A Broken Vessel (30 page)

She gazed at his bent head in silence. Then she passed her other hand over his hair. “I been hard on you. I’m sorry. I just wanted to pay you out for being so toploftical before. You wouldn’t let on you fancied me—you was al’ays stalling me off. So when I seed how glad you was to have me back, I thought, turn-about’s fair play. But I didn’t mean nothing by it.”

“I suppose I deserved it. I really did make up my mind from the beginning to keep you at arm’s length for Dipper’s sake. The trouble was, you’d got under my skin more than I realized—after you left, I couldn’t stop thinking about you. And the strangest thing is, I was forever asking myself what I saw in you. I don’t know how I could have been in doubt. You’re clever and courageous and wholly adorable. What I see in you is what any man with eyes, ears, and blood in his veins would see.”

Her eyes shone. Then she looked rueful. “We was both wrongheaded. I was just as bad.”

“What do you mean?”

“It wasn’t just ’coz I fancied you that I was trying to get you up me petticoats. I wanted to prove you was the same as other coves—the mattress-jig was all you cared about. But later on, after I went to the refuge, I seen that wasn’t so. They treated me like dirt there—Wax-face and the matrons—but I didn’t mind; I’m used to it. ’Coz why, ’coz a game gal’s the lowest thing there is, and everybody knows it. You’re the only cove as ever treated me—I dunno, polite and respectful. Like I was a
lady
. I’d never’ve knowed what that was like if it hadn’t been for you.

“I’ll tell you some’ut else. I used to think a gentleman was a cove with swell togs and carriages, and a handle to his name. Now I knows different. A gentleman is just what it says: a cove as is gentle. Kind to people, treating ’em decent—’specially them as is weaker than you.”

He got up abruptly and walked a few paces away. “I don’t know how you can say that. I’ve been snapping at you all evening.”

“Well, I been asking for it, ain’t I? Tease a dog enough, and it’ll bite, no matter how gentle it is.” She went up and stood face to face with him, holding his hands. “I want to be with you tonight. But if you think it ain’t right, just say so, and I’ll never plague you about it no more.”

So it was over—the struggle and suspense between them. But it was not ending as he had expected, or resolved. Because in that moment, his perspective shifted. He had often tried to fathom what she meant to him; he had never once asked himself what he meant to her. Looking into her upturned face, he saw her for the first time, not as a seductress, but as offering him the only thing in the world she had to give. And, all at once, it no longer seemed wrong to accept, but churlish to refuse.

He took her in his arms. She blinked at him in surprise. He saw then how little she had expected from her appeal.

“You mean it?” she said. “You ain’t trying it on with me?”

For answer, he drew her closer, cupping her head in his hand so that her hair streamed through his fingers. His lips came down on hers, urging them sweetly open. He kissed her deeply, intoxicatingly.

“Last time I kissed you,” he murmured, against her lips, “you said it wasn’t a real kiss. Was that any nearer the mark?”

“I ain’t made up me mind,” she breathed, her wide grin teasing but tender. “You’ll have to do it again.”

CHAPTER
21

A
t midnight, Dipper tapped softly on the back basement window of the Prices’ shop. Annie hurried over with a candle and opened the window. He slipped through in the wink of an eye, having been trained from childhood to get inside houses by every means but the door. She hastened him from the back room to the front. A quick glance told him why: the back room was her bedchamber.

The front room was the kitchen. Annie stood clasping and unclasping her fingers. “Should—should I make some tea, or ought we to go—upstairs?”

“Biz’ness afore pleasure,” he said briskly.

She lit a second candle and gave it to him. They went past the shuttered shop on the ground floor to the office above. “Do you have the keys?” she asked.

“Got ’em.” He produced a brass ring with several keys on it. “Which one undubs this door?”

Annie touched his arm. “You—you didn’t have to hurt Pa, did you?”

