Page 4 of A Treacherous Trade
I didn’t dare look in his direction just now.
She couldn’t bring herself to say he spoke highly of me, nor did she intimate that he spoke of me often, so I could only imagine in what capacity he discussed me with his sister.
Very probably as a workplace grievance.
“I confess, I’m surprised.” I hoped my self-effacing smile didn’t appear as much of a grimace as it felt. “I am the lowly cleaning woman that too often shows up to get in his way.”
The wisp of an amused smile touched her lips aged with fine lines that hardship must have turned into grooves. I’d never asked Croft his age, though I’d put him somewhere between thirty and forty.
Which meant Amelia, at ten years his senior, would be glancing at fifty within the next few years. “There’s nothing lowly about you, dear. You’re a vision of elegance.”
She was being kind, but I appreciated it.
“And here I thought I looked terrible.” This time Ididpeek over at Croft, who made no move to meet my eyes, as it would keep him from boring divots into his sister with the force of his glare.
His jaw locked with such intensity that a muscle jumped at his temple, which told me I’d hit my mark.
Surely he’d known better than to tell me how awful I looked, even if it was the truth. He’d behaved badly, and would be rightly recriminated by his sister if she were aware. Luckily for him, Amelia had not been privy to his assessment of my appearance earlier, and seemed ignorant of the tension between her brother and me. “I’ve just come from the chemist’s and chocolatier to procure some medicines and sweets for Bea. She’s been unwell and is so distraught, I’m worried she won’t care for herself. Jane was special to her.”
Croft made a sound that landed somewhere in between a scoff and a lament. “A damn shame about Jane.”
“Did you know her?” I asked him without thought.
He shook his head. “But women like her, that do… what she does… they’re…”
I waited for him to produce the word he so obviously sought.
“They’re brave.”
“Brave,” I echoed, convinced I’d misheard.
“Ladies who—give the business… are subject to more brutality than just about anyone alive. Coppers, soldiers, criminals, and laborers—we’re trained to expect violence. To return it in kind.” He shook his head, his sledge-hammer-sized fist flexing in frustration. “But women…”
I couldn’t have been more astonished. Not only because Croft rarely, if ever, revealed an entire paragraph of words, let alone an opinion. But because he’d always seemed so conservative and principled, so disapproving of all things, that I imagined surely whores were among them, regardless of his sister’s past.
I caught the look Amelia sent her brother, something fond, colored with a darker brush. Shadows of regret and a pain so brilliant it suddenly hurt to look at her.
Because it was to her he referred, of course. About her that he thought… the men who might have harmed her in the past, and the fact he’d not been in a position at the time to stop them. To protect her.
If I stayed here much longer, I might do something I regretted.
Like respect him.
Or like him.
And neither of us wanted that.
All thoughts of confession had dispelled into the miasma of misery in which I’d lingered for months. Something like verve suffused me as I realized I had a chance at rejoining the living and was reminded of my reason for doing so.
“I am sorry about your friend, Miss Croft.” I stepped forward and retrieved Amelia’s glove from the table, just as she wriggled her capable fingers into its mate. “I will be happy to go to work for you.” I offered it to her, dusting off my rarely used smile.
I wanted to see where this Jane Sheffield had died. Needed to check how her body was placed, and to breathe the air in the room, hoping to maybe detect the Ripper in the stench of death a working woman left behind.
“Thank you, my dear.” Amelia took the proffered glove and caught my hand to give it a grateful squeeze. “No one looks after us, and no one seems to mind when one of us goes missing, or worse. And to be killed like Jane was… so… dreadful.”
“How was it done?” I asked, doing my best to keep the curiosity from my voice. Iwastruly sorry for Jane. For Amelia and her loss…
But I’d had a friend butchered as well.
