A Gift for Guile (The Thief-takers) (3 page)

“I’ll make no promises until I know what sort of danger you’re facing.”

Damn it, she would have to compromise on the compromise. “I don’t know who he is. I don’t,” she insisted when he growled at her. Again. “I’ve no idea. I… Here. Look.” She retrieved her chatelaine bag from the bed and pulled out a small, torn piece of paper, which she handed to Samuel.

He read the short note in silence.

I know who you are. Meet Wed. Pddy sta. 6:00 p.m. Come alone. Bring 10p.

It was rather funny to watch his expression jump from grim to befuddled. “Ten pence? Ten
pence
?”

“It is most odd,” she agreed.

“What sort of blackmail is ten pence?”

“Perhaps he meant pounds,” she ventured, then shrugged when he gave her a dubious look. “It is as good a theory as any you’ve offered.”

He held up the note. “Was this sent to you in Derbyshire?”

“No, it was handed to me yesterday by a young boy in Spitalfields.”

“Spitalfields?” He dropped his hand. “You went to
Spitalfields
? You idiot.”

Oh, he did make it hard to be civil. “I am not an idiot.”

“You went to Spitalfields,” he repeated, very slowly. “Realm of rookeries and flash houses. Home to footpads and cutthroats and—”

“And people like me,” she finished for him.

“You are not—”

“I was born in Spitalfields.”

That seemed to bring him up short, but only briefly. “You may have been born there, but—”

“But I grew up in boardinghouses in places like Bethnal Green. Quite an improvement over the common lodging house of my infancy, I’m sure. We had a room, sometimes two to ourselves. Such luxury.”

“I don’t—”

“And when I was six, my father took us to Bath, where he swindled a small fortune from a young woman and used those ill-gotten gains to rent an entire house. We lived there for three months, until the young woman’s brother came home from abroad, broke into our house, beat my father senseless, shot him in the leg, and gave Lottie three pounds to see the lot of us out of town. We came back to Spitalfields.”

She paused, but he didn’t try to speak, which was a little disappointing. She rather liked interrupting him. “It was several more years before my father became a proficient criminal. I was ten the last time we paid for lodgings in the East End.”

And she’d been nineteen the last time she’d worked there with her father, but she didn’t mention it.

She gave him a look of reproach. “How quick you are to remind me of my filthy origins when it suits your purpose, and how easily you forget when it does not.”

“I didn’t mention your origins. You did.”

“I…” Oh. Right. She had. She was, perhaps, a mite touchy about her sordid past. Particularly in the company of someone like Samuel, whose pristine beginnings made her own seem even shabbier by comparison. But Samuel was not wholly without blame.

“You assumed I was waiting for a mark or an accomplice at the station,” she pointed out. And he’d been worried she might stab him in the carriage. That had cut to the quick. Years ago, she had flashed her blades at a few of her father’s more unpredictable cohorts because her father had asked it of her. She’d been a foolish young woman then. She wasn’t a monster now.

“I didn’t assume,” Samuel retorted. “I merely asked. And for what it’s worth, I didn’t know of your origins.”

Frowning, she retrieved the note from his hand. “How could you not?”

“Your father’s early career and whereabouts were always a mystery.”

“Renderwell must know by now.” As far as Esther could tell, Lottie told her husband every damned thing.

“Probably. He’s never mentioned it.” He studied her a moment, his expression one of idle curiosity. “You have the speech and manners of a lady of breeding.”

She didn’t mind curiosity, so long as it wasn’t a precursor for judgment and disdain. “My father’s doing. It’s difficult to swindle a class of people with whom you can’t converse. Father was a great mimic, and he taught us well. He wouldn’t allow anything but fine manners and speech under his roof. When we had one.”

“It’s an act?”

“No. I suppose it must have been, once,” she admitted. “But by the time we went to Bath, the fine accent and manners were natural to me.”

“Didn’t your friends wonder at both?”

“I didn’t have friends,” she replied, a little surprised at the question. “Father kept us isolated regardless of our neighborhood. He had too many enemies. When interaction could not be avoided, we used an alias.” And had learned early how to remember a fabricated family history. They had been the Oxleys, the Farrows, the Gutierrez family. Her father had quite enjoyed being Hernando Gutierrez, the dashing Spaniard who’d taken in his orphaned nieces and infant nephew. Lottie and Esther had been forced to call him Uncle Hernan for months. “I thought you knew all this as well.”

“I knew that to be the case when your father worked for us.” He tipped his head at her. “I didn’t know you’d always been alone.”

