In the faint flickering light from the kitchen window, his eyes looked almost as dark as hers, turned from sky-blue to midnight. He had a face that was daunted by nothing. It would have been tough on any other man. On him it was handsome. Firm determined lips. A strong masculine nose with a tiny bump upon its ridge. His rogue eyebrow enough to take a woman’s breath away. Her heart rate kicked faster as her gaze lingered momentarily on it before returning to his eyes.
‘What are you doing here, Ned?’ she asked in wary softness.
‘Taking the air.’
They looked at one another.
She’s yours. The echo of the sailor’s words seemed to whisper between them, making her cheeks warm.
‘I didn’t think you’d be fool enough to walk home alone in the dark through these streets.’
‘Normally I do not. Tom lives in the next street up from mine. He usually sees me home safe.’
‘Tom’s not here.’
‘Which is why I borrowed one of Nancy’s knives.’ She slid the knife from her pocket and held it between them so that the blade glinted in the moonlight.
‘It wouldn’t have stopped them.’
‘Maybe not. But it would have done a very great deal of damage, I assure you.’
The silence hissed between them.
‘You want to take your chances with the knife? Or you could accept my offer to see you home safe.’
She swallowed, knowing what he was offering and feeling her stomach turn tumbles within. ‘As long as you understand that it is just seeing me safely home.’ She met his gaze, held it with mock confidence.
‘Are you suggesting that I’m not a gentleman?’ His voice was all stony seriousness, but he raised the rogue eyebrow.
‘On the contrary, I am sure you are the perfect gentleman.’
‘Maybe not perfect.’
She smiled at that, relaxing a little now that the shock of seeing him there had subsided, and returned the knife blade to its dishcloth scabbard within the pocket of her cloak.
‘We should get going,’ he said. And together they began to walk down the alleyway.
Their footsteps were soft and harmonious, the slower, heavier thud of his boots in time with the lighter step of her own.
They walked on, out on to St Catherine’s Lane. Walked along in silence.
‘You knew those sailors would be waiting for me, didn’t you?’
‘Did I?’
‘You do not fool me, Ned Stratham.’
‘It’s not my intention to fool anyone.’
She scrutinised him, before asking the question that she’d been longing to ask since the first night he had walked into the Red Lion. ‘Who are you?’
‘Just a man from Whitechapel.’
‘And yet...the shirt beneath your jacket looks like it came from Mayfair. And is tailored to fit you perfectly. Most unusual on a man from Whitechapel.’ He was probably a crook. A gang boss. A tough. How else did a man like him get the money for such a shirt? Asking him now, when they were alone, in the dark of the night, was probably not the wisest thing she had ever done, but the question was out before she could think better of it. Besides, if she did not ask him now, she doubted she would get another chance. She ignored the faster patter of her heart and held his eyes, daring him to tell her something of the truth.
‘You’ve been eyeing up my shirt.’
She gave a laugh and shook her head. ‘I could not miss it. Nor could half the chop-house. You have had your jacket off all evening.’
‘But half the chop-house would not have recognised a Mayfair shirt.’ Half in jest, half serious.
Her heart skipped a beat, but she held his gaze boldly, as if he were not treading so close to forbidden ground, brazening it out. ‘So you admit it is from Mayfair?’
‘From Greaves and Worcester.’
‘How does a Whitechapel man come to be wearing a shirt from one of the most expensive shirt-makers in London?’
‘How is a woman from a Whitechapel chop-house familiar with the said wares and prices?’
She smiled, but said nothing, on the back foot now that he was the one asking questions she did not want to answer.
‘What’s your story, Emma?’
‘Long and uninteresting.’
‘For a woman like you, in a place like this?’ He arched the rogue eyebrow with scepticism.
She held her silence, wanting to know more of him, but not at the cost of revealing too much of herself.
‘Playing your cards close to your chest?’ he asked.
‘It is the best way, I have found.’
He smiled at that. ‘A woman after my own heart.’
They kept on walking, their footsteps loud in the silence.
He met her eyes. ‘I heard tell you once worked in Mayfair.’ It was the story she had put about.
‘Cards and chest, even for unspoken questions,’ she said.
Ned laughed.
And she smiled.
‘I worked as a lady’s maid.’ She kept her eyes front facing. If he had not already heard it from the others in the Red Lion, he soon would. It was the only reasonable way to explain away her voice and manners; many ladies’ maids aped their mistresses. And it was not, strictly speaking, a lie, she told herself for the hundredth time. She had learned and worked in the job of a lady’s maid, just as she had shadow-studied the role of every female servant from scullery maid to housekeeper; one had to have an understanding of how a household worked from the bottom up to properly run it.
‘That explains much. What happened?’
‘You ask a lot of questions, Ned Stratham.’
‘You keep a lot of secrets, Emma de Lisle.’
Their gazes held for a moment too long, in challenge, and something else, too. Until he smiled his submission and looked ahead once more.
She breathed her relief.
A group of men were staggering along the other side of the Minories Road, making their way home from the King’s Head. Their voices were loud and boisterous, their gait uneven. They shouted insults and belched at one another. One of them stopped to relieve his bladder against a lamp post.
She averted her eyes from them, met Ned’s gaze and knew he was thinking about the knife and how it would have fared against six men.
‘It would still have given them pause for thought,’ she said in her defence.
Ned said nothing.
But for all of her assertions and the weight of the kitchen knife within her cloak right at this moment in time she was very glad of Ned Stratham’s company.
The men did not shout the bawdy comments they would have had it been Tom by her side. They said nothing, just quietly watched them pass and stayed on their own side of the road.
Neither of them spoke. Just walking together at the same steady pace up Minories. Until the drunkards were long in the distance. Until they turned right into the dismal narrow street in which she and her father lodged. There were no street lamps, only the low silvery light of the moon to guide their steps over the potholed surface.
Halfway