He was, however, usually one step ahead of anyone who thought they could get away from him and his men.
Not this time.
It maddened him.
“How thoughtful of you to consider Lady Derring’s welfare.”
“I am at heart a decent man,” Kinbrook said. Piously. He laid down his cigar butt in a tray on the table. The smoke, vile yet somehow enthralling to aristocrats, curled from it.
“Well, certainly now that you’ve unburdened your conscience, you can resume believing so, Lord Kinbrook.”
Kinbrook looked at him sharply.
Tristan wondered about Lady Derring, this pretty, frightened widow, and whether she would become a burden or a servant to some relative, or some man’s desperate mistress, and how the weight of fate tended to displace people.
The way the cigar butt displaced Kinbrook’s brandy when Tristan plucked it up and dropped it in.
The brandy seeped into the tablecloth as he and Massey took their leave of him, Kinbrook’s oath ignored.
Chapter Three
The world turned in woozy circles for a second when Paul, Lady Derring’s driver, helped her and Dot from the carriage outside of 11 Lovell Street.
Which is when she realized she hadn’t eaten a thing all day, and Dot likely hadn’t, either.
The darkness around them was alive. It, and its noises, was mysterious, but did not feel immediately menacing, any more than the woods at night did. It was interrupted by the glow of lanterns through windows of shops and pubs and presumably dwellings where humans lived, stacked upon each other in little flats. A hundred feet or so away from where they stood, hulking buildings rose; they were perhaps warehouses, or workshops. She had never been in this neighborhood before in her life.
Above those, into the fast-deepening mauve of the night sky, rose the spires of ships, looking almost churchly. And high above those was the glowing disk of a full moon.
Distantly, she heard voices raised in argument.
Raucous laughter floated toward them from another direction. It concluded in a violent coughing fit and an extravagantly, protractedly juicy spit.
She and Dorothy winced.
Somebody screamed off in the distance. It was a bit difficult to tell if it was due to murder or glee.
Dot jumped six inches and then nearly climbed Delilah like a frightened cat.
Delilah batted her down and set her firmly away.
“It was just someone expressing a powerful emotion, Dot. Nonetheless, it might be best to hold your hatpin in your hand.”
“Very well, Lady Derring.” Dot’s voice was a little wobbly.
The scent of sea was layered like a complex perfume, wild and briny, a bit foul, a bit sweet, carrying with it a bit of everything it swept through on its way to where they stood: tar and salt and smoke, among other things. A wind whipped through and tried to steal her hat and she slapped her hand down upon it. Their skirts billowed and lashed their legs.
“Would you be so kind as to wait for us here, Paul?”
Paul was one of the servants who hadn’t yet fled, but he’d told her he’d accepted new employment. And yet he’d been kind enough to drive her out to the docks without so much as a raised eyebrow. She wondered if he thought that, now that she was penniless, she was doing the practical thing and going straight away to join a brothel, because surely that’s where the brothels were, down by the docks.
“Of course, Lady Derring.”
He pragmatically yet surreptitiously laid his musket across his lap and retrieved a flask from his coat pocket.
Lovell Street barely qualified as a street; it was more like a bit of fringe dangling at an angle from the main thoroughfare. As far as she could tell, three buildings occupied it.
Number 11 was the largest.