“I wasn’t alone. I had Lottie. And later Peter.” And she didn’t like the way he was looking at her. As if he pitied her. What was that but another kind of insult? “We are quite off topic. I am not an idiot for having gone to Spitalfields.”

“Anyone who goes into places like Spitalfields when they have a choice otherwise is an idiot.”

“That is unfair. There are decent, honest, hardworking people who live there.”

“A great many. But their combined innocence does not render the cutthroats less vicious. What were you doing there?”

She shook her head. A compromise went both ways. “I’ll have your promise first.”

Samuel scratched his bearded chin in a thoughtful manner. “If I agree to help you with your business, then you must agree that I am responsible for that business, and your safety, for as long as you are in London.”

“No.”
Good Lord, no.
She couldn’t believe he’d even suggest such a thing. Either he was jesting, he was testing her, or she had significantly overestimated his intelligence.

“Esther—”

“I’ll not take orders from you.” She didn’t take orders from anyone. “You may give orders, if you like, but I’ll not promise to follow them.”

“Orders that don’t have to be followed are called suggestions,” he replied in a bland tone.

“Then I shall agree to take your suggestions under advisement.”

His gaze traveled over her in an assessing manner that made her pulse quicken. “I could take you home in shackles.”

“And I could take myself back to London the next day. Or do you mean to play my gaoler for the rest of your life?”

He didn’t reply except to produce an angry humming noise in the back of his throat, which she very much hoped was not an indication that he was giving the gaoler idea serious consideration.

“Samuel, you cannot stop me from finishing my tasks in town. All I am asking is that you not make the process more difficult than it needs to be. For me, or my family.”

The humming noise stopped, but his hands opened and closed into fists at his sides. Imagining themselves curved about her throat, no doubt.

“Fine,” he bit off at last. “I’ll help you and keep your secret for the duration of your visit.”

“Excellent.” Oh,
excellent
. Esther hadn’t wanted to admit it, even to herself, but once she’d decided on making use of Samuel, she’d quickly become enthusiastic about the idea. For the last few days, she had been alone in London. Alone and, at times, a little frightened. With Samuel at her side—

“
Provided
—” Samuel added, holding up a single finger. “You are not in town for reasons that are monstrously stupid.”

She should have known he wasn’t finished. “Define ‘monstrously stupid.’”

He dropped his hand. “
Define
it?”

“‘Stupid’ is a relative term.”

“No,” he replied. “It really isn’t.”

“It certainly is. I believe my reasons are sound, but you might very well think them stupid.” She rather assumed he would, in fact. He’d already declared her an idiot for going to Spitalfields.

“I didn’t say stupid, I said
monstrously
stupid. If you’ve come to town to tread the boards, I am going to wire Scotland and haul you home, promise or no promise.”

Treading the boards wouldn’t be stupid, it would be suicide. If that was the sort of behavior that worried him, she was probably safe. “Very well. But if you break your promise over what I am about to tell you, I warn you—I will make your life a living hell.”

“No change for me, then,” he said dryly and made a prompting motion with his hand. “Tell me why you’re in London and why you went to Spitalfields, then.”

“I have come to town to find someone.”

“Someone from your youth? You know better,” he chided. “Your father kept you isolated for good reason.”

“Not someone I knew. Someone…” Oh, this was going to be an uncomfortable conversation. “I was looking for… That is, I am looking for my father.”

Sympathy and a fair amount of trepidation passed over his face. “Esther,” he said in a tone usually reserved for calming overexcited children and raving lunatics. “Your father is dead.”

“No, not Will Walker,” she replied impatiently. “My natural father. The man my mother ran off with when Lottie was two and abandoned to return to Will Walker a few months before I was born.”

He appeared perplexed rather than surprised. Evidently her illegitimacy was something Renderwell had seen fit to tell him. “Why?”

“Why did my mother leave him?” she asked, knowing full well that wasn’t his question. “Because that was what the woman did. She arrived, she charmed, she took money, she left. Eventually, and to the regret of all, she came back again.”

“No, why do you want to find this man?”

She bit her lip and shook her head. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“I certainly don’t at present.”

And he never would. She couldn’t claim to know every detail of his early youth, but Lottie had mentioned once that Samuel’s father was a vicar somewhere in the south. How could she possibly explain to the son of a vicar what it meant to wish for a better father and a better life? “It doesn’t matter why. I do, that’s all.”

“He lives in Spitalfields?”

“He did nine years ago.”

“How do you know?”

She reached into her bag again and produced a second torn piece of paper. “Last year, when Lottie and I were arranging to have our things moved from Willowbend to Greenly House, I found a portion of a letter that had fallen behind a drawer in an old desk. It was from my father. Mr. George Smith.”

