Unraveled (4 page)

Miranda shut her eyes and raised her face to the rain. It felt freeing to have her skin washed clean of its suffocating layer of rice powder and rouge. She pulled a handkerchief from her basket and wiped her brows, her cheeks. The remains of Daisy Whitaker disappeared in a smear of rouge and the coal dust she’d used to darken her lashes.

She let her handkerchief fall, opened her eyes—and jumped back. A man was standing directly in front of her. She hadn’t even heard him approach.

“I do beg your pardon,” the man—the
gentle
man, by that haughty accent—said.

He didn’t sound as if he was begging her anything. From the proper tone of his speech, he’d never had to beg at all—just buy. There was something familiar about his voice, though. As if to reinforce that sense of familiarity, he reached out and placed a gloved hand on her wrist.

She sized him up in one instant, taking in the thick, fine wool of his greatcoat and the snow-white of his cuffs, peeking out beneath well-made sleeves. His shoes were polished black, with no creases worn in the leather. His cravat had been fastidiously starched. She couldn’t find even a solitary piece of lint on his clothing, a surer sign of wealth than even his shiny brass buttons. He was handsome in an austere sort of way, his features sharp, his eyes clear and blue in contrast with the ebony of his hair. Incongruously, a dusting of white powder touched the shoulders of his coat.

He wore no hat, which didn’t fit at all.

Still, she had his measure. Rich. Handsome. And not very intelligent, if he’d ventured into an alley in Temple Parish wearing shoes like
that
.

No doubt he was looking to buy himself a little pleasure. Pleasure often made men stupid.

“Let go of me.” She let her own accent creep toward the common—consonants sliding together, vowels eliding.

The stranger relinquished his hold on her wrist and stepped into a doorway, just out of the rain. He didn’t take his eyes off her, though. There was something arrogantly peremptory about the way he perused her from head down to toe, and then back again.

She raised her chin. “The whores are all back by the Floating Harbour. I’m not for sale, and so I’ll thank you not to eye me like a piece of flesh.”

He did not appear the least put off by her vulgarity. “I’m not looking for a whore from the harbor.”

“Well, I’m not like to take you.” She snorted. “What’s wrong with you, then? Must be something dreadful, if a pretty thing like yourself is forced to pay for a tumble.”

“Pretty?” He shook his head in bemusement. “I haven’t been called pretty in years. I’m afraid you have the matter entirely backward. I came here looking for you, darling.”

“Darling?” Miranda bristled. “I’ve not given you leave to address me by something so familiar.”

“If ever I address you with an intimacy, you’ll know it. Darling is your name, is it not?”

Her face was turned toward the glassworks, where heat radiated out the open door. Still, she felt suddenly cold all over. How did he know her? What did he want?

And there was the indisputable fact that he was taller than her. Bigger. Stronger. She had safe passage from the thieves and the bullyboys, but the Patron had no control over gentlemen.

Miranda took a step backward. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, mister.”

“Mister.” A half-smile crossed his face, and he took a step toward her. Up close, that grin looked like the self-satisfied expression of a shark closing in on a hapless fish.

The smattering of powder on his greatcoat was too evenly distributed to be dandruff. She of all people should have recognized it: it was wig-powder. But the only people who powdered their wigs these days were actors. Actors and—

Miranda felt the blood run from her face. He reached out and took hold of her wrist again, and this time, he drew her close.

“It’s simple,” he said, “Miranda Darling is the first name you gave me, and it would be best for you if that much turned out to be true. You’re certainly not Daisy Whitaker, no matter what you claimed today.”

He was supposed be fat. He was supposed be old. He was supposed to be back at the bleeding Council House.

“And as we’re establishing what we call one another,” he continued, “the proper form of address for me is not
mister.
It’s ‘Your Worship.’”

“Lord Justice,” Miranda heard herself say. “Oh,
shite.”

Chapter Three

S
MITE HAD ASSUMED THAT
Miss Miranda Darling was young—no more than the fifteen or so years of age that she’d acted earlier in the morning. Impressionable enough that he might frighten her into compliance with a stern little speech. But up close, he could see that she was not coltishly slender, just undernourished. Not desperately so—she wasn’t starving—but he very much doubted she ever ate to her satisfaction.

Aside from that one expletive, she had a presence to her, a self-possession that young girls lacked. He could feel the pulse in her wrist hammering against his grip, but she raised bright green eyes to him with just a hint of defiance…and something else.

If one judged age by the eyes, she was ancient.

One could never determine age properly in the more squalid districts. She might have been anywhere from nineteen to nine-and-twenty.

Her eyes widened; her pupils dilated. But she merely tossed her head, and the bright mass of reddish-orange hair slipped down her shoulder.

Most women in her situation would have lied, never mind that the falsehood would have been transparent.

She simply shifted her stance, angling away from him. “Well. What do you want?”

“You can start by thanking me.”

She glanced at his hand on her wrist, and curled her lip. “Am I supposed to thank you in some particular fashion?” Her gaze fell to his trousers.

“No.” He dropped her hand. “That’s appalling.”

“I hadn’t realized I was entirely repellent.”

“I’m not that sort,” he countered. “I wouldn’t take advantage.”