“Bless your bright eyes, no!” Dipper laid down his candle and took her reassuringly by the shoulders. “I done him over very gentle, like this.” He lifted her apron pocket lightly with his left hand and slipped the fore and middle fingers of his right hand in and out.

“I didn’t even feel that.”

“You ain’t s’posed to. So don’t you worrit about your pa. I wouldn’t hurt a hair of his head.”

“I’m sorry. I do trust you, mostly. But sometimes I’m a bit afeard of you. I never met a thief before.”

“I ain’t a thief no more. See, I’m giving you back the keys, and you can tell your pa he must’ve left ’em at home.”

He put them in her hand, his fingers closing around hers. She did not draw her hand away. He reminded himself that there was work to be done and let her go. She turned the key in the lock, and they went in.

The office was grubby and impersonal. Its only furnishings were a deal writing-table and chair, two stiff-backed chairs for visitors, and a hat-tree by the door with a man’s black coat hanging on it. Annie started on seeing the coat and clung to Dipper’s arm.

“That don’t means he’s here,” he whispered soothingly. “It’s prob’1y his second-best coat, as he sports in the office to save his best for wearing on the street.” Though it seemed strange that Rawdon should practise such economies, when he could afford to buy a fine house in Shoreditch and fill it with costly furnishings.

To be on the safe side, he poked his head into the back room and shone his candle around. There was no one there. This room was even barer than the one in front. All it contained was a wash-stand, a cabinet, and a large oak chest.

He returned to the front room. “We’ll start here.”

There was little to investigate. The room had few bodily comforts, and nothing to throw light on Rawdon’s taste or personality. There were no pictures on the walls, the mantelpiece was bare, and the fireplace held only a grimy hob-grate, a poker, and a coalscuttle. On the writing-table were blotting-paper, ink, several pens and pencils, a tinderbox, and a leatherbound ledger-book. It was the book that interested Dipper.

He and Annie went through it together, sitting side by side in the visitors’ chairs. The first half was full of entries, all written in the same cramped, clerkly hand. The rest of the book was blank. There were only six kinds of articles listed: tea-pot, tea-chest, tea-urn, coffee-pot, coffee-mill, and coffee-urn.

“Is that what they deal in?” wondered Annie.

“Seems a bit rum,” said Dipper, frowning.

Many of the items bore a brief description: porcelain or japan-work, gilded or painted, plain or fancy. A few were identified as having arrived cracked. Most had one or two letters written beside them in the margin, followed by a number between five and thirty. Some items had parentheses around them in pencil; a few had parentheses in ink. Several were crossed out with a bold black line.

“It’s a queer sort of ledger,” said Annie. “It don’t say where the goods come from, nor who they’ve been sold to. And it don’t give any dates or prices.”

“Let’s have a look next door,” said Dipper. “Maybe there’s more records in there.”

In the cabinet, they found office supplies: candles, foolscap, a few envelopes, a stack of blotting-paper, and a bottle of ink. The chest contained two more ledger-books, with the same kinds of entries as the one on the desk. But these books were full, and obviously older. Many more of the items were in parentheses or crossed out.

There were also several account books listing office expenses, such as rent, coal, paper, and ink. “It must be a much bigger business than it seems,” said Annie. “Look at all they pay for dinners and post-chaises and hackney coaches. It can’t be Mr. Rawdon who travels so much—he’s in his office ’most every day.”

“And he leaves by five—ain’t that what you told me?”

“Yes.”

“Then why does he need so many candles?”

They looked at each other, baffled.

Dipper explored both rooms more closely, tapping on the panels and floorboards and running his hands over the furniture. He could find no secret compartments. The whole place reminded him of Rawdon himself: outwardly nondescript, but when you scratched the surface, sinister and enigmatic.

It was very cold, since they dared not light a fire for fear of leaving traces behind. Dipper saw that Annie was shivering inside her shawl. “We might as well morris off,” he said. “There ain’t nothing else to smoke out here.”