She gave him the scrap of paper but didn’t wait for him to read it. “There isn’t much to it. Mr. Smith asks after my mother’s health. He hopes she is well. He assures her he is well, and the rest is missing. But look.” She tapped the other side of the letter, where a date and part of the address remained intact.
Mr. George Smith, No 58, Commercial Street, London.
“I’m told it used to be a grocers, but it was lost to a fire some years ago. I was also told that Mr. Smith survived, but no one knows for certain what happened to him after the fire. A few people did seem to think he moved to either Rostrime Lane in Bow or to a street in Bethnal Green with ‘apple’ in its name. Or possibly ‘pear.’”

That wasn’t strictly true. One person had mentioned a fruit-themed street in Bethnal Green. She knew for entirely different reasons that her father had lived on Rostrime Lane the year
before
he’d sent the letter from Spitalfields.

Samuel frowned at the note. “This couldn’t have been meant for your mother. It was written well after her death.”

“Five years after,” she agreed. “He must not have known. I don’t know how else to explain it. Perhaps there had been no contact between them after my birth. Perhaps the letter was an attempt to reestablish that connection.” Though how the man had known where to send the letter remained a mystery. “I can’t imagine he kept up a correspondence with Will Walker.”

“How do you know Mr. Smith is your father? There is no mention of a child in this note.”

“My mother told me.” The lie slipped off her tongue without thought. She regretted it immediately but couldn’t find it in herself to take it back. The truth required a long and painful explanation, and she’d quite had her fill of explanations today. “Before her death, she told me his name.”

Samuel handed the letter back to her. “Did you wear your veil in Spitalfields?”

“Yes, of course. Only…” She winced. “I lifted it to speak to an elderly woman. She had difficulty hearing. It helped her to see my lips. It was only the once.”

“Once was enough. Someone recognized you.”

She blew out a short, aggravated breath. “It would seem so.”

Rather than put the loathsome mourning bonnet back on, Esther hid behind a folding screen while their meal was brought in the room and set out on a small table before the fireplace.

Sometimes, it felt as if she’d spent the whole of her life hiding. From the police, from her neighbors, from her father’s friends and his enemies alike. And now from a trio of silly young maids who giggled nervously at Samuel’s every request.

She couldn’t judge them harshly for it. Samuel cut an imposing figure. In part because there was just so much of him but mostly because
so much of him
was undeniably appealing. His muscular physique and rough-hewn features were hardly fashionable, but fashionable wasn’t always what a lady desired in a man. Some women might sigh over a pretty prince, but others preferred the captain of the guard.

It was Samuel’s eyes, however, that compelled a lady to take a second look. They were such an unusual shade of gray, very nearly the color of steel, but sprinkled with warm flecks of gold about the irises. And on the rare occasions that he smiled, they crinkled nicely at the corners. He looked cheerful then, kind and approachable, like a man who welcomed your company and conversation.

She could count on one hand the number of times she’d seen him smile like that. Not one of those smiles had been meant for her.

“Leave the lids,” Samuel said. “You may go, thank you.”

Esther rolled her eyes at the ensuing round of giggles. However understandable their admiration, she wished the maids would hurry about their chore and be gone. Her mouth watered at the aroma of warm bread and roasted meat. Riddled with nerves, she’d not eaten since the day before. She was famished.

As soon as the door shut on the last giggle, she darted out from behind the screen and pulled the lid off one of the platters.

Oh, asparagus. She adored asparagus.

Samuel gestured for her to take a seat. “You’re fond of asparagus, I believe.”

“Yes. How did you know?”

He pulled out his own chair and began removing the other lids. “You mentioned it.”

“Did I? When?”

“Last year. On the twenty-eighth of June.”

She stopped midreach for her napkin. “That is very specific.”

“I’ve a keen memory.”

He remembered the exact date she’d made an offhand comment about asparagus. That wasn’t keen. That was… Well, she didn’t know what that was, except disconcerting. “Can you recall everything I’ve ever said?”

He frowned a little as he transferred a thick slice of ham to his plate. “Good God, why would I want to?”

For your own improvement
, she thought but kept the put-down to herself. Lord knew he could use both the improvement and the put-down, but she was in no hurry to ruin the tentative truce they seemed to have formed.

She smiled at him instead, a thin, tight-lipped smile she was quite certain did not make her eyes crinkle nicely at the corners.

* * *

Samuel took in Esther’s strained smile and paused in the act of cutting his ham. “Something the matter?”

“Not at all. I am merely”—she tilted her head a little and pursed her lips—“taking the moral high ground,” she decided, and then smiled in earnest, evidently pleased by the notion.

