Page 53 of An Honorable Deception
Cockney, though she looked as though she could have come straight from Calcutta. Lavinia smiled. “I suspect you aren’t Samira,” she said, careful to keep her voice to a bare whisper.
The girl grinned. “Lucy.” Then it faded into a frown. “Samira’s still in there. Some bloke’s on his way up.”
Yates put a brotherly hand to the top of the girl’s head and used it to propel her forward. He’d somehow managed to get stockings and shoes back on in the half second she hadn’t been looking—ample practice, she supposed. “Let’s get away from here before we give Vinny the briefing, shall we?”
Lavinia’s stomach was still clenching over thatsome bloke’s on his way upand everything it implied, and her head was still a bit light from seeing Yates quite literally snatch a child from the teeth of hell. But she fell into step, not commenting as he let Lucy lead the way through a maze of streets and alleyways Lavinia never had and never would have dared to venture down on her own. They were presumably still in Soho or had crossed into Mayfair, but the buildings and streets that looked so welcoming in the daylight felt far different now.
Now she knew that too many of the men who claimedthese houses and businesses as their own also frequented establishments like the one they’d rescued achildfrom—and she had to think the very presence of Lucy on Yates’s back meant that their suspicions had proven true.
After ten minutes of walking, she finally dared to snatch a look up at Yates and ask, “She was there?”
He nodded, jaw clenched.
“And it was ... as we thought?”
“Worse. If that’s possible.” He slowed Lucy with a hand on her shoulder when she made to go right at an intersection. Grosvenor Square, home to both Fairfax and Hemming Houses, was to the left. “Hold up a minute, Lucy. We both live this way.”
Lucy stopped, turned to face them, and something in her face went dark. “Rich gent.” She spat it like a curse.
Yates lifted his brows. He might as well have said,Challenge accepted. “Am not.”
“You are if you live down there.”
“No—myfamilywas, hence the house on Grosvenor. I assure you, I’m very much not.”
Was it the relief of home being so close that made Lavinia want to grin? Heaven knew nothing had really gone right enough to warrant it otherwise.
Except that this child, at least, was no longer in that wretched house.
“He isn’t