Page 32

A loud groan interrupted his thoughts. Bethwell had concluded his business. Harry didn’t move, and a few minutes later the marquis stumbled out of the alley with dirt on his coat elbows, still buttoning his breeches. He passed Harry without a sign he even noticed someone lurking in easy earshot of his sordid encounter. For a moment the marquis stood on the street, fumbling at his clothing, and then he gave a terrific belch. Harry glared at the ground in disgust while Bethwell thumped on his chest as if trying for another.

There was a noise behind him, and Harry instinctively tensed, gripping the handle of the dagger at his waist. But it was just the girl, a small, pale creature who couldn’t have been more than fifteen, emerging from the alley. “My shilling, sir,” she said to Bethwell in a high, young voice.

The marquis didn’t even look at her. He picked a clump of dirt off his sleeve and frowned at it before flicking it away. “I never promised. You weren’t that satisfying after all.” And he started to walk away.

Harry saw the girl’s mouth fall open and her eyes narrow in anger. More than one man had been murdered by an irate woman, and even a half-starved girl could put a knife into someone’s ribs with deadly effect. He eased away from the wall, but she made no effort to follow. After a moment her anger faded and she seemed to droop where she stood as if she didn’t have the strength even to be outraged any longer. Harry glanced at the departing Bethwell, strolling away with complete indifference. He cursed under his breath, then came forward to drop an arm around the girl’s shoulders.

“‘Ere, no,” she complained, trying to twist away. “You got to pay first, see. That one promised me another shilling after, and din’t pay it. Two shillings, in my hand now⁠—”

“Wheest, luv,” muttered Harry in guttural Cockney as he propelled her down the street while keeping one eye on Bethwell. He could feel the bones of her shoulder through the thin fabric of her dress. She was fair and small, a girl who might have been pretty if she’d been decently fed and cared for. She had no coat, only a thin shawl clutched around her arms. “No worry, no worry. Oughtn’t you get home to yer mum?”

“Not without a few more shillings I can’t.” She had stopped resisting and started pleading. Her thin fingers groped at his heavy coat in clumsy imitation of a caress. “Come on, now, just two shillings, and any way you like it.”

“Get you home.” He pressed a coin into her hand. It was a better use of Sidmouth’s money than usual, in his opinion. “It’s cold out this eve.”

Her eyes flashed toward him in shock, but the silver crown had already disappeared into her ragged dress. “Coo,” she breathed. “Thank ‘ee...”

Harry released her and jerked his head in a curt nod. Without breaking stride, he jammed his hands into his pockets and scowled after the man he followed. Bethwell appeared to be unaware of his surroundings as he strode along with a cocky swagger. Harry was sorely tempted to bash the man over the head, stuff him into a hackney, and send him home. Either that or leave the self-righteous prig on his own in Whitechapel.

Finally the marquis made it to his own doorstep, where his servants would tend to his filthy clothing and putrid odor without comment or reproach. They were waiting for him, in fact, holding the door open and lifting a lamp to light his way into the house. No flicker of scorn or disapproval touched their expressionless faces. They weren’t paid to judge, after all, just to obey orders without question.

Much like Harry himself.

He turned and walked away, furious at Bethwell for carrying on like a sailor on shore leave and frequenting such shabby, dangerous places while holding such a prominent station. The man had a responsibility, damn it, if not to his family to live a decent life then to his country, to live the life he promoted for others. Bethwell was a crusader against the rookeries, the gin houses, the poor laws. The poor ought to live more moral lives, he declared in Parliament, and that would improve their lot—not schools or government programs or higher wages.

Harry had read accounts of his speeches in the newspapers and wondered what the marquis really knew of the poor. It couldn’t have been much. Certainly not tonight, when Bethwell wagered fifty pounds on a fight where one man might die from his injuries, then paid a half-starved girl a mere shilling for the use of her body.

The marquis had no use for people like that—the fighter with the broken ribs and blinded eye, or the prostitute with no shoes or warm shawl. They existed only for his amusement, Harry thought darkly, just as he himself existed only for Bethwell’s safety. The man wouldn’t give a damn if someone stepped in front of a knife or a pistol meant for him; he probably wouldn’t even notice. Not that Harry was in this job for Bethwell’s gratitude, but it made him angry that Bethwell didn’t have the slightest care for anyone other than himself. What was the benefit in protecting Bethwell’s life if the marquis did nothing admirable with that life?

He kept hearing the young woman’s muffled sounds of pain as Bethwell used her. He kept seeing her thin, pale face begging him to do the same, for only two shillings in her hand. The contrast between that ruined scrap of a female and Mariah Dunmore made him sick. It made him angry. Bethwell was a hypocrite and an arrogant ass, but he was living the life he was born to. No one would protest his treatment of a street whore; he was a gentleman and a marquis, while the girl was nothing. Just as Harry was nothing, while Mariah was a wealthy young lady of aristocratic blood.

He didn’t intend to visit her. He wasn’t thinking of her at all. He walked blindly for a long time before looking up to find himself outside Doncaster House. For an even longer while he stood there staring up at the façade, the gas street lamps reflected a hundred glittering times in the many windows. Lord Doncaster, at least, seemed an honorable man, the sort of man worth sacrificing himself for.

That made it all the worse, perhaps, that he was lusting after Doncaster’s daughter with a ferocity that unnerved him.

While he slipped through the iron gate into the garden, shed his foul coat and cap, and shinned up the ivy to her window, Harry told himself he would deserve nothing less if Doncaster discovered him and put a bullet through his wicked heart. Wicked, for wanting what he couldn’t have, as he saw Mariah innocently asleep against her pillows, an open book under her hand and candlelight spilling over her smooth cheek and white nightdress. Her room smelled of lavender and clean linen, everything comforting and right, and for a moment the blackness inside him abated. Wicked, for climbing into her room and crossing to her bedside to gaze on her sleeping face with a desperate longing that had no excuse and no hope of being gratified. He craved her touch and company like some men craved gin or opium; a weakness, but not one he could deny tonight.

And most wicked of all for knowing that, and staying anyway.

* * *

Mariah startled awake as he pinched out the candle beside her bed. She lurched upright, blinking rapidly, her heart pounding. “What? Who⁠—?”

“Only I.”

She recognized Harry’s quiet voice and searched the darkness, finally locating his shadow as he moved away from her bed. She shook her head, trying to clear her brain. She’d been dreaming of a ball, where dozens of gentlemen holding flowers pursued her while her mother insisted she drink another cup of tea after every dance. A remnant of her day, she thought in disgust, remembering the endless, dull-beyond-words calls from four suitors today alone.

Mariah didn’t want to think of them as such, but her mother persisted in naming them so, and their actions had been uncomfortably like those of suitors. For three days now she’d been trapped in the drawing room by the parade of gentlemen—including Mr. Crane, twice—and wasn’t at all surprised it was giving her nightmares.

But now Harry was here, for the first time in several nights, and if she hadn’t fallen asleep, she might have seen him. He had put out her candle before she woke, and she knew he’d done so by design. “Why did you do that?” she snapped in sleepy frustration.

“You were asleep,” was his infuriating reply. “You no longer needed a light.”

“But now I am awake, and I should like to relight it.” She put aside her book, and on impulse started to get out of bed to retrieve the flint.

“Please don’t.”

Mariah frowned, although she stayed where she was, sitting on the edge of her bed. She had agreed, after all, at his last visit, that touching his face would be enough. And she supposed it would have to be, even though she had deliberately left her candle burning every night since in hopes he might return and she could catch just a glimpse.