"For the information you bring today," she said impatiently. "Name your sum."
He released the flower. "What makes you think I can be bought for any sum?"
She lifted her brows. "You have gone to no small lengths to arrange this meeting, so surely you expect a reward for your efforts."
"Perhaps, my lady, doing what is right is reward enough."
Faint color slid along his high cheekbones. His youth suddenly shone through the mask of sophistication; with a jolt, Marianne realized Andrew Corbett could not be more than three-and-twenty at most. For all the rumors of his manly prowess, he had not left boyhood far behind.
"If that is true," she said quietly, "then tell me what you know of Kitty Barnes and my daughter's whereabouts."
For a minute, Corbett said nothing. Then his shoulders drew back. "I don't know the location of Kitty or your daughter. The truth is, I haven't had contact with Kitty for over three years."
Another dead end. The familiar dark undertow dragged at Marianne. She fought the waves of despair closing over her head.I've failed you, Rosie...
"But I have an idea of how you might find them," he said.
His words hooked her, yanked her gasping to the surface. "How?" she managed.
His gaze went to the closed door, as if expecting someone to barge in at any moment. He drew in a breath. "Kitty engineered her disappearance because of debt. She'd overestimated her own success and invested badly besides. In the end, she owed a pile of blunt—and to a man not known for his patience. As a warning, he set one of her bawdy houses aflame. We barely escaped that night with the clothes on our backs."
"But Kitty is alive. She is alive, and she has my daughter."Please, God, let that be true.
"Last I knew, Kitty was headed to the country. She wouldn't tell me where—said she had some friends to turn to." Corbett paused. "At the time, she still had your little Primrose."
Hearing her daughter's name battered at Marianne's composure. She shut her eyes against the hot welling of hope. In three years of searching, this was the first real news she'd had of her daughter. Longing seeped through the cracks, the hinges of her self-possession creaking as everything she'd locked away threatened to burst free.
Rosie laughing as Marianne tickled her. Rosie splashing in her bath and soaking Marianne in the process. Rosie snug in her little pink ruffled bed one night—and gone the next morning.
Oh, my darling... wait for me. Mama's coming.
Drawing a breath, Marianne numbed her heart. She shifted the acuity to her head. Now that she finally had Rosie's trail, she mustfocus.
"Why didn't you go with them?" she said.
"Kitty and I had been at odds for some time. We did not see eye to eye on the matter of your daughter." A muscle quirked along Corbett's smooth jaw. "Unlike her, I do not believe that children should be used in such a manner."
Marianne swallowed over the razors in her throat. "Used?"
"You said your husband was the one who sent Primrose to Kitty?"
Marianne nodded numbly.
Corbett's lips formed a grim line. "He must have been the one paying for her upkeep, then. Kitty said the cove paid fifty pounds a month, with the instruction to care for Primrose like her own child. And Kitty kept her end of the bargain—until the payments suddenly stopped coming three years ago."
"When Draven died," Marianne said through dry lips.
"Without the income and her own dire straits, Kitty's first priority was saving her own hide. Before we parted ways, she had talked of... selling Primrose." The stark look in Corbett's eyes thrust the blade deeper into her heart. "I don't know if she did or not. But knowing this possibility—knowing what your daughter may have suffered, what she might have become if indeed she still lives—will you still want her then?"
"I will always want her," Marianne said fiercely, her hands balling up. "Nothing can change that. And I'll stop at nothing to bring her home."
Raw emotion flashed in Corbett's eyes and vanished before she could know if she'd imagined it or not.
"Then you will want to start with Bartholomew Black," he said.
The hairs rose on Marianne's neck. She'd heard that name before. In her search for Primrose, she'd scoured the stews, and in that hotbed of vice and depravity, only one name consistently roused fear and trembling. A man notorious for his power, temper, and love of killing.
Bartholomew Black: the rookery's most infamous cutthroat.
