“Well, then, if I can’t have a cat or a dog—”
“I said I didn’t like them. Didn’t say you couldn’t have one.” He stretched out his leg with a grimace, and the velvety fabric of his banyan parted, revealing a bare shin dusted with crisp blond hair. Of course she had known that men, like women, must have legs beneath their trousers and feet and toes beneath their shoes and stockings. It was just that she had never seenthem for herself. No gentleman would reveal such a part of his anatomy before a lady.
But then, she hadn’t married a gentleman.
“I had a mouse as a pet, once,” he said. “A little brown house mouse.”
“A mouse is not a pet,” she said. “Mice are vermin.”
“In the slums, a pet is whatever animal you can keep. A dog or a cat would have been impossible,” he said. “One might sparea scrap of a crust of bread for a mouse, but feeding anything larger might mean starvation…if one didn’t find one’s pet stolen for someone else’s supper.”
Phoebe shuddered at the very thought of it. “So you kept a mouse instead?”
“I didn’t keep him so much as he lived in the wall near where I made my bed at night. He’d made a little hole there in the corner. At night, when the house was quiet, he’d come out to explore. If I had got anything to eat for dinner, I’d save over some crumbs for him and feed him from my hand. Watch him take it up in his paws and stuff it into his cheeks. I called him Freddie.”
“If you had got anything to eat for dinner?” she asked. “What do you mean by that?”
“That’s how it is on the streets. You get only what you can pay for. Or so said Scratch.”
“Scratch?”
“The kidsman who took me in. Wasn’t his name. ‘Least, I don’t think it was. But all the children called him that. He had these wretched long nails, was fond of doling out slaps and gouges to the children who failed to meet his expectations. Got more than a few scars to show for it.”
“That’s dreadful,” she said.
“That’s life, more often than not. I owed Scratch for my keep. All the children did—four pence a day. Six if we wanted to eat into the bargain. Christ, my knee aches.” His toes stretched and flexed, his leg extending in a shaky motion, as if the muscles were tight and strained. A guttural sound erupted from his chest as he dug his thumb into the flesh of his knee, and his voice grew rougher, coarser. “I was seven, or thereabouts, when me mum passed on. Hadn’t anywhere to go.”
“Your father—”
A disdainful snort. “Never wanted nothin’ to do wiv me. Andwhy should ‘e? I was just a bastard, of no use to ‘im.” A strange sound of relief, like he’d plucked the last of the tension from his aching muscles, and his foot found purchase upon the ground once again. “But there’s always kidsmen lookin’ to train up new thieves. Scratch had a gang of nearly twenty,” he said. “I was wiv him until I was fourteen or so. ‘Til he tried to sell me off to a toff wiv a fondness for children.”
“A fondness for children?” The sinister undertone to the words sent a shiver cascading down her spine. “Not…not simple Christian charity, then, I take it.”
“Not hardly,” he said on a malevolent laugh.
“What did you do?”
“Don’t ask questions ye don’t want answered.” It was a gentle rebuke, as far as they went, but there was an undercurrent of gravity within it. “I’m not a good man, Phoebe,” he said. “I’m not even a nice one.”
No; notnice. But then, nicewas a strange descriptor. She’d met a goodly number of people who might be called nicebut could not be called good. Nice was public affability and social pleasantness. Nicewas a vague sort of geniality that did not necessarily persist beyond the immediate moment. Nicewas politeness feigned for the duration of a morning call or a dinner party. But it wasn’tgoodness, in and of itself.
Shewas nice. But she had never thought of herself as particularly good.
Chris gripped his cane in his hand, setting the tip to the ground in preparation to rise. “You found your room?” he asked.
“Oh. Yes.” She’d had to summon Brooks to take her to it eventually, since she’d gotten lost within the house.
“Good. If it’s not to your liking, choose one that suits you.” He bit back a groan as he eased himself to his feet once more, a grimace passing over his features.
“It suits me well enough.” An awkward laugh trickled fromher throat. “I suppose it will take me some time to…adjust. I’d made perhaps half the journey down to the garden before I realized I didn’t have to sneak around to do it. I dodged a fair few servants in my efforts to be stealthy about it.”
He scraped at his mouth with one hand, muffling a rough laugh. “You’re a married woman,” he said. “You go where you please.”
She rather liked the sound of that. That long-coveted freedom which had eluded her, at last in her grasp. “Good night, then,” she said. “Sleep well.”
Another low chortle as he turned to go, the tip of his cane clicking upon the stone path. “Unlikely,” he called over his shoulder. “Sweet dreams are for the innocent. Don’t step on Hieronymus; he’s by your shoe.”
Oh. So he was. The little turtle had settled just by the toe of her shoe, tucking his head and legs within his shell until only very tip of his beak poked out. Sleeping, she thought.
