“Your wife! Is it acceptable, then, for a man to take his wife to socialize in a tavern?”
“No,” he said. “But it is worlds away better than letting anyone present believe you to be a woman of negligible honor and light morals. At least you will be somewhat shielded from censure. The judgment, if any, will fall upon me for bringing you rather than you for being present.” He planted his feet firmly upon the floor as the carriage began to slow. “Now give me your hand, darling. We’re here.”
She did, with startling alacrity. “Have you got a pocket watch?” she asked, chewing at her lower lip. “Your mother said she would check in on me when they returned. And time tends to get away from me.”
“Yes, I know.” His fingers closed around hers. “I’ll have you back home before you are missed, Cinderella.” The carriage stopped at last, and Thomas shoved his free hand into his pocket to retrieve the fare as Mercy climbed out after him with his assistance. She paused there upon the street, her fingers tightening in his.
Across the street, beneath the halo of a lamp, a woman was climbing down from a carriage. Her dark hair was elegantlystyled, pinned up in a cluster of artfully-arranged curls, gleaming sable in the light. She wore a gown of rich silk brocade, in a pattern that could only be one of Mercy’s. As Mercy watched, enthralled, the woman retrieved a key from her reticule and disappeared through a door, no doubt to her residence on the upper floor above the shop on the street level.
Hell. Mercy had just gotten a glimpse of one of London’s most famous courtesans. “Pay her no mind,” he said, with a gentle tug upon her hand. “You’re not meant to notice women of her stamp.”
Mercy jerked from her daze as if he’d struck her. “Whyever not?”
“She’s a courtesan,” he said. “A professional mistress.”
A sharp breath whistled across her lips, nearly shrill in the silence of the street. “Have you ever—”
“No,” he said as she fell into step beside him. “Nor would I. Suffice it to say, should you ever encounter her, you should pretend as though she does not exist.”
“I don’t think I could ever be so cold,” she said softly. “Whatever her sins, she is someone’s daughter, someone’s sister.” The pitch of her breath suggested an odd disquiet. “She issomeone.”
“She is. And if you acknowledged her, you would be judged just as guilty by association. It isn’t fair,” he said. “But society is often cruel. You know that much already. Here we are,” he said as they rounded a corner and arrived before a tavern glowing from within with candlelight.
Mercy jerked to a halt beside him, resisting his hold on her hand. “Fordham frequents this tavern?” she inquired, her voice vibrating across a few octaves.
“He does.”
“I can’t go in there,” she whispered in a rush, the words tripping over one another.
Thomas paused, turned, stared down into her face. “You’ve been here before,” he said slowly, comprehension dawning. “How many times? The first night you sneaked out of the house alone, or any of the others?”
She gave a little start, her eyes going wide, shocked. “How—”
“You’ve been leaving your shoes on the staircase for weeks,” he said. “I’ve always been an early riser. It wasn’t difficult to deduce your comings and goings, which nights you had sneaked from the house, when it was clear that your shoes had to have been discarded there sometime between midnight and dawn. Why do you think I placed that note upon the stairs for you?” And those occurrences had always followed a letter delivered from C. Nightingale. It had taken him some time to notice the pattern, but eventually it had become impossible to miss. Several times he’d considered cracking open that wax seal and violating her privacy. At the time, he’d just been glad that she had taken her damned key rather than shimmying down the trellis, that her late night adventures had remained the secret she had clearly intended them to be.
Now, he simply had hope that she would share her secret when she was prepared to do so. Whatever it was, he was reasonably certain it was not an affair, but that did not mean it posed no threat to her reputation or safety.
Her fingers twitched in his, and a shadow of a blush slipped over her cheeks. Some manner of shame, he thought, to have been caught out so unexpectedly. “You never said.”
“What could I have said to dissuade you? If I had attempted to stop you, you might have taken to climbing the damned trellis again—as you did tonight.” He rubbed his thumb over her knuckles, a soothing gesture meant to convey that she had not earned his ire for her clandestine little escapades. “Will you be recognized?” he asked, jerking his head toward the tavern.
“No, I—I don’t think so,” she said. “I don’t know. I can’t becertain.”
“Have you been here more than once?”
A quick, decisive shake of her head. “Never the same tavern twice,” she said.
Good. That was good. Not perfect, perhaps, but then he could hardly alter what had already occurred. The tavern was busy enough, and her last visit distant enough, that he liked their odds. “Did you give anyone your name?”
“Of course not,” she said. “I’m not a fool, Thomas.”
“Good,” he said, and pulled her once more toward the door of the tavern. “Here’s hoping you think quickly on your feet, Mrs. Armitage.”
∞∞∞
The tavern was just as Mercy remembered it; loud and raucous and filled to the brim with gentlemen a bit too deeply in their cups to give much thought to propriety. Thomas, to his credit, wrapped an arm about her waist and tugged her close to his side, shepherding her safely through the crowd and toward the bar. “Sit,” he murmured in her ear, as he pulled out a chair. “Away from the window. We don’t want to be seen from the outside.”
Mercy slid into the chair he offered, turning her face away from the window. “Could I have a drink?”
