Page 41

Don’t let me catch you with that pencil again, Rafe. I’ve never let a fool sleep under my roof and eat at my table, and I don’t expect I’ll start.

After Mother’s accident, there had been nothing to stop Thomas from barging into Rafe’s room late one night and flinging the pencil box into the fire. The scorched scent, the crackling, the showers of sparks … It was the one time Rafe fought back.

He had been eight; his single punch couldn’t have hurt his father’s stomach much. But Rafe paid with pain, delivered by a pewter candlestick. That was the first night he bolted himself in his room.

He’d never sketched since. Not really. Just small shapes in the margins of cheap paper, created more through impulse than intent.

Are you an artist? Miss St. Quinton’s words echoed in his mind. Perhaps you ought to be.

He smiled. Swallowed, and rolled the pen between his thumb and forefinger. The scratch of ink seeping into paper was a thousand times louder than when he wrote.

Her nose was small and straight in profile; that was accomplished easily enough. The mole above her lip came next. He would have to be careful with her mouth—the Cupid’s bow elevations, the way her lips met, corners tilting slightly up even when she made no expression at all.

“Busy morning?”

Rafe startled, hiding his work under his palm and catching Alfie’s eye. “Oh, Alf.” He sat up, smoothing his rumpled waistcoat with his free hand. “I was hoping to lunch with you.”

Alfie took a step into the office, but he didn’t close the door. “I’m afraid I can’t today. I’ve only come to pick up my check from your father. Just thought I’d stop in.”

Rafe’s smile faltered. “Of course.”

“Well, then.” Alfie dipped his chin. “Good day.”

“Good day.” His echo was hoarse, like someone waking from heavy sleep. Elbows planted on the desk, he took his head in his palms after the door closed.

Alfie hadn’t even mentioned last night. Not that Rafe would divulge any details of what had passed between him and Miss St. Quinton, but damn if he hadn’t expected Alfie of all people to pester him about it.

Evidently, he’d been looking forward to it.

A scream sent breath rushing into Rafe’s lungs. He fumbled to sit upright on the hackney seat—he really ought not to put his bare cheek against a surface of such questionable cleanliness—and blinked at the curtainless window. They were passing a tavern, that was all. One of the lively ones close to the hospital, for pensioners shed of their blue coats danced in the street to the sawing tune of a violin, and a woman in frothy blue skirts dangled from one of the men’s shoulders.

He blew out a breath and clutched the small parcel in his right hand. Dr. Ward’s powder and laudanum. The rundown apothecary shop on the outskirts of Greenwich hadn’t had the pills, but the man behind the counter said this stuff ought to work the same. It all smelled like quackery to Rafe, though they loved charging like the devil for it.

It couldn’t have been long since he’d left that shop, but the dark hackney and dark night and gloomy oppression of sleeplessness must have caught him at last. He was becoming weak, dozing in strange places. The poorly sprung vehicle vaulted into a curve that rattled the glass bottles in their paper and made one of the crates in the floor slide. No Chenoweth, this one wasn’t.

It was an expensive venture to hire a hackney from Mayfair all the way to Greenwich, but it was the only way Rafe could ensure his visits to see his mother remained discreet. The journey’s cost, however, prevented him from coming any more frequently than once every fourth week.

Light flickered hot orange beyond the dust-fogged window, and the hackney stuttered to a stop. The stony breadth of the Royal Hospital for Seamen’s gates loomed ahead. The hackney driver leant back on his box and barked, “What’d y’say your business was?”

“Balfour. Delivery.”

The gates opened with a guttural popping, but the hackney didn’t budge. “Out wi’ you,” the driver shouted over his shoulder before Rafe had a chance to move. “I ain’t no delivery boy.”

The pensioner acting as gatekeeper helped Rafe move the crates to the ground. It was a mercifully small delivery, easier to transport and less likely to be noted missing.

Rafe paid the hackney driver, and the gas lanterns atop the gateposts made his cheap coins appear blinding gold. An apt illusion: he was giving away something of precious limited supply.

“Got somewhere else t’be tonight?” the gatekeeper asked warily.

Rafe looked away from the crawling streets of Greenwich, a wild, disorganized territory compared to the civilized symmetry behind the hospital’s walls. He didn’t know this gatekeeper, but the man watched him with a steady, unblinking gaze.

“Yes, as a matter of fact I do.” Rafe removed his hand from his pocket, leaving the wrapped bottles behind. “Allow me to help you with these crates first.”

“Ach, I can manage ’em.” The man’s short legs widened their stance before he bent over the first crate.

Rafe quickly stepped up. “I insist.”

His fingers had barely brushed the coarse wood grain when the gatekeeper’s bent head twisted toward him. “She that hard to live wi’, eh?”