‘Then you make something up,’ said Miss Lillian, her gaze still on the ceiling, and the circular pattern plastered into it. ‘A beloved childhood pet. Some long-forgotten aunt you want to remember. Something small, but meaningful.’ Her gaze settled on the graze upon his jaw. ‘From the looks of you, I assume that might be a welcome respite?’
Damien resisted the urge to reach up and touch the sore skin where the man’s rings had cut him. ‘I want you to cover all the costs,’ he said. ‘As well as a weekly stipend. And room and board.’
Miss Lillian tilted her head towards him. ‘Asmallweekly stipend. To cover food and coal.’
‘A good weekly stipend,’ said Damien firmly. ‘So that when this is all over, I board a ship to New York, and I do not look back.’
She narrowed her eyes, tapping one long fingernail upon the desk. ‘Then you report back to me each week.’
‘Agreed.’
‘And you’ll bring me information I can use. Or else your stipend will decrease.’
Damien held out his hand. ‘And when the information is especially good, you pay me a bonus.’
‘Deal.’ Miss Lillian gripped his outstretched hand. ‘Now, let’s talk about how you’ll convince her, shall we?’
Chapter Nine
‘Walk with me to the grocer’s?’ Oliver said, poking his head around the sitting room door. Something was bubbling upon the stove behind him – she could hear it spitting water onto the grate, and then sizzling.
‘It’s a bit late, is it not?’ Ava glanced at the clock upon the mantlepiece and then realized – belatedly – it had not been wound, for it still read a quarter past nine.
‘We’ve got an hour or so before it shuts,’ Oliver said, pulling off his apron and disappearing back into the kitchen. She heard the clatter of metal on metal as he began to cluster the pans around the stone basin of the sink. ‘Besides, I forgot the potatoes. Can’t very well have scouse without the potatoes.’
Ava sighed. In truth a walk would do her good, for her thoughts seemed to be marching in circles, and at the centre of them was the dark-haired man from the other night. There’d been something about him – something slippery, something shifting. She’d spent her life amongst actors, people who wore one face for the world, and another upon the stage – and she could see that in him, too.
And yet, she couldn’t help but feel she should’ve helped him. Should have been able to help him. Although then shesupposed she would be facing another problem altogether … one with dark green eyes.
‘You should have a wife to do those things for you, Oliver,’ called their father from the hallway, the bottom step creaking.
‘Have you been plotting with Mrs Moss again?’ Oliver fired back.
‘She only mentioned her niece twice at breakfast the other day,’ said Ava.
‘Three times,’ said Oliver. ‘I was counting.’
‘All I’m saying is that you won’t be young forever,’ their father muttered, crossing the sitting room in his morning robe and their mother’s slippers. ‘You’re nearingthirty.’
‘I’m twenty-six,’ Oliver said, plucking Ava’s coat as well as his, and throwing it to her. ‘Come on. Before Pa summons Miss Collins with the sheer power of despair alone.’
The walk from their father’s house near the docks to the greengrocers was a pleasant one that took them through Cleveland Square, where the treetops were slowly turning from green to deep, buttercup yellows and smouldering scarlets.
‘Remember when we wanted to live here?’ Ava asked, looking up at the houses that ringed the square – though now the stucco was flaking from most of the walls, and the iron railings circling each house had begun to rust.
‘Ma would never have moved,’ said Oliver. ‘She loved that house.’
‘I am not sure she would love it as much now.’
‘Mmm,’ said Oliver, tucking his arm through hers, and leading her wide of a puddle, a single white feather floating in it. ‘She’d love it even less when we can no longer afford to pay Mrs Moss the rent.’
She looked at her brother, at his cold-bitten face, and the tendrils of brown-blond hair that refused to stay beneath his grey woollen cap. ‘How bad is it?’
‘With both of us out of work? It’s not brilliant. Ma’s savings are almost all gone. And there’s …’ Oliver looked away. ‘There’s something else.’
‘“Something else”?’
Oliver huffed a breath through his teeth. ‘If I tell you,’ he said, ‘you have to promise not to get riled.’
