The gentleman didn’t bother to glance back. But why should he? It was a wonder he was involved in any way in the common task before him. “Distribute the rest as you see fit,” the young lord said, heading for his grand carriage.
“He don’t care,” she said, unable to keep a frantic note from creeping in. “And I’m not a whore,” she felt compelled to add. Because a pompous one like him who’d mentioned it would care.
Sniffing at the air, he bypassed her, ignoring her assurances and handing the offering over to—
“You,” she spat.
Meg Silvers, the most notorious seller of both flowers and her body and now also a notorious sellout to Rand Graham, smirked. “Step aside.”
That bastard had come and solicited help from those who’d grown up and still lived in these parts. For their fealty and information he found useful, he gave them protection in the form of safety and monies.
Several of the children who stood in wait assessed the arrival of Meg Silvers. Knowing the threat they faced now if they secured flowers over her, a favored hand of Rand Graham, those children scattered.
Fury licked at Julia’s insides. She’d be cursed to hell and back before she ceded these flowers to this sellout. Edging Meg Silvers out with a swift elbow, she angled herself in front of the other woman and held her arms up to the servant. “Give me a bloody case.”
“Phew, the mouth on you,” the man spat as he drew that offering back.
No!
Everything in Julia cried out at the loss of that gift, one that would have seen them fed and the rent paid and without worries for at least two months.
“You can keep your damned flowers,” she shouted, waving a fist.
She dimly registered someone tugging at her sleeve.
“We are, and we’ll give them to more thankful, more grateful people than the likes of you.” The nasally nosed bastard flicked a glance over Julia before handing that crate and then another and another to Meg and the children and other women who’d resumed swarming them.
Desperation nearly brought her doubling over as she surged forward. “She’s not more grateful. She’s a liar. She is the wh—”
“Julia. Julia,” Adairia said more insistently. “Come.”
She allowed herself to be dragged away, her gaze locked on the dwindling supply and the cheering children until the mirth faded, and the carriages rolled away. The streets returned to their usual bustling activity, devoid of charity and filled with the cries of the piteous hawking their wares.
Julia sank down onto the slight stoop where the pavement met the cobblestones and stared forlornly out.
Gone.
It was all gone.
“We didn’t need their flowers anyway,” Adairia said with her usual sunny optimism.
Something snapped. “Actually, we did, Adairia,” she exclaimed. “We needed every single one of those damned flowers. To sell. To dry and then sell.”
“But we can have more than flowers.” The younger woman withdrew a small official-looking sheet and waggled it under Julia’s nose. “Oswyn gave me this. It is from a detective whose been sending queries around St.—”
Cursing, Julia ripped the page from her friend’s hand hard and fast enough that it shredded at the corner, leaving a remnant of the damning scrap in Adairia’s fingers. “Have a care,” Julia ordered the younger woman. “Lest someone discover you with this.”
Julia should be kinder, and she should be more patient and understanding, but the other woman didn’t know the level of danger she played with. If anyone How could she not realize that? And worse, how could she believe this shite?
But they all did what they had to to cope in these parts. Her friend had opted to live a life of make-believe, where she wasn’t just some fatherless bastard whelped by a whore and turned into a flower seller.
Adairia frowned. “You don’t believe it.”
Julia stole a frantic look about. “I believe you should put this away,” she muttered, and hopping to her feet, she promptly folded and stuffed the ivory page inside the front of her dress.
All that fucking Graham had brought to their step was potential peril. She damned that ruthless bastard to hell.
“But there’s this detective and Graham who are both saying—”
“To hell with Graham,” Julia interrupted. “Graham is consolidating power and flushing out people who might have been disloyal to Diggory so he can purge people he deems traitors.”
Adairia proved as persistent in this as she did in that fanciful dream she’d allowed herself to believe since she’d been all but a babe. “But—”
“How have you still not learned that a person doesn’t bring attention to themselves in the Rookeries?” Or claim that you are a rightful lady taken from a noble family by the ruthless people who still dwell in these parts?
Her friend smiled. “Because sometimes there are things too wonderful to turn away from. Because fear should not chase away chance and hope and truth.”
Why, that rumor alone that her friend spoke so freely of was enough to see a woman with the hilt of a dagger buried in her throat. Because the ones who’d supposedly had a hand in the disappearance of a child, were also the ones who’d pay for those crimes.
She’d failed the other woman. There was nothing else for it. Julia shuddered.
Understanding dawned in Adairia’s eyes. “Ahhh…”
Do not say more. She’s only put that soft little utterance there to get you to say more. Do not. Do—
Julia hopped to her feet. “What?” she snapped.
With all the grace and aplomb of the princess she’d professed to be, Adairia sailed to her feet. “You’re scared,” the other woman murmured in her soft, lyrical speech. “But you don’t have to
