’d touched his face, and he’d grabbed her hand. He hadn’t squeezed too hard, thank God. She was breathing quickly and looking at him as if he had perhaps passed over into lunacy.

  He let go. “Don’t fuss over me.”

  She flexed her hand gingerly.

  “Will you be back, then, looking for records?”

  She shook her head surely—but stopped halfway, her eyes focusing elsewhere. “Actually,” she said, “I will need to find out what happened with George Patten. The gaol—how would one go about getting the records there?”

  “One needs to be a man of some standing in the community,” Smite said dryly. “Or one has the portcullis shut in one’s face.”

  Instead of looking disheartened, Miss Darling simply nodded. As if she were contemplating—

  Smite narrowed his eyes. “Thinking that you could pretend to be yet another person? No. I don’t think so. Consider the improvidence of committing fraud while you are inside a gaol.”

  “Of course,” she said, all too obediently. “You’re quite right.”

  He’d bet Ghost a romp through a manure pile, that she was making plans at this very moment. But what was to be done? He couldn’t watch the gaol himself. He could send warning.

  But there was another option.

  An odd impulse, nothing more. It had absolutely nothing to do with that wretched awareness of her that kept creeping out at the most inopportune moments—at least, he hoped it didn’t. If he was going to exert himself on her behalf, he might as well choose the option that didn’t end with her in prison. More efficient for everyone involved.

  That was it. Efficiency. Nothing else.

  “I have an idea,” he heard himself say. “I’ll take you there myself.”

  AFTER LORD JUSTICE AND his dog took their leave, Miranda negotiated the rickety steps of the narrow staircase down a level, until she heard the faint sound of boys talking. Robbie’s deep rumble contrasted with Joey’s higher treble.

  She paused on the third-floor landing and shivered. The window was half open, and cold night air poured in. Robbie and his friend were on the other side. They’d leapt the foot-wide gap between upper window and gables, and she could see them perched on the flat roof of the neighboring building. They leaned against one of the chimney flues for warmth.

  Joey passed Robbie a bottle, and Robbie lifted it to his lips. Moonlight glinted on amber glass, and Miranda’s heart contracted.

  Gin. At least Robbie was fake-swallowing, just as she’d told him. If you only took a little in your mouth…

  She turned and flattened herself against the wall. Half of her wanted to storm out onto the roof, threatening bloody murder.

  But she’d tried screaming. She’d tried punishments. She’d tried gentle affection and love. She’d tried everything in turn, until she’d come to the end of her wits. It all came down to the same thing: she was scarcely eight years older than he was. She simply wasn’t adequate to the task of raising a twelve-year-old boy.

  All she could do was watch him fall from her grasp.

  Her eyes stung, and she wrapped her arms about herself to ward off the cold.

  Miranda tried to be optimistic. Her future was spread out before her. She had good friends. When her wigs sold, she had more funds than most solitary women her age. She’d made do so far.

  But she felt like a juggler tossing torches into the air. The circus-master kept throwing more in. Sooner or later, one would fall, and the life she’d built would burn to cinders.

  No wonder Robbie never minded her. What did he have to look forward to? A life of hard labor where, honest or not, he could still end up in gaol. Like George. Her fingers dug into her arm, stinging.

  Miranda gave her head a short shake. No. Down that road lay surrender and despair. She’d seen it before, and she wasn’t going to succumb. Defeat might be inevitable, but she hadn’t dropped her torches yet, and she wasn’t going to stop trying.

  Miranda straightened her spine, turned to the window, and wrestled it all the way open.

  Out on the rooftop, Robbie jumped guiltily at the horrid creak it made. He shoved the bottle he was holding behind his back.

  But all he said was, “What?” in a surly growl.

  “I’m going dancing down at Pete’s,” Miranda called. “Want to come?”

  Light. Heat. A fast country reel, and enough exertion that she could push aside the impossibility of her life.

  “Dancing?” Robbie rumbled.

 
; She could hear the distant sound of the fiddle a few streets over. The music reached out to her across the cold night. It was the sound of a few hours of forgetfulness—cheaper than gin and twice as warming.

  “I’m getting my cloak. I’ll be leaving in a few minutes.” She paused, then offered, “Come along. You’ll have fun.” It wasn’t an olive branch she held out; more like a twig stolen from some similar tree.

  Robbie stood. “I guess.” He shoved something at Joey—the bottle, Miranda supposed—and crossed the roof to the window. He didn’t even look down at the gap between the buildings before he jumped inside.

  “Do you want something to eat before we go?”

  He smelled of gin, but he wasn’t unsteady on his legs. She really should scold him. Or maybe she should apologize. But as she watched Robbie climb the stairs ahead of her, what she breathed instead was a whispered promise.

  “I’m going to keep juggling,” she said.

  “Huh?” Robbie asked ahead of her.

  She shook her head. “Nothing. It’s nothing.”

  Chapter Six

  THIS TIME, THE WATER in Smite’s dreams was boiling hot and there was nothing to hold—no ladder, no stairs: nothing but rough walls that tore at his fingers. When he opened his mouth to scream, water bubbled in, stifling his voice to nothingness. He clawed for the surface, but it had ceased to exist. There was nothing but liquid surrounding him, nothing but this hot, filthy effluent stretching in all directions. No matter how he fought, there was no end to it.

  It filled his lungs, caustic as lye soap, and he swallowed it, choking, burning—

  Smite woke, jerking upright, swallowing a shout on his lips. He could hear it ringing around him, and he felt that old sense of embarrassment. Not that it mattered; there was nobody else about. What servants he employed lived outside his home; he’d arranged matters that way for this very reason. He gulped breath and urged his heart to cease racing.

  There was a rustle in the dark, and then, against the palm of his hand, a cold nose.