Page 3 of A Treacherous Trade
“If two… ladies of the evening are dead in Whitechapel, it’ll only be so long before the press catches wind of it, and they will set the city ablaze like it was sixteen sixty-six,” I reminded him, gathering myself enough to turn and face him. “So, you might as well give me the details now.” It took everything I had not to fidget with my hair, to smooth my dress or pinch my cheeks.
It wouldn’t make me look less terrible.
One dark brow lifted. “Did Amelia explain nothing?”
I was still working on becoming a convincing liar, so I told the truth. “Most people tend to impart details to me in person.”
“I’m surprised she didn’t just summon you to Fleet Street.”
“I’m sorry, but why would I go to Fleet Street when the murders were in—”
“Because the women onlyresidein Whitechapel,” came a husky feminine voice from the doorway. “But they work in the same brothel on Fleet Street.”
It wasn’t the wealth of onyx hair, uncommon height, or sturdy jaw that pegged the woman as kin to Croft, so much as the matching Northern accent and the same haunted gaze as her—I realized with a jolt of surprise—youngerbrother.
“Worked.” Amelia Croft’s eyes were a great deal softer than the inspector’s as she corrected the tenses of the women who were now in the past. “I wanted to engage your services, Miss Mahoney, because the coroner has yet to come for Jane Sheffield, who was gruesomely murdered at the very brothel in which I used to ply the trade.”
ChapterTwo
Amelia Croft cut a figure every bit as striking as her brother’s, even bundled as she was in a frock coat and winter trappings. With a gleaming gold rose brooch on the lace collar of her modest, high-necked gown, anyone would have placed her as matron of a respectable household, rather than a spinster former prostitute.
I remembered, not long ago, Inspector Croft intimated that he and his sister had resorted to less-than-reputable trades as destitute orphans from Northumberland. I never judged nor censured him for it, and yet a stain of color crept from beneath his high collar at the indelicate mention of what his sister used to do for a living.
As suddenly as she’d appeared in the doorway, she swept away, her boots clicking with brisk efficiency on the floorboards.
Inspector Croft and I blinked at each other for a moment and, in a strange syncopation, mobilized to follow her. Abandoning my tea to a table, I trailed him down the long corridor toward the front of the house and nipped at his heels like a small—no doubt irritating—dog as he hit through a door into an impressively large kitchen.
“Amelia, Ispecificallyremember telling younotto contact Fiona Mahoney on behalf of your friend.” He annunciated every word through gritted teeth, as his sister bustled about the kitchen, tying a brown-paper-wrapped package with some twine. “Did I or did I not declare it too soon?”
Too soon? Did he mean after Aidan’s death?
Croft had added his name to Inspector Aberline’s flowers and the brief note of condolences for the death of the man he’d known as my priest and close confidant. But I couldn’t think why he would ask Amelia to wait longer than a handful of months to contact me after Aidan’s loss. Most people did not grieve for their friends and ecumenical leaders as long as they did their spouses or their kin.
Father Aidan Fitzpatrick was none of these to me…
But he was the man I loved. The man I’dmeantto marry before he took on the cassock.
He’d not initially been forthcoming as to why he’d bound his life to the church rather than to me. I hadn’t known it was to bury a guilty conscience in the service of God. Before he died, Aidan said he’d loved me too much to stain me with the blood on his hands…
And once I’d learned his sins, I was grateful.
Broken, but ultimately relieved.
What if I found out what he’d done after marriage? Children?
I’d never spoken of my emotional attachment to Aidan, least of all to Grayson Croft, who held nothing sacred but the law and his own honor.
“Of course you instructed me not to, Gray, but what good has ordering me about ever done?” Amelia moved from the counter to a round, heavy table that might have comfortably seated all twelve of King Arthur’s knights. It dominated the room, and yet seemed to belong there.
Who else met at the Croft table? I wondered, as it was a ridiculous piece of furniture for two unmarried siblings. In the center, a large arrangement of dried lavender perched in a crystal-cut vase bent as if waving in a perpetual breeze.
Several bundles of herbs hung upside down, suspended from the cupboard above the washbasin. I could only name about half of them, but then again, I was never any good in the kitchen or the garden, much to my mother’s dismay.
A kettle simmered and steamed on the iron cookstove, in which a fire crackled, and several more jars of herbs and loose-leaf teas perched upon the shelf above. I squinted through my spectacles at the tidy script on the jars, but at this distance, the neat scrawl remained difficult to make out.
“Surely this isn’t your idea of an introduction.” A sharp look accompanied the curt rebuke, as Amelia removed ermine gloves to affix a ribbon to the small package. As she turned to me, the lines of censure smoothed from her forehead and the long owl feather in her cap bobbed as she nodded a belated greeting. “Miss Mahoney, it is so lovely to finally meet you. Grayson speaks of you so… Well, he speaks of you.”
Did he?
