“You made it very clear that a matrimonial bond with me would be very distasteful.”
“I offended you.”
“Yes.”
“I did not mean—”
“To display such outrage at an engagement you should have already fulfilled?” She wished she could keep back the emotion, but it bubbled in her voice like rising lava. She shook as she backed away from him. “I am convinced that the last thing in the world you wish, Mr. Fancourt, is to marry me.”
“What would you have me do?” His voice struck a new note. Deep, brutal, honest enough that she read everything in the familiar timbre. “We both know we could never love one another. That never seemed to concern you before. I did not think it would now.”
He had no inkling what she had thought of him—whether she had loved him or despised him, whether she had rejoiced at the thought of their marriage or loathed the agreement entirely. He had never asked. He had never asked her anything. He had never looked at her and seen her at all.
Maybe that was her fault, because she had filled the empty space by teasing other gentlemen and hiding behind a protective wall of shyness and reserve.
But maybe the fault was just as much his.
Whatever the case, it didn’t matter now.
“I had no suspicion as to the details of your father’s will, and I am very regretful that I am involved with the outcome of your inheritance.” She forced herself to meet his gaze as she retreated. “But as for your request, I fear I must decline. You broke our attachment twelve years ago.” She turned to the parlor door and groped for the glass knob with a quivering hand. “It cannot be amended now.”
Endless top hats and bonnets and shaggy heads overwhelmed the lane, as four prisoners were shoved onto the rickety wooden scaffold before Newgate Prison. A cheer rose.
“Excuse me.” Simon eased past a cluster of ladies, but his shoulder must have bumped someone else, because a pile of penny sandwiches scattered at his feet.
“Lawks! You fool. You foxed fool.” The tattered pieman groped for the sandwiches, but between the pushing and shoving, they were stomped before he could save them.
Simon dug several coins from his coat pocket. “Here. Forgive me.”
“You ought to be the fool up there.” Cursing and red-faced, the pieman jabbed a finger to the gallows then turned—
“Wait.” Simon seized his patched coat, gritted his teeth when more bodies bumped into him. “Here’s five more shillings if you tell me how to get inside the prison.”
“Gimme the shillings first.”
Simon smacked the coins into the dirty hand, then followed the pieman through the dense crowd. A stench curled his nose—unwashed bodies, pungent sewer, and the gagging odor of rotting flesh coming from the barred windows.
“That door there.” With one last glare, the pieman disappeared back into the mass of spectators.
Simon hurried for the door, the temperature cooling in the shadow of the massive stone prison. He rapped six times, hard enough his knuckles sored, before the door finally slung open.
“No, ye cannae be watching from the inside windows—”
“I did not come to see the hangings.”
“Eh?”
“May I speak with the prison warden?”
The white-haired Scotsman, with open sores on his face, opened the door wider. “Come in then, but hurry ’fore another tries to squeeze through.”
The interior was dark, the air moist, as he was led through a grimy passageway and into a small taproom. Two men sat eating at a long wooden table, their plates steaming, the aroma of potatoes and beef a nauseating mix to the reeking prison air.
“Warden, this gent be wanting to speak wiff ye.”
“I’m busy.”
“Sir, I will not take up much of your time.” Simon approached the table. “I would like to discuss a matter with you.”
