“But—”
“Miss Harland.” His voice gentled. “Please. My mother found herself in a similar predicament. Let me do this for her, if not for you.”
She fell a little in love with Mr Hawke—just for a moment. The urge to slide onto his lap and smooth the frown from his brow was nearly unbearable.
Do you like that, Hawke?
You know I do, angel.
“What?” he said. “You’re looking at me like I’ve just been canonised a saint. It’s a practical decision. We can’t move freely around London with the Moseley brothers on our backs.”
Strange how practical felt like protection.
“Still, I shall find a way to repay you.”
Or a way to settle the debt herself.
Neither spoke again for a mile.
While she scoured her mind, imagining all the things she might do for him, he seemed oddly preoccupied with the upper buttons on her coat.
Perhaps he was assessing how warm she was because he intended leaving her on Lady Soanes’ doorstep, without so much as a backward glance.
Was the trip a ruse? A way to force her out of Shadowmere and avoid the kicking and screaming?
She stilled.
No. His actions said otherwise.
He’d brought her new fire tools last night, and a thicker wrapper to guard against the cold. Why go to such trouble if he meant to evict her?
“Who will we visit first? The witness? Mr Beattie’s old comrade thinks he lives in Southwark.”
Mr Hawke regarded her in silence, as though measuringher mettle. “We’ll visit the witness before we return to Kingston tonight.”
She sagged in relief.
He planned to take her home with him.
“I need to visit a friend in Seven Dials. She’s the only person who can broker a meeting with the Moseley brothers without them shooting us first.”
He glanced out of the window as they passed a cart laden with barrels, but his gaze lingered at some point in the distance.
“You might charm her into disclosing a secret, Miss Harland. You have a talent for achieving impossible feats.”
If there was a compliment there, she didn’t dwell on it.
Who was this woman? An old lover? A dear friend?
Jealousy twisted in her stomach.
Absurd.
Since when had a flutter of desire overridden all common sense? She was a thorn in his side. She spent the rest of the journey repeating it like a prayer.
It took the better part of an hour to travel from London Bridge to Seven Dials, the streets growing noisier and more chaotic with every turn of the wheels.
The woman Mr Hawke knew had clearly fallen on hard times. Daphne’s fate might not be so different. Once the house was sold and the creditors paid, she’d be lucky to have threepence in her purse.