But he could see why others might. Objectively, she wasn’t pretty. She was too thin, and it pinched her features: her cheeks were a touch on the hollow side, her hands too scrawny for real elegance. A smattering of freckles covered her nose, and a flush rose over her skin—not pink and demure, but red and angry.

Not that plainness would have mattered. In the back slums, it would only have mattered that she was female and alone.

She wasn’t beautiful, but she had a vast store of defiant vitality that was all too attractive. He grimaced, and filed that observation away in the back of his mind.

“Let me spell matters out for you,” he said slowly. “You came into my courtroom in disguise, bearing a false name. There is only one reason you aren’t languishing in custody at the moment.”

“Your forbearance?

“My interference. I didn’t let them swear you in. As it is, you merely told lies. Perjury, by contrast, is punishable by six months in prison.”

She went utterly still.

“If you had actually committed that crime, it would have been my duty to act on the matter.”

Miss Darling licked her lips and looked away. “Thank you, then.” She glanced down the alleyway. “I can explain.”

Smite cut her off with a chop of his hand. “You can
excuse
. I’ve heard it all before. You didn’t have a choice. You did it for the common good.” As he spoke, he ticked off fingers. “You were hungry.” He shook his head. “I’m not interested in your pathetic reasons. This isn’t a hearing.”

“What is it, then?”

“A warning. Don’t tell tales in my presence. Don’t disguise yourself in my court. If ever I see you before me again, dressed as someone else and spouting falsehoods, I will have you arrested on the spot. And I won’t give this—” he snapped his fingers “—for your
excuses.”

She took a deep breath and eyed him. It was a canny look, that, one that sized him up and found him wanting all at once.

“Ah.” He took a step closer to her. “You think you can fool me. That you need only don the right disguise and I’ll look right past you. You’re wrong.”

She didn’t say anything.

“I saw you first on October the twelfth, a little more than one year past. You spoke on behalf of Eric Armstrong, a thirteen-year-old boy accused of striking a patrolman. I actually think you were telling the truth then. You were wearing a gown of dark crepe.”

Her mouth fell open.

“I glimpsed you in the hall eight months later. Then, you were dressed as a boy. I checked the records after; I believe you testified that one Tom Arkin was
not
the same boy who served as an apprentice to the chimney sweep.”

He could see her swallow, could trace the contraction down her throat.

“I remember you precisely,” he told her. “I’ll be looking for you. You can’t disguise yourself from me. Don’t even try.”

This time when she looked at him, he finally saw what he’d been waiting for. Fear. Real fear.

“You are inhumanly precise,” she finally said.

“Yes.” No point in quarreling over the truth. What did it matter, how inhuman his memory was, if it served his purpose? He’d scared her, and she would stay away. If he was successful, he’d never see her name on the gaol delivery lists. His inhumanity was a small price to pay for that.

“Enjoy the rest of your day, Miss Darling.” He reached up to tip his hat to her, but then remembered that he hadn’t brought one. He converted the gesture into a meaningful tap of his forehead and turned to leave.

He had taken four steps away when she spoke again. “Do you recall all your witnesses in such vivid detail, Your Worship?”

He paused, not looking back at her. “Yes,” he said. “I remember everything.” It was close enough to the truth to serve. His memory felt like dry leaves, pressed flat between the pages of some heavy book. The essence was preserved, but what remained was a poor facsimile for reality. He never could recall scents, and without those nothing seemed real.

He glanced at her over his shoulder. “I particularly remember you, Miss Darling.” He met her eyes.

He hadn’t meant it
that
way, but she raised her fingers to her lips, and a different sort of flush pinked her cheeks.

Nobody would call her beautiful, but she was striking. And perhaps some dormant part of him belatedly decided to notice that she’d called him pretty before she’d known who he was.

A woman. Wouldn’t that be nice?

No. Not this one. And definitely not now.

He shook his head, more at himself than to her, and left before his imagination could cause him any more trouble.

O
LD
B
LAZER WASN’T IN.
Miranda could tell in one breath when she opened the door to the little shop on Temple Street. No heavy pipe smoke greeted her. Only a faint, lingering bitterness, hours old.

Old Blazer was in less and less these days.

Miranda sidled past the secondhand gowns that hung on pegs, waiting for new owners. Spools of cheap ribbon and bolts of middling quality calico were displayed atop barrels and boxes.

She did not look to her left. If she did not see how she had fared, she couldn’t get any bad news.

She wasn’t sure if she should be happy about the old man’s absence. Only a faint, sour hint of pipe smoke remained to remind her of his presence. The two customers who were in the store were silent, looking through the wares. That, most of all, made the shop seem smaller and gloomier than usual. Usually, Old Blazer was chattering away. And unless he’d been set off on one of his famous rages, someone would have been laughing in response.

Miranda clutched her basket to her chest and tiptoed to the back of the store. The counter there, usually stacked with goods, had been cleared of everything but a red pincushion.

Jeremy Blasseur—Old Blazer’s grandson—was sitting on a stool, needle in hand. He was slender, and had a shock of sandy brown hair that curled of its own accord. He was frowning at a seam, which gave him a somewhat abstracted expression. It almost made her want to laugh, which would have been very wrong, because Jeremy was one of the most intensely sober individuals she had met. Especially these days.