Thief of Shadows (Maiden Lane #4)(43)
Author: Elizabeth Hoyt

Peach hunched a shoulder and turned her face away. “They’re dead. Mama died of fever an’ Papa of the cough, an’ little Raquel, too. They all died.”

Winter felt his heart contract. He’d heard this story so many times before—families devastated by disease and poverty, leaving orphaned children forced to somehow make their way in an indifferent world. It didn’t make this hearing any easier.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.

Peach shrugged and chanced a peek at him. “Papa asked Mistress Calvo to take me in before ’e died. I stayed there a bit. But Mistress Calvo said she already ’ad too many mouths to feed an’ that I must leave.”

“Coldhearted witch,” Joseph muttered angrily.

Winter gave him a chastising look.

The boy ducked his head, but he still scowled.

“Please continue, Peach,” Winter said gently.

“Well, I tried to find work, really I did, but there weren’t any,” Peach said. “An’ beggin’ wasn’t much better. Kept ’avin’ to move so’s the bigger ones wouldn’t beat me.”

There were gangs who ran stables of beggars and others who preyed upon beggars by demanding a percentage of their daily take. A child alone like Peach wouldn’t have stood a chance against the gangs.

“Tell him what happened then, Peach,” Joseph Tinbox whispered.

The little girl stared up at the boy as if drawing courage from him, then took a deep breath and looked at Winter. “Th’ second night I were at th’ church, they got me. The lassie snatchers. Woke me up and carried me away. I thought”—the little girl gulped—“I thought they might kill me, but they didn’t.”

“What did they do, Peach?” Winter asked.

“They took me to a cellar. An’ it were full of girls, it were, all sewin’. At first I thought it weren’t too bad. I don’t mind work, really I don’t. Mama said I was a good ’elper. An’ Dodo was there, though no one ’ad named her and they kept trying to chase ’er away.”

The little girl hid her face in Dodo’s neck as the terrier licked her ear. She whispered so low that Winter had to lean forward to catch her next words. “But they didn’t feed us ’ardly anything at all. Jus’ gruel and water and there was bugs in the gruel.” Peach began to sob.

Joseph Tinbox bit his lip, looking worried and anxious. He hesitantly reached out a hand to the girl, but then stopped, his fingers hovering over her thin shoulder. He glanced at Winter.

Winter nodded at the boy.

Joseph awkwardly patted Peach’s back.

Peach shuddered and lifted her head. “An’ that weren’t the worst. They beat us, too, if’n we didn’t work fast enough. There was a girl called Tilly. They beat her so long she fainted, an’ the next morning she weren’t there no more.”

Peach looked at Winter, her eyes huge and haunted. She didn’t say the words, but somewhere in her childish mind she knew that her friend Tilly must be dead.

“You were very brave,” Winter said to the little girl. “How did you escape?”

“One night,” Peach whispered, “the lassie snatchers came with a new girl. They argued with Mistress Cook—she was the one who made us all work. But they left the door unlocked behind them. I saw it was open a crack. So me an’ Dodo, we ran—ran as fast as we could, until they weren’t shouting behind us no more.”

Peach panted as if she were reliving the terror of running through the night, chased by people without mercy.

“Brave, brave girl,” Winter murmured, and Joseph nodded fiercely. “Do you know where the cellar was, Peach?”

The girl shook her head. “No, sir. But I know it’s under a chandler’s shop.”

“Ah,” Winter said, trying to beat down his disappointment. There were dozens of tiny chandler’s shops in St. Giles. Still, it was better than nothing. “What a smart girl you are, Peach, to make note of such a thing.”

Peach blushed shyly.

“Now, I think it’s to bed for the both of you,” Winter said as he stood. He watched as Joseph gave Peach one last reassuring pat before following Winter to the door. Winter opened the door, but then paused at a thought. “Peach?”

“Sir?”

“What were you and the other girls making in the cellar?”

“Stockings.” Peach said the word as if it tasted foul. “Clocked lace stockings.”

WINTER YAWNED WIDELY the next afternoon as Isabel’s butler let him into her town house.

The butler raised a disapproving eyebrow a fraction of an inch. “Lady Beckinhall is waiting for you in the small sitting room, sir.”

Winter nodded wearily and fell into step behind the butler. He’d been on the streets of St. Giles at first daylight, searching for a chandler shop with a workshop in the cellar beneath, but so far he hadn’t been able to find the place. Nor had anyone heard of a Mistress Cook. Peach may’ve been mistaken about the chandler’s shop—she’d been terrified, after all, when she’d fled Mistress Cook and the lassie snatchers—or Mistress Cook may’ve moved her illegal workshop.

Of course, there was a third—more disturbing—possibility. Several of his usual sources of information had been quite nervous and cagey. Perhaps the denizens of St. Giles were too afraid of the lassie snatchers and Mistress Cook to give away their location.

The butler opened a yellow painted door, and Winter braced himself as he entered the small sitting room. Isabel was standing by one of a series of tall windows on the far side of the room, her face in delicate profile, the sunlight glinting off her dark glossy hair.

His chest squeezed hard, the first glimpse of her almost a physical blow. Usually repeated exposure to an irritant dulled the shock after a time. Yet with Isabel, each sight quaked him anew, seized both limbs and mind. He very much feared that repeated exposure to her merely made him crave her more intensely.

“Mr. Makepeace,” she said as she turned toward him. She was silhouetted now against the bright frame of the window, her face in shadow. “I had wondered if you would come at all today.”

Ah. She had not forgiven him for his tardiness the night before.

“Indeed, ma’am?” he said, cautiously advancing. “But I see that you already have tea laid.” He indicated the service spread on a low table. “I did say I would arrive at four of the clock and it is, by the clock on your mantel, exactly that.”