He set down his knife and fork. He hated when people took the moral high ground. By default, that meant everyone else was on the low ground. “Why am I on the low ground?”

“It’s nothing. You were insulting, that’s all. I am trying to let it pass.”

She wasn’t doing a very good job of it. Also, he couldn’t see that she had any right to this particular patch of high ground. “You’ve insulted me. Repeatedly.”

“Yes, but not since…” She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. Might we agree to both make an effort to be civil going forward?”

He grunted in assent. It was doubtful that they would manage civility for long. But he wasn’t opposed to the effort.

He did wonder, however, which insult she’d been thinking of when she’d offered that first smile. Maybe it was when he’d called her an idiot. He’d called her that once before, last summer. Actually, he’d called her an imbecile, but that was close enough. And now that he thought on it, he’d called her a fool in the carriage, and that was essentially the same thing. The sting of a single barb could generally be brushed off, but when that same barb was delivered time and time again, it had the potential to stick and fester. He was personally susceptible to slights referencing Frankenstein’s monster.

Samuel made a mental note to refrain from belittling her intellect in any future sparring and returned his attention to his meal.

“I assume you have a plan in mind for tomorrow?” he asked after a time. She’d want to go into Bethnal Green and Bow probably. He wondered if he could convince her to let him go in her stead.

“I need to go back to Spitalfields. I need to find the little boy who gave me the note.”

“No.” And he wasn’t going to be civil about it.

“Yes.”

“The man who sent that note knows who you are, Esther.”

“He thinks he does. That is why I must find the little boy,” she replied reasonably. “He can tell me who gave him the note, and I can find out what, exactly, is known.”

“I saw the man at the station. I can look for him in Spitalfields. Alone.”

“That man knows he was seen. He might avoid Spitalfields.” She pointed the tines of her fork at him. “He’ll certainly be avoiding you. But a small boy is unlikely to have the wherewithal to leave his neighborhood, and he’ll not be actively hiding from you. It would be faster and smarter to look for him than to look for the young man.”

“It would be safer and wiser for you to leave London immediately,” he grumbled.

“We’ve already discussed this. I’ll not go home until my business is concluded. Besides, I’ll not be in immediate danger going back to Spitalfields. If the man wished to attack me on the street in broad daylight, he’d have done so already. It is very unlikely he will attempt to do tomorrow, in front of you, what he would not attempt yesterday when I was alone.”

“Describe the boy to me. I’ll go to Spitalfields and find him.”

“I can’t describe him. Not well. He gave me the note and dashed down a side street before I could ask him a single question. I would recognize him, but I couldn’t tell you what he looked like, other than to say he was a small boy, possibly near eight years of age, with very large eyes and hair that was nearly black.” Her face screwed up in thought. “I might be imagining the eyes. He may have just had long lashes.”

“Sketch him for me. You’ve some skill as an artist.”

“I have every skill as an artist,” she corrected. “But I can’t do it. I can’t sketch well from memory, even if I know the subject well. I need to see it before me.”

“Damn it, Esther.”

“I don’t see why this should be a point of contention,” she said, reaching for her wine. “You walk about London openly every day. There must be dozens of men who would like your head on a platter. Why is it you are allowed to thumb your nose at danger, but I am not?”

“It’s different.”

She took a long sip of her drink and set the goblet down slowly. “Is that a euphemism for ‘because you are a woman’?”

“No.” Possibly. He might give it some thought later. “You have family, Esther. They care about what happens to you.”

“And yours do not?”

He said nothing and hoped she would assume she had won the argument. He wasn’t going to discuss his family.

“My family,” Esther continued, “is the reason I will wear that miserable veil when I leave this room and the reason I will leave London and never return—
after
I have found the boy, the person who wrote the note, and my father.” She cocked her head at him. “Are you going to break your promise to help me?”

“I promised to help you with your business. I did not promise to help you put yourself in unnecessary danger.”

“It isn’t unnecessary,” she returned. “Not to me. Are you going to break your promise, then?”

She repeated the question almost casually, as if it was of no consequence to her one way or the other. But that eerie stillness had returned. She held herself stiffly, and her expression was shuttered tight.

She didn’t want him to break his promise, he realized. But she expected it. A woman like Esther, who had been raised by a man like Will Walker, would always expect to be betrayed. And she would guard herself accordingly.

He wished he could prove her right in this instance, but refusing to keep his word would do neither of them any good. She would find a way to Spitalfields with or without him. “I’ll not break my promise.”

This time when she smiled, it didn’t look as if she’d swallowed bad meat.

“Excellent,” she chimed and went back to her meal.

