Page 65 of Never a Duke
“You think I don’t work hard?” A world of ironic weariness colored the question.
“I know you do, Billy, and you’ve ventured far from the river to tell me something I need to hear.”
Billy glanced about, though at this hour, the alley was deserted. “Something ain’t right. Herself is worse than usual.”
Tryphena worse than usual was a harrowing thought. “What has changed?”
“She’s always been canny, but now she sees everything and everybody as a threat. No honor among thieves, if ye know what I mean. She talks crazy, and the look in her eye…”
“Has disease caught up with her?”
Billy shook his head. “I don’t fink so. Tryphena stopped entertainin’ years ago. This is sudden-like. She’s scared and more than just the usual scared. She’s done well for herself, played her cards right. You don’t agree with her methods, but they was all she had.”
“Old history, Billy. I’m willing to leave it in the past if she is. Have you noticed anything out of the ordinary besides her moods?”
Billy petted the horse again, and it occurred to Ned that once upon a time, had Billy been offered a job as a tiger or a groom, his life would have taken a very different turn.
“Herself owns doss houses. They bring in money. Not the fancy money the nunneries bring in, but it’s steady, and as she says, folk need a safe place to sleep outta the wet. Besides, nobody comes after ya for ownin’ a doss house.”
The doss houses were safe, provided a man slept with a knife in each hand and one eye open. “Go on.”
“I stop around every Wednesday to collect the take, but lately…”
“You think something is going on at one of these doss houses,” Ned said.“Either nobody is seeking a night’s lodging there, or Tryphena has found another use for that property.”
The options were myriad: She could be holding stolen goods, leasing the place out to the river pirates and smugglers thronging the wharf, preparing to burn the house down for insurance money, or using the property as a gambling dive.
Or she could be harboring kidnapped women.
“She ain’t sold the place,” Billy said. “I’d know if she had. And it’s one of her better houses. Could make a nice sponging house, but she won’t listen to me when I tell her that. Says that’s not honest work, holding up folk down on their luck for every pitcher of water or lump of coal.”
“I applaud Tryphena’s generosity of spirit, Billy, but which doss house has gone dark?”
A coach-and-four rattled by on the street. The minutes were passing, and Rosalind would not wait indefinitely.
“East of the City.”
“A street?”
“Off Cuckminster Lane.”
Ned did not know it, but then, the streets, alleys, lanes, and wynds in the older part of London often went through a series of names, depending on the trades plied along them.
“And where is that?” Ned asked.
“I told ye, near the Tower. A couple streets back from the river.”
That last description was useful. “What does the place look like?”
“Looks like a doss house, Ned. ’Cept it ain’t been a doss house since winter, and for all I know she traded it for some other property.”
“She would tell you that because you’d have to read the contracts to her.” Among Billy’s many other duties, he was Tryphena’s reader. “You know, Billy, if you ever wanted to leave that life…”
Billy shook his head. “She needs me, and she’s all I’m good fer. She’ll probably slit m’ throat someday, but we’re all put to bed with a shovel in the end.”
And it would not occur to Billy to slit Tryphena’s throat first because he was, in his way, a good man. “If you ever change your mind, a groom’s life isn’t half so dangerous as what you do now.”
“Not half so excitin’ neither.” He gave Ned a cheeky grin and stepped back into the shadows. “Take care, Wentworth. You’re a legend, you know. Wee Neddy turned honest, and ain’t he just all the crack now?”
