“Hannah Rogers.”
“Ah.” His eyes lit. “The girl what owes Bertha a great deal of money.”
“I have it, sir. When will Mrs. Beech return?”
“She won’t. So I’ll take it in her stead.”
Hannah was instantly suspicious. “Pardon me, sir. But my business is with Mrs. Beech.”
“Then your business is with me. I’m her brother. Tom Simpkins is the name. Perhaps you’ve heard of me?”
A shiver of revulsion passed over her. The panderer who led desperate girls into lives of prostitution for his profit.
“She has mentioned her brother, but—”
“That’s me. I’m running the place now.”
No... She didn’t dare trust him. Yet had she any choice? She had to get Danny back. At any price. She opened her reticule and handed him the money she owed.
He accepted it eagerly. “Is that all of it? Are you certain?”
It was all she was prepared to give the man. She wasn’t about to suggest he review his sister’s books or mention she’d threatened to increase her rates yet again.
“Yes,” Hannah said. “Now please bring me my son, or allow me inside and I shall collect him myself.”
He pocketed the money and crossed his arms, leaning against the doorframe. “I’m afraid I can’t do that.”
Panic and anger rippled through her. “Why not?”
Behind the leering man, Hannah glimpsed a woman in only a shift and stays traipse past, pulling a man up the stairs behind her.
Simpkins shrugged. “He ain’t here. None of them brats are. Wet nurses neither. I told you this is my place now. Bertha landed in a spot of trouble, see. Spending a bit of time in the lockup at present, awaitin’ trial.”
Hannah stared, uncomprehending. She could believe Mrs. Beech had been discovered for the corrupt matron she was, but this? She sputtered, “Then wh-where are the children?”
“Oh, parceled out here and there.”
Her heart pounded. “Where? Where is Daniel Rogers? Surely you have a record?”
“Nope. All I know is, her charges has been split up. Some sent to the Walcot Poor House on the London Road. Some to the workhouses in Bradford or Bristol.”
Hannah lifted her chin. “I don’t believe you.” She pushed past the greasy man and stormed through the hall and up the stairs to the nursery. She threw back the door and recoiled at the sight of a man and woman in bed, under a tattered blanket. No cradles. No babies.
Nerves jangling, she ran to the next door and did the same. Inside, a frowsy woman gaped up at her from a dressing table. Her lined face was heavily powdered and rouged in an effort to look younger—and less used—than her years.
“Where are the children?” Hannah asked her. “The babies?”
The woman shook her head. “No babes here, love. This is Tomcat’s place now. Did he not tell you?” She surveyed Hannah with bloodshot eyes. “I hope you’re not looking for work. You’re no great beauty, but he’d replace me in a heartbeat for someone young and fresh like you.”
“I am only looking for my child.”
“You’re too late, love. The last stragglers left this morning.”
Too late? God in heaven, no ...Oh, why had she dawdled? Why had she taken Dr. Parrish’s advice and waited? What was an arm compared to her child ... her flesh and blood, her life?
Trembling in horror, Hannah hurried back down the stairs and past the grinning menace at the door, ignoring his offer to stay and enjoy a life of luxury in his care. She had to get out of that house before she was sick. Before she lost her last thread of self-control and fell into a heap of futile sobs on the man’s nasty floor.
She all but leapt from the front steps and dashed around the corner of the house into the alleyway between two tenements. She drew in desperate breaths of fresh air, trying to stay the nausea, but it was no good. Her stomach wrung with molten dread, and bile climbed her throat. She bent over to retch.
