“S’right.”
“In that case,” Marcus strolled to the window with the pies.“Take this as compensation.”He lifted a pie, glanced at the boy’s hungry expression and took two.
“She’ll be mad,” the child said.“She’s a right scary one, she is.Nearly bit me head off when I was only trying to have a sniff.I hardly even touched it.”He wiped his hands on his trousers.“Dunno what she’ll do to you if she catches you pinching one pie, let alone two.”
Marcus repressed a smile.“She won’t mind.”Cook ran a tight ship, but she’d always had time to feed a hungry boy.Well, a hungry Marcus.
The lad gave him a skeptical look, but took the pies, which vanished into the pockets of his coat.“Fanks, mister.”
“What’s your name?”
“What’s it to you?”
Marcus picked up another pie.Neither the boy nor the dog took their eyes off it.“Your name?”
“Joey,” he said sullenly.
“And where are your parents, Joey?”
There was a short silence.Marcus broke off some of the crust and dropped it for the dog, who gobbled it up in a trice.Marcus looked at the boy, who looked at the pie.“Your parents?”
Joey shrugged.“Ain’t got none.Me dad ran off to sea when I was a nipper and never come back.And me mum died last winter.”
“So who looks after you?”The child had to be seven, eight at the latest.
He straightened and looked Marcus in the eye.“I look after meself, I do, and nobody can say different.”He reached for the pie in Marcus’s hand.
Marcus raised it higher.“And where do you live?”
“Around.”His tone was defiant, truculent.
Marcus nodded.The boy’s bristles were well and truly up; he wasn’t going to get much further.“Very well, if you come back tomorrow, I’ll have some jobs for you to do.For money—and no I won’t bargain with you.We’ll see how well you work first.But it will be fair, and as well as pay, you’ll get a good midday meal.”
The boy glanced at the kitchen window.“From ‘er what made them pies?”
“Yes, she’s an excellent cook.”He handed the boy the pie.He took a ravenous bite, glanced down at the dog, broke off another bit and gave it to him.Marcus was impressed.
“Orright then, I’ll come, but if it’s some trick...“
“It’s an honest offer, partly in thanks for what you did for the lady this morning.”Marcus would never forget the way this skinny urchin had stood up to him, trying to protect her.
The boy nodded, slipped out of the back gate and disappeared.
#
“THAT BEGGAR-BOY?”PEVERILLsaid in disbelief.“You’re going to admit him to the house again, m’lord?And I’m to find him work to do?”
“That’s it,” Marcus agreed.Peverill had taken one appalled look at the dog tucked under Marcus’s arm and had pointedly decided not to notice it.
“But he’ll steal the silver.”
“No he won’t,” Marcus said placidly, but with a firm undertone that his butler would recognize.“The only thing he’s likely to steal is Cook’s pies, and he’s welcome to as many of those as he wants.That child is near starving.”
“But he’s dirty, really quite filthy.He, hestinks, m’lord.”
“So would you if you’d been living on the street since last winter.”
“My lord!”Peverill drew himself up in silent indignation at such a suggestion.