He went about making sure they left everything exactly as they found it. Spying a few drops of tallow on the floor, he carefully scraped them off. They went downstairs, locking the office door behind them.

In the kitchen, Annie hung a kettle over the fire and brought out a flask of gin, a sugar-basin, and two lemons. She set them on a table and cut the lemons in half, squeezing the juice into a large bowl. Dipper offered to help, but she assured him she could manage. He sat down at the table, watching her, his chin propped on his hands.

“We didn’t find out much, did we?” she sighed. “We still don’t know what business Mr. Rawdon is in.”

“Whatever it is, it’s on the cross,” said Dipper positively. “Maybe he’s a fence. That’d account for why his records don’t say where the moveables comes from, nor who buys ’em. ’Cept, who ever heard of a fence as only works tea and coffee things? And why keep all them ledgers, if the goods is pinched? He’d want to get shut of ’em double-quick—he wouldn’t want to leave any record he ever had ’em, much less what they looked like. You know what? I think it’s all some kind of dodge. I think the words in them ledgers means some’ut else.”

“What?”

“I dunno. But me master might. He’s a rare hand at nob-work.” He tapped his head.

She mixed the grog, taking little tastes to see if the proportions were right. “Does he know you’ve been trying to find out about Mr. Rawdon?”

“Yeh. I told him, and he said he’d help if he could.” Dipper thought it best not to tell her about Mr. Kestrel’s investigation of Mary’s death. She would be even more frightened if she knew they suspected Rawdon of murder.

She poured them each a glass of hot gin-twist, and they sat before the fire, Dipper bringing his chair unobtrusively closer to hers. “You have a young man?” he asked.

“I did have. We was going to be married, but then the landlord of the Bear and Chain died, and John married his widow. She was old enough to be his mother.” Resentment flickered in her eyes, then died down to wistfulness. “He’d always wanted to keep a public.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It happens sometimes.” She poked the fire. “I wonder what I ought to do now—about Mr. Rawdon, I mean. I can’t tell Pa what we’ve found out. He wouldn’t turn Mr. Rawdon out—after all, there’s no proof he’s doing anything illegal. He’d only give me the rough side of his tongue for spying on him.”

“I’d leave it for a bit, if I was you. We might find out some’ut more.”

“Does—does that mean you might come back?”

“Oh, uncommon often.” He smiled at her.

She smiled back, her great grey eyes gleaming softly in the firelight.

He cocked his head considering. “If I was to kiss you, and you didn’t like it, I wouldn’t have to do it again.”

She blushed and sat shyly waiting. He kissed her gently, experimentally. It seemed to go off rather well, so he kissed her again. They stood up in order to get closer, then got down on the hearthrug, to be closer still.

“Don’t you think I’m very forward?” she said hiding her face in his coat.

“I think you’re tip-top, a reg’lar first-rater.”

“It’s just that I’ve been so lonely.”

“On account of some cove’d rather keep a public than look in them sparklers of yours?” He kissed her closed eyes. “He’s a
cod’s-head, as wouldn’t know pure gold if it bit him. He don’t bear thinking about no more.”

“I’m not thinking about him now,” she murmured.

“What you thinking, then?”

She buried her face in his shoulder again. “I’m thinking— I’m thinking we’d be more comfortable in my bed.”

CHAPTER
22

“
I
can’t call you Lightning no more,” said Sally, snuggling into Julian’s shoulder.

“You don’t think I’m flash anymore?” he said, smiling.

“It ain’t that.” She came up on her elbow, her long brown hair brushing his chest. “But lightning’s quick. Which you ain’t.”

She kissed him lingeringly. He gathered her against him, his hands running along her back and twining in her hair.

She arched like a satisfied cat, then nestled in his shoulder again. “You ain’t sorry we done it?”

“Do I seem sorry?”

“No. But now it’s over, you might mind about Dip. You know, he don’t have to find out. I can make up his bed like I slept in it, and he won’t be none the wiser.”

“I don’t want you to have to lie to him.”