Herbuilding was the largest.
She had never owned anything of such significance outright before. Hers, and hers alone.
Mine.She’d never realized what a powerful word it was.
Of course, two prone bodies were propped at odd angles against it. Drunk rather than dead, she hoped. Prayed.
One of them stirred and murmured, chuckling to himself.
Chuckling wasn’tterriblysinister, was it?
The building was about the width of two and a half townhouses and filthy with coal smut. A battered sign creaked and swayed on rusty chains in front of it; whatever it had once said had worn away.
She shifted her gaze upward; were those gargoyles?
Suddenly something savory wafted out the door of what appeared to be a little pub adjacent. Her stomach, a crucible of terrible emotions all day and filled with nothing else, growled.
The pub’s battered sign, rocking and dancing in the wind on its chains, read “The Wolf And.” The final word was no longer legible.
Ladies did not frequent coffeehouses or pubs, she knew, unaccompanied or not. But what did she have to lose? If she was kidnapped and sold into slavery or murdered for the joy of it, it would at least be a dramatic denouement to her story.
She was hungry and thirsty and doubtless poor Dot was, too. They would enterherbuilding fortified.
“Dot, we’re going into this pub to have a meal and perhaps a coffee.”
Dot hesitated. “Oh, Lady Derring, but ladies don’t—”
“Widowsmay go wherever they choose. But widows ought not go alone, which is why I’m grateful for your company.”
Dot looked relieved. “Is that so? I’m right famished, Lady Derring.”
“Well, in we go then.”
The Wolf And was snug and nearly dark as a cave and glowed like an ember thanks to a healthy fire at one end and a series of lanterns hooked across the smoke-dark beams.
A century of smells seemed to have soaked into the timbers of the place—smoke, ale, food—and she wouldn’t be surprised if blood had found its way into the mix. It was pungent, but not oppressive.
A young woman with a resolute expression and dark hair scraped and pinned back away from her face was swishing a rag over the bar with one hand and pushing a sloshing tankard over to a man with the other. Next to the fire, another man in a chair snored like a tree branch cracking. Another two men were in the corner, heads together, speaking in murmurs.
The barmaid looked up. “Look what the wind blew in! Are ye lost, my dears?”
The unexpected kindness, and the smoke, made Delilah’s eyes sting a little. “No, but we are famished. Have you anything that might make a good dinner?”
“I’ve meat pies. Not rancid yet, I shouldn’t think. Bought from the pie man earlier today.”
“That’s quite an endorsement. What sort of meat?”
“Does it matter much if ye’re hungry, lass?” Pragmatic. Unapologetic.
“I suppose not. We’ll have two meat pies, please. Have you any tea or coffee?”
She studied them a moment. “I’ll bring you coffee, bless your hearts, but it won’t be the sort you’re used to, I’d warrant. My name is Frances.”
“Thank you, Frances.”
She didn’t offer her name in return.
She and Dot settled at a little battered table and Frances returned apace with two meat pies.
