Embarrassed pleasure made his face rosy. “If only I were thirty years younger.”
Chapter Two
Lady Walsh’s request did make a trip downtown a necessity, but the day was so fine I decided to take the trolley. A few old ladies in the back seats frowned my way as I stood with the men at the front of the car, reminding me that I was still in my skirts. If I’d dressed in my native costume of bucks they wouldn’t have given me a second glance.
The men, mostly young clerks and old gophers who couldn’t afford to keep their own carri, collectively ignored me. A woman who didn’t assume her proper place in public effectively rendered herself invisible to the tonners and anyone who emulated them, which were most of the respectable citizens of Rumsen. Rina called it wishful blindness.
As we passed through one of the older quarters, a funeral procession halted the trolley, and as the black- shrouded carts and carris passed, I saw a shimmering form drifting after them. The ghost of the deceased, I guessed. I often caught glimpses of such specters following the newly dead or hovering about a fresh grave. When I tried to go near them, they faded from sight.
I knew from experience that they weren’t creatures of magic. While mages insisted the proper spell or ritual could bring back the spirits of the dead, I’d found enough noise-making contraptions hidden in seance chambers to explain such convenient “visitations.” I had no explanation for what I sometimes saw, but I suspected they might be a trace of the spirit left behind by those who passed on. Like the scent of a lady’s perfume that lingered in a room for a time after her departure, or the outlines of a face in an old, sun-faded portint.
Mum would have insisted they were fantasies of the imagination, nothing more. I often wondered how she’d explain away the chill they left behind in the air once they vanished.
At Pike Street I got off and walked to an alley between a boardinghouse and a dressmaker’s shop.
The alley was famous for one thing: it was the lowest point in the city. It also had flooded every year during the storm season until one Mrs. Carina Eagle had purchased the boardinghouse and hired a road crew to dig trenches on either side for drainage pipes. As for the boardinghouse, where no one ever boarded for longer than a night, it still bore the sign
I stopped in front of a bruiser in a pilled tweed coat who had one shoulder propped against the corner. He was reading over a short sheet without much interest and rubbing a flat, milky-white stone between his broad thumb and the stump of his first finger.
I waited politely until he finished reading and looked up at me. “Morning, Wrecker.”
“Miss Kit.” He touched the brim of his cap. “She’s not up yet. Late night, she had, what with all of ’em sailors what come into port yesterday.”
Wrecker had been sent over to Toriana on work-release from Sydney a few years back after serving ten years in the quarries for kneecapping the wrong chap. He’d finished out his debt to the Crown and now lived as a freedman. Had Rina not hired him, he might have kept at the work he knew best. Luckily protecting her and her gels required Wreck to commit far fewer felonies.
“No worries, I’ll bring her a cup.”
Knowing my long-standing relationship with his mistress, he nodded and let me pass.
At the other end of the alley was the back of the boardinghouse, a red door, and a bright brass bell. After I tugged on the pull, a narrow eye-slot appeared in the door.
“Miss Kittredge to see Mrs. Eagle.”
The door opened, and a fellow almost as huge as Wrecker inspected me. He was new, which meant his predecessor was either dead or in prison. “Selling or buying?” The way he ogled my body from the neck down made it clear he hoped I was selling.
“Neither,” I said firmly. “I’m a friend.”
He pouted a little. “Her’s still abed.”
“So I’ve been told.” I went past him and made my way to the kitchen, where Mrs. Eagle’s cook stood cracking eggs into a large mixpot with one hand and flipping rashers with the other.
“Morning, Almira.” I asked, nipping a piece of bacon from a platter and dodging a swat from her spatula. “Have you sent up her tea?”
“Why would I? She left word that she’s not to be disturbed before noon.” Almira nodded toward the kettle. “If I were you, I’d drop in a pinch of willowbark.”
I winced. “Rough trade last night?”
“Mariners in for their first shore leave since the Skirmish.” She pulled a whisk from her apron pocket and began beating the eggs. “Randy boys, the lot of them.”
I made up a tray and took it to the back stairs, where I carried it up one flight to the mistress’s chambers. Walking into Mrs. Eagle’s private sanctuary was like crossing the threshold of a dark church: a cool rush of shadows and incense-scented air. I made my way to the cart carefully, and after depositing the tray, I lit the wall lamp and turned to the bed.
“For the love of Jesu,” a muffled voice said from beneath a mound of golden silk puffs. “Piss off.”
I poured and carried a cup of tea over to the mound. “You know this is why your mother wanted you to be a nun.”
“Too hard on the knees.” A small head of tousled blond hair appeared, and a slender hand took the cup from me. “What do you want, and sweet Mary, don’t say anything that involves my bum in motion, or I’ll thump you.”
“As ever-tempted as I am by your charms”—I sat down on the edge of the mound—“I came for a gown.”
She waved a hand toward her armoire of indecently beautiful negligees as she guzzled the tea. “Take whatever you want and be gone with you.”
“Not that sort of gown.”
She pushed a handful of hair out of her eyes to give me an irate squint. “You said you were through working the Hill.”
“Special exception, just this one time,” I promised. “Someone’s taken the cut direct to a new and nasty level.”
She yawned. “How nasty?”
“Slicing hateful words into her skin while she sleeps.” I touched a whisker burn on her cheek. “Does that sound like anyone you’ve thrown out lately?”
“Chastity had a biter last month. Horrid man. I had Wrecker relieve him of his front teeth before showing him out.” She sat up and held out her cup. “More.”
I poured her tea and waited as my friend gradually roused. Without her jewels and cosmetics, Carina Eagle looked too young to be let out on her own. She had been, once upon a time, long before she had become the queen of backstreet brothels.
We’d found each other, Rina and I, drawn together as fellow outcasts in a society that wanted nothing to do with either of us. I’d had it a bit easier, coming to Rumsen as a penniless, nameless waif who’d had as much chance at being respectable as a hemp picker had of residing on the Hill.
Rina’s family had been merchant class, indecently successful, and had employed their hard-earned riches in hopes of marrying her off to better. The hard-fisted gambler they’d snagged had strung them along while gaming away her bride price. When the bleeding sod had wagered Rina’s maiden night in a card game, and lost, she’d been forced to pay the debt. The morning after, the vicious bastard had refused to marry her, claiming publicly that she was bespoiled goods, which conveniently canceled his financial and social obligations to her family. Rina had been ruined, of course, and turned out onto the streets.
I’d met Rina shortly after that, when she’d still been green enough to let herself be cornered. Stopping the brute I found beating her half to death in a back alley had required only a brick to the back of the head; the real task had been convincing her to come home with me so I could fix her up. She’d stayed with me for a few days,