Samuel pushed his own plate away, his appetite lost. He shouldn’t have made the promise, but there’d been nothing else for it. If Esther was determined to be in London, she would be in London. Frankly, it was a miracle the contrary woman wasn’t dead set on remaining in London alone.

It had been a mistake, however, to offer his promise before he’d secured her agreement to follow his orders. Then again, some errors were easily got around. Most, in fact. Which made him wonder…

“Esther?”

“Hmm?”

“Why didn’t you simply agree to take orders from me and then find a way around the agreement?”

She glanced up at him. “Why didn’t I lie, you mean?” She shrugged. “I didn’t want to. Why didn’t you agree to help me and simply plan to make me follow your orders whether or not I cared for the idea?”

Again, he said nothing.

“Oh, that
is
what you’ve planned, isn’t it?” She made a disgusted sound. “I told you, I’ll not follow your orders.”

“And if the orders are sensible?”

“I don’t need you to tell me how to be sensible.” She pointed her fork at him again. “And don’t you
dare
contradict me on that point, Samuel Brass. We agreed to be civil.”

“Is
that
an order?”

Rather than answer, she jabbed her fork into an asparagus stalk and bit the tip off in a most uncivilized manner.

He decided to take that as a yes.

* * *

The remainder of the meal passed in relative peace, primarily as neither party felt it necessary to speak. Esther supposed silence was as good a route to civility as any.

At least Samuel didn’t look quite so put out as he had earlier. He didn’t look particularly pleased, mind you, but he never really did around her. She imagined that, with her, he would always be something of a curmudgeon. Sir Samuel Brass, the curmudgeonly giant. Yes, that fit him quite well.

She finished her meal as quickly as she could without making a spectacle of herself and sent up a small prayer of thanks when the maids who came for the dishes turned out to be older and faster than the first three.

Samuel glanced at the clock as she stepped out from behind the screen. “You haven’t any plans to leave the hotel tonight, I presume?”

“No.” In fact, she was very much looking forward to finally crawling into bed. She pulled her chair out from the table and took a seat. “But if that should change, I’ll come to you directly.”

You see? Sensible.

“You’ll stay in this room.”

She decided in the interest of their truce that he was asking a question, not delivering an order. “Yes. And I’ll not answer the door for anyone except you.” Sensible again. “Do you mean to stay inside as well?”

“Yes.”

“Well then, good night.”

“Good night.”

She frowned after him as he walked to the door. Something had been niggling at her all evening: a doubt, or a question she’d not been able to place. Suddenly, she realized what it was.

“Samuel?” She waited for him to turn around again. “Why are you here?”

“I don’t understand the question.”

She scooted so she could see him properly over the back of her chair. “You sought me out in Derbyshire because Lottie and Renderwell asked you to check in on me whilst they were away, didn’t you?”

There was a small pause before he answered. “Yes.”

“I thought so. When you discovered I’d left, why didn’t you simply wire Renderwell in Edinburgh and be done with it? You weren’t obligated to track me down. Nor are you required to help me now.”

She wasn’t his sister or even his friend. She wasn’t his responsibility. So why trouble himself over her safety?

“Renderwell is my friend,” he replied. “Your sister is his wife.”

“And word of my disappearance would have upset her, thereby upsetting him,” she guessed.

“Essentially.”

She didn’t know why she should find that explanation a little disappointing. “Well then, thank you for thinking of my sister, however indirectly.”

His only response was a single grunt. Then he left. This didn’t surprise her particularly. He always grunted when she thanked him for something. Like when he’d rescued her from the stable fire, and when he’d rescued her brother from the kidnapper. She’d not yet figured out whether the grunt meant
You’re welcome
or
I don’t wish to discuss it
or
Devil take your gratitude, troublesome wench
, but she rather thought it might be the last.

She told herself it didn’t matter. It simply did not matter what Sir Samuel Brass thought of her.

All her life, she had twisted herself into knots worrying over the good opinion of others. Not an unusual predicament, really, else there’d be a sight fewer women running about in itchy crepe. Nearly everyone gave some thought to what their friends and neighbors thought of them. Most people, however, sought acceptance through conformity.

She had stolen it through deceit.

Esther had learned at a very young age that she would never be able to compete with her sister’s cleverness nor Lottie’s natural bond with their father. She would always be the second-best daughter in Will Walker’s eyes. But she’d had talents and gifts of her own. She was nimble of finger and sharp of eye. She could throw a blade with pinpoint accuracy and draw a pencil or brush over paper with enviable skill.

And she could act. Brilliantly. Give her a role, any role, and she could fill it with aplomb. Cunning thief? Simpering flirt? Proper lady? Obedient daughter? She could play any one of them at the drop of a hat.