Unraveled (8 page)

S
MITE WOKE TO HEAD-POUNDING
confusion. A twisting burn of pain at the back of his skull warred with the dryness of his mouth. Straws poked his back; a warm, wet cloth lay on his forehead. The air around him was thick with a perplexing mixture of smells: heavy coal smoke, overboiled wheat, lye soap, and over everything, a heavy, distasteful scent that put him in mind of the worst of the street’s refuse.

Gradually, memory returned. He’d chased after Miss Darling in the gloom of a cloudy afternoon, ducking through the alleys of Temple Parish. He’d put his arm around her. She’d yelled at him. And then, the last thing he could bring to mind: her eyes cutting up and to the right, widening at what she saw behind him.

So. Her surprise hadn’t been a ruse.

That explained the knot of hurt at the back of his head. Someone had struck him from behind.

And now he didn’t know where he was or who held him. The thought of moving made his head whirl. He wasn’t precisely in a position to fight his way to safety.

“Wash your hands,” a voice said, not so far away. “It’s time to eat.” Not just a voice; it was Miss Darling. Rather a relief; he didn’t think she intended him any harm.

Smite also didn’t think that a bare nod to hygiene would make any difference, not with that scent of sewage so prominent. An unfortunate consequence of living in the poorer areas. No matter how the authorities tried to stamp out the practice, people would toss the contents of their chamber pots in the streets.

“I don’t want to.”
That
voice was unfamiliar. Flat and monotone, it hovered just barely above baritone range.

Miss Darling sighed. “Don’t be difficult.”

“You’re not my mother.” There were clinking sounds—dishes being moved, perhaps? He tried slitting his eyes open, but his head was turned full toward a window, and the red rays of sunlight left him temporarily blind.

“What does it matter, Robbie?” Miss Darling said. “I’m trying to do what’s best for you. Can’t you see that?”

“Ha,” came the morose response from the other occupant.

Smite couldn’t see him, but he could form an image in his mind of this
Robbie
. Young and hulking, if one trusted that voice. Muscular. A sweetheart, perhaps? He found himself vaguely annoyed by the thought of Miss Darling entertaining so boorish a lover.

“I can’t believe you hit him,” Miss Darling said.

“Huh,” came the man’s brilliantly articulate reply.

Wood scraped against wood. Smite moved his head a fraction, angling it away from the window, and slitted his eyes open again. From beneath his eyelashes, he could make out silhouettes against the light.

By the voice, Smite had expected Robbie to be a large, surly fellow, barely into manhood. But Robbie was a thin reed of a child, his voice desperately outsized in a scrawny body. Miss Darling, not precisely tall herself, towered a good six inches over him.

“You don’t let me do anything,” Robbie rumbled. Or rather, he attempted to rumble. His voice quavered on the last syllable, hanging on the verge of breaking until he cleared his throat and deliberately dropped it a handful of notes. “Can’t take work at the mills. And now Joey says I’m not to be allowed to work with him either. That’s ready money you’re stopping me from getting, to be had for the taking.”

“We both know how Joey gets his money. He’s working with the Patron. I don’t want to see you hanged.”

“Ha,” Robbie repeated.

Smite was unsure what Robbie was, but he was fast building up a list of things that he was
not
. He was not an adult. He was not Miss Darling’s lover. He was not a stunning conversationalist.

“If you go to work for the Patron, Robbie, so help me I will toss you out on your ear. It is not safe. Now promise me you won’t even try.”

Sullen silence. Then—“What, I’m not even allowed to try a little dipping, but you can do whatever you wish?”

“What do you mean?”

“Why else would you be so angry when I hit that cove? You were planning to sell it to him.”

Miss Darling gasped, and a slap echoed. That sound made the silence that followed all the more pressing. Smite could barely make out the details of the scene—Miss Darling, holding one hand in the other, looking down at her fingers as if she couldn’t believe what she’d done, and Robbie, his own hand rubbing his cheek.

“Right, then,” Robbie rumbled. He shoved away from the table and opened the door. Smite felt a breath of cool air against his face. “Charge him double. After all, he brought company.”

“Where are you going? You haven’t eaten.”

