“I might do some having of my own.”
Mr Hawke’s thumb dragged along his jaw, mirroring the focus in his gaze. He leaned back, his wolfish eyes pinning her in place as the silence deepened.
“I have a feeling you’d devour me, Miss Harland.”
Heat rose to her cheeks, then spread like fire beneath her skin. “We’ll never know. Only a fool would make love to a man who wished to ruin her.”
The challenge in his eyes was unmistakable. “Indeed.”
Nelson Square
Southwark
“This doesn’t look like the home of a humble witness.” Mr Hawke glanced at the scrap of paper in his hand, then at the Georgian square with its neat oval garden, and back to the elegant row of brick-and-stucco townhouses. “I imagined something less refined.”
Daphne looked at the polished windows and prim façades. “Mr Brown might be a servant.” But what would a servant be doing near the river past midnight? And if he was the owner, perhaps he’d been travelling home late.
“He’s not a servant,” he said, those hawk-like eyes glinting with suspicion. “I’ve seen the witnessstatement. Brown claims to be a clerk. How does a man earning fifty pounds a year afford a house like this?”
He’d read the statement and not told her? Mr Hawke clearly didn’t grasp the meaning of a partnership.
Why was she surprised? He distrusted everything and everyone. Had the seed been planted during his time at Mrs Haggert’s, or had it taken root later, during the dark days at Shadowmere?
“An inheritance?” she suggested.
“The witness was walking along the riverbank. That’s why he claimed not to have seen the perpetrator.” He spoke like a barrister addressing a jury. “Men who live in houses like this don’t walk shadowy footpaths alone at night.”
“Perhaps we should knock on the door and put the same questions to the owner.” She’d noticed the curtain twitching in the lower window. It was hardly surprising, given the ominous black carriage parked outside.
Mr Hawke’s coachman didn’t help. He had the grim stillness of a hangman waiting for the bell to toll.
“If we have any hope of Mr Brown answering our questions, we need to appear professional,” she said. “I’ll be the grieving daughter. You can be the agent I hired to help solve the case. Everyone knows constables are incompetent.”
“You’re hardly grieving, Miss Harland.”
“No. Grieving implies sorrow over a loss.”
Mr Hawke studied her as a naturalist might study a rare beetle. “Does your hatred of him stem from being offered to the highest bidder, or is there something else you’ve not told me?”
The question struck where every woman was weakest. How could he know what it was like to be denied a voice?
But then she remembered the child lost on the street.
“Based on what you told me about your time with MrsHaggert, you know what helplessness feels like.” Few men would admit it. “You escaped that life. I was still trapped in its cage.”
“Was? You still have one foot in the cage, Miss Harland. I sense there’s more you haven’t said.”
She wasn’t about to tell him his eyes reminded her of forbidden forests and twisted fairy tales, where the girl saved the prince.
“In that, we’re kindred spirits, Mr Hawke. Perhaps that’s why bartering for information is such an engaging pastime.”
The man gave an amused snort as he regarded her pelisse for the umpteenth time. As if needing to test the fabric, he took hold of her sleeve while helping her to the pavement.
The front door opened before they could knock. A young maid peered out, her lips pinched, her gaze wary. She eyed the carriage as if it were the Bedlam cart come to collect the master.
“Can I help you?” Her knuckles whitened around the doorjamb. “If you’re calling for Mr Brown, he ain’t home.”
Daphne studied the comely woman. Even an amateur sleuth could tell she was terrified. Not just that. Her vowels were polished, her skin scented with expensive soap, not tallow.
