“Of course.” I had accompanied him to the entryway. “The weather is dreadful, the streets may very well be impassable,” I pointed out, as they often were due to flooding when the winter weather set in. “You might stay the night and return to the office in the morning,” I suggested in an attempt to ignore the persistent feeling that something had very definitely changed between us.
It certainly wasn’t as if he hadn’t stayed over before. That dark gaze met mine again.
“I thank ye, but it would not be proper.” He angled a look in the direction of the kitchen where Mrs. Ryan had disappeared after delivering the cake.
Proper? It wasn’t as if she wasn’t aware of ourarrangement. There had only been one comment that had quite surprised me at the time.
“It’s about time you had a man in your life,” she had announced. “Even if he is a Scot. He is a fine figure of a man.”
But it was more than that, and I knew it.
“Wait…”
He shook his head. It was there in that dark gaze, what he had told me at Old Lodge, and I knew it— he wanted more.
“Good night, Mikaela.”
He left without a backwards glance and climbed into the coach, the lanterns atop barely visible, then disappearing altogether as the driver made the turn at the end of the street.
Bloody hell!
I returned to the front parlor and poured myself another dram. Bloody stubborn Scot, I thought. He wanted more and had made that perfectly clear.
What did I want?
If I was completely honest with myself, I knew the answer.
Impossible, I argued as I crossed the parlor to my desk. The stack of mail was there with that telegram on top.
At a glance at the envelope, it was marked the evening before from Edinburgh. It had been sent from the telegraph office at the Waverley Hotel, and it was from Munro.
He had returned to Edinburgh at the conclusion of our last case after I had made arrangements for Lily, the girl who had assisted us, to come to London.
She was intelligent, brave, and resilient, and I liked her very much. In some ways, she reminded me of myself at that age. And no minor part of it all, she had been instrumental in getting us both out of a very difficult situation.
After all was said and done, I had made a proposition— no pun intended in spite of the fact that she was employed as a maid to the ladies at a brothel at the time.
The brothel had been forced to relocate after a fire and it seemed that theladiesemployed there might also be forced to relocate. Lily was between prospects as it were, with Madame sadly informing that she could not afford to continue to pay her until business resumed.
I had discussed my proposal with Brodie— something unusual for me. I usually made a decision on my own and then set out to make it happen. I wasn’t in the habit of discussing something with anyone else before setting off.
However, I valued his opinion and his thoughts on the matter. He had reminded me that taking on a fourteen-year-old girl might have its challenges, especially one set in her ways and quite accustomed to surviving on her own. I assured him that I was well aware of that.
I thought on balance that the positive aspects outweighed the negative ones. And the truth was that I cared very much what happened to her. Most particularly as a result of my acquaintance with Brodie.
Not that I hadn’t been aware of the poverty in certain parts of London before our association. However, the past many months had exposed me to those harsh truths, not to mention Brodie’s own background.
Quite simply, I cared about the girl and couldn’t bear to see Lily left to that same fate, perhaps forced to work in a brothel with the otherladiesin order to survive. But for how long before some misfortune befell her— disease, the brutality of such a profession, or the crime that seemed to be part of it?
What would her fate be?
And so, I had made that proposal— that she come to London, put an honest effort into her education, all the while she would be paid a monthly stipend that would be put into an account and held for her once she had completed that education.
Of course, there were details to be worked out— where she would live, who would be responsible for her, how to be accountable for seeing that she received that education. However, my proposal had been met with less than enthusiasm.
“I know how to read and write,” she had protested before we left Edinburgh.
That is if her version of writing could even be deciphered. As for reading, that was limited to messages the ladies at the brothel had sent back and forth with one request or another. Not precisely a formal education that might open doors in the future, other than the doors of a whorehouse.