Smite turned his face toward the draft, but his head throbbed and he shut his eyes, dizzy once more.

“Going to smoke with Joey,” Robbie said. “And don’t give me that look—at least smoking’s healthful. Everyone says so.”

The door slammed, and the reverberation echoed through Smite’s throbbing head. But pain or no, he could reconstruct what had happened. Robbie had come upon Smite accosting Miss Darling, and had struck him a blow from behind. Presumably, the two of them had brought him up here, rather than leaving him facedown in the streets. Whoever Robbie was, he was looking for trouble…and dragging Miss Darling into it, right alongside him.

A mess, and Smite had landed himself squarely in the middle of it. He exhaled covertly.

Miss Darling was alone now. Her hair caught the last rays of the sun through what appeared to be a garret window. It seemed to catch into a brilliant orange—like a stack of foolscap thrown on the fire, bursting into flame.

She covered her face with her hands. “Oh, God,” she moaned. “What am I going to do?” Her body curled in on itself. She brought her knees up on the seat beside her and hugged them close, rocking back and forth. It was still impossible to judge her age. She looked young now. Alone and unprotected.

Not a comfortable realization, that. She hid her vulnerability so well that his discovery felt curiously intrusive. As if he’d seen her stripped to her chemise, and she hadn’t yet realized he was looking. He shut his eyes, giving her the privacy she thought she had.

He didn’t think she would want him to watch her weep.

Instead, she sighed and he heard the rustle of fabric, the sound of steam being released, and the dull clank of wood on metal. Stirring the pot on the hob, he guessed.

“No,” she said aloud. “You can’t have any. I’ve already got laundry to send out because of you.”

Another poor choice on her part. She had to eat. It was a foolish economy to skimp on her own meals to feed her surly charge; if she wasn’t eating, it was hardly surprising that she made bad decisions.

“You really don’t want any,” she continued. “Don’t give me that look. Dogs don’t eat gruel.”

Dogs?

His eyes flew all the way open and he half sat up. From this new vantage point, he could see everything: the carpets on the floor, so worn he could see the wood beneath them; the whitewash flaking from the walls. What furniture there was consisted of old trunks and barrels with blankets tossed over them. Miss Darling stood at the hob, spooning something white and porridge-looking into a bowl.

And yes, a dog sat next to her, watching with a hopeful expression that Smite knew all too well. Not that he could see it at this distance. But he recognized that expectant quiver in the dog’s haunches.

Of course, it was not just
a
dog; it was
his
dog. Suddenly Robbie’s line about bringing company made sense. Ghost had tracked him down. Smite’s eyesight blurred, and then focused on the creature’s silhouette. Gray muzzle. Gray chest. Paws… Damn. No longer white and pristine.

That smell he’d dismissed as a consequence of living in the slums? It wasn’t caused by poor sanitation. It was his dog. His own disgustingly filthy animal. Ghost appeared to have found every pile of horse manure between here and the Council House.

“Ghost!” Smite said sharply. “Get away from there. Stop your begging this instant.” His own voice sent a pulse of pain through his head.

Ghost turned, saw Smite sitting up on his elbow, and launched across the room. His paws were positively black, his chest spattered with drying mud—yes, Smite was going to call that dark filth
mud
out of grim optimism. Ghost, of course, had no idea that he was in disgrace, and so gave him a delighted bark, beating the air enthusiastically with his tail.

Turner shook his head. “What did you do with yourself? Drag yourself through a tour of the middens of Bristol?”

Ghost made an abortive attempt to leap onto him—the better to share the smell of those middens—and Smite made a sharp gesture, sending the dog to his haunches.

“You’re a disgusting animal,” Smite said, “and I’ll most likely rid myself of you in the morning. Now behave yourself. I’ve got someone I need to talk to.” He pushed himself up to a sit. His head spun dizzily, but so long as he balanced himself on his arms, he could hold himself upright and look over at Miss Darling.

Ghost danced around again, spinning in circles—

“You’re making me dizzy,” Smite told him. “Lie down and wait.”

There were a great many complaints one could make about Ghost. Palter, in fact, had made most of them. But when the animal was given a direct command, he obeyed. On that, he lowered himself to the floor and fixed his gaze on Smite.

Miss Darling was watching him, too, and unlike Ghost, she did not seem overjoyed to see him. Her eyes were red but dry.

“Are you going to arrest me, Your Worship?” she asked directly.

“No.” He rubbed his head and looked up. “My head is pounding too much to consider it.”

She walked to him. As she came closer, Ghost stood up and crossed to investigate her, gray head lifted, sniffing gently. She didn’t seem to notice the dog; instead, she sat on the straw tick beside him.

“You shouldn’t be sitting up, you know. You’ve had a head injury, and they can be quite perilous.” She was inches from him.

“I’m perfectly well,” he said.

She frowned dubiously at that. “You can never be sure. I knew someone who hit his head and then dropped dead the next day.”

She reached to touch his cheek, and he grabbed her hand.

“I said, I’m perfectly well.”

But he wasn’t. A flutter of…of
something
passed through him. Something barely recognizable. His hand fit around hers. She was warm, and he could feel calluses on her fingertips. She wasn’t a lady, no matter how exalted her accent at the moment; he could feel the evidence against his palm. Her rough hands should have reminded him of the gulf between them.

There were too many differences: he was wealthy; she was not. She’d appeared in his courtroom; he might have to see her again.

But when he took hold of her hand, he was most aware of the other sharp distinction between them. He was a man. And she was, undoubtedly, a woman.

She looked down at him, at his grip on her, and slowly, he let her fingers loose.

She pulled away. “Well. My apologies for interfering.”

His hand still tingled where he’d touched her; he made a fist of it. “If I’m going to drop dead, I’ll do so regardless of whether you prod at me.”

“Yes, but if you drop dead
here,
I’ll be stuck disposing of your body.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “I have enough to worry about.”

It hurt to smile, so much so that he winced when he tried. “Well, then. I’ll do my best to drag my sorry carcass away if I feel the sudden urge to keel over.” He ran his hand over his face. “Why did you go to the records room?”

“Looking for records,” she muttered evasively.

“What sort of records?”

She paused and looked up to her right. “I have a friend,” she said slowly. “George Patten. He was put away two months ago, and due to be released yesterday, yet he’s disappeared entirely. He wasn’t let go. He’s not in gaol. I don’t know where he is.” There was a twitch in her cheek.

“Those records would be kept at the gaol,” Smite said. “You don’t imagine that the records of daily dealings at the gaol would find their way to the Council House a mere day after the events in question. Tell me the truth, Miss Darling.”

She raised her eyes and let out a long exhale. “Someone asked me to get a list of all the men employed by the police force,” she said quickly.

Likely, that was the truth.

“I don’t think you should have anything to do with
someone,”
he said.

“Of course I shouldn’t.” She stood up and paced away. “Especially as he didn’t even want the list. I don’t like having games played with my safety. But—”

“But you’re in over your head, and you’ve someone else to watch over. It’s not easy surviving by yourself.”

“I—yes.” She looked at him, her eyes crinkled in puzzlement. “I wouldn’t have imagined you would understand. It is, after all, just one of those excuses that you decried the last time we spoke.”

Smite had his own experience of Bristol life, decades old now. But he simply shook his head. “It’s always difficult when responsibilities tug you in different directions.”

“Difficult.” She let out a sigh. “I feel like Antigone, operating under two incompatible directives.”

Smite froze. “Antigone.” He glanced up at her. “How do you know Antigone?”

She waved a hand. “I was raised by actors. You shouldn’t be shocked that I have some passing familiarity with plays.”

“Passing familiarity, yes, but…
Antigone
has not yet been translated from the Greek.”

“One of the members of our troupe was translating it.” She delivered this airily, with no sense of how remarkable that might have been.

There were only a handful of scholars who could have even attempted such a thing. Men who translated ancient Greek were fellows at Oxford. They didn’t traipse about the countryside putting on performances for rural audiences.

It wasn’t often that Smite was rendered stupid. “But… You were truly raised by actors?” It didn’t come out as quite a question. He’d already noticed that over the course of their conversation, her accent had drifted toward the learned tones of an Oxonian. Her vocabulary was far beyond what he would have expected from a poor seamstress.