“You didn’t see anyone with the woman?”
“No. Must have knocked me out. Hurt like the devil when I woke. I couldn’t stop moaning. Then I saw the body.” He shivered. “Lying there, right next to me.”
He paused, his eyes widening. “Dear God.” He looked as if someone had just struck him again. “The Middlesex murderer.”
“How long do you think you were out?”
“Don’t know.” He scratched his head, flattening a section and making another stand further on end. “Maybe twenty minutes? Was about ten when I left the house, and I heard a guard say it was half past eleven as they were locking me up.”
“And after you saw the body what did you do?” Noble asked.
“I touched her arm. It was so…cold. I didn’t know what to do. I just sat there looking down at her. Then this man came barreling down the alley and tackled me. Wouldn’t listen to a word I said. He just kept yelling at me. I was here not twenty minutes later. Shoved into this rathole.” He kicked a piece of straw. “They think I’m the Middlesex murderer. Unbelievable. And to think, he was right there. Could have done anything to me.” He shuddered.
“So far his victims have all been women. I doubt you were quite his style, even with that shirt,” Noble said.
Kenny looked down at his overly frilly shirt in bemusement. It was the height of style, at least ithadbeen before being dirtied and bloodied and ripped, but Marietta privately agreed with Noble.
“Who are you?” Kenny asked Noble in honest confusion.
“I’m someone your sister hired to help you.”
“Hired?” He looked at her. “Marietta?”
“Worry not, Kenny.” She smiled brightly. “It’s all been taken care of.”
She could see the cogs turning. Her brother’s face went from stark white to angry red. His fists clenched the bars of his cell. Then he gave Noble a once-over and his indignation turned again to confusion. She wasn’t in the same physical class as Noble. It was obvious to anyone with eyes.
“How?”
“Not in the way you are thinking, I assure you,” she said, somewhat more tartly than she’d intended. She didn’t know if she was more upset with her brother thinking she had sold herself or that he thought there was no way Noble would have purchased her.
She chanced a glance at Noble. His face was arrogant and remote. No change there.
“Well, then how—”
“Your sister answered your question.”
Kenny’s jaw closed with an audible snap.
Noble watched him through narrowing eyes. “Now, what have you left out of your tale?”
Marietta looked at Kenny, who looked at his shoes. “Kenny?”
He continued to shuffle his feet, buckles clicking against the bars and upending straw.
Noble turned to her. “Marietta, perhaps you should wait around the corner?”
The body. He wanted to ask about the body. She swallowed. “I’ll stay. I want to hear everything. I daresay I’ve seen more blood in the kitchens than Kenny has in his life.”
Noble’s gaze was narrow and piercing. Probing. “Fine.” He turned to her brother. “What did the girl look like?”
“I don’t know,” he whispered, not looking up.
“What do you mean?”
He shuddered. “She was covered in blood. I couldn’t make out her features. She seemed older, though. I don’t know what it was that made me think that. Dress? Hair? I don’t know.”
“There was nothing identifiable about her?”
