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“Beggars can’t be choosers. Daresay it’s a novelty for you, being the beggar.”

“I’ve always had enough,” Piers acknowledged. “Haven’t you?”

It was something of a shot in the dark and it got a reaction, though he couldn’t quite guess its significance. The quick blink looked almost like surprise.

“Is theft a novelty for you?” Piers asked. “Or does one call this kind of thing extortion?”

The jailer, already in a crouch, sat back on his heels, letting his hands dangle between his knees. The nails were well cut, the knuckles slightly scraped. In this light and from this angle, it wasn’t easy to judge if they were working man’s hands. But they did have unusually long, thin thumbs.

“Don’t matter what you call it,” he said.

“Kidnapping’s a hanging offence, though.”

For the first time, his jailer laughed, with a flash of good teeth—apart from a missing molar on the right side of his mouth. Something else to commit to memory.

“Not a chance. You wouldn’t know your own wife if she walked in that door now with her arms full of money.”

Piers dropped his gaze as though in defeat and shame.

But in this, his tormentor was wrong. He always knew April.

Chapter Four

Dr. Laine pronounced himself pleased with both April and the child. “You both appear to be in the best of health, although you must rest, Lady Petteril, and the worst thing you can do is worry about your wayward husband. He will be home directly. Between us, we will find him.”

You don’t know where to look. It took effort not to shout the words at him, for she was beginning to panic. It took more effort still to smile through Gussie’s effusions on the baby and her joy in holding him—which woke him up so that he had to be pacified by Ruby.

So, it was well into the afternoon before she was alone with the baby fed and changed and asleep. And still no word from Piers.

When the nursemaid finally left the room, April threw off the bed clothes and went to her wardrobe. Her muscles were sore, but she felt none of the wilting exhaustion everyone seemed to expect of her. Instead, she was filled with impatience, energy, and the need to be active. Even if Piers had not been missing, she would have insisted on going for a walk.

With him and the baby...

But there was no point in thinking like that. She fought off the returning sense of desolation with action. She opened her wardrobe door and rummaged at the back until she found what she sought: an old canvas bag containing worn old clothes. Boy’s clothes.

She cast off her dressing gown and nightgown and began to climb into the old shirt and breeches. And encountered a snag. Several snags. The shirt that had once been too big, was too tight across her chest, squashing her tender breasts. And the coat that might once have hidden her shape, no longer did. Nor would the breeches fasten at her waist.

She was no longer even just a healthier, prosperous female shape, she had just given birth. Her bump might have gone, but her belly had not yet shrunk.

Annoyed that she had not thought of this, she tore off the clothes again and stuffed them back into the bag, which she replaced in the wardrobe. Hastily assuming the dressing gown once more, she went through her dressing room to Piers’s. She listened carefully at the door before she went in, for she did not want to encounter Stewart. He would try to stop her.

But the room was silent. She suspected Stewart was out looking for Piers. She just hoped he stayed away from Saracen Street for if the kidnappers knew this house, they might well know Stewart too. They could be watching the house. They probably were watching Saracen Street.

She found Piers’s old disguise without difficulty. Right at the beginning of their acquaintance, he had assumed the character of the “dangerous clerk”, a supposed forger, in order to find her. Well, now she would return the favour.

The clothes were much too big for her but turning them up and bundling them and tying them with string certainly disguised her shape. She pinned up her hair and crammed it beneath her own old hat, then stamped into her holy old boots, completing the picture by tying thicker bits of rope around the waist of the breeches to hold them up and to keep the coat closed, and then rubbing coal over the bits of bright hair that still showed, and over her hands and face. It was the best she could do until she could find some proper outside dirt.

From there, it was a matter of whispering an agonized apology to the baby— “Ruby will hear you cry,” she promised—and then dodging about the house to avoid the servants. The most difficult part was hiding in the dark hallway between the back door and the area door at the front, until the kitchen was clear enough for her to slip quietly out of the area door. She ran up the steps with her face averted, hoping she looked like some frightened, rejected beggar, and skulked along the street with her head down, trying to remember how she had walked and run and slouched when she was Ape...

It was surprisingly hard to get back into the swing of it. Once, it had been this hard to be a female, and even harder to be Lady Petteril. But passers-by didn’t give her a second glance—unless it was to give her a wider berth—so she drew confidence from that and hurried toward St. Giles.

It took too long, for she was out of the way of running, and she dared not risk trying to jump on the backs of carriages as she had once done to get around London. She was a little too sore and much too out of practice and her body was all out of balance now...

She did not have long enough to do this properly. She had to be back in a couple of hours for the baby, and she didn’t really want anyone to know she had been out, certainly not dressed like this. In retrospect, perhaps she should have warned Stewart...

The area beyond Covent Garden had been her old stamping ground. Even there, Seven Dials had been regarded as particularly dangerous, so she didn’t know it well and she didn’t want to ask. But she knew White Lion Street, and the map had shown Saracen Street only one alley away from there, but stopping well before what seemed to be St. Andrew’s Street. Between the main streets was a maze of alleyways and tiny passages, and crumbling buildings that sheltered thieves and cutthroats and the sort of people she didn’t want anywhere near Piers, let alone in control of him.

Driven largely by the fear that curled her stomach and licked through her nerves, she walked briskly along White Lion Street, as though she knew exactly where she was going. That was an essential of survival. And no one bothered her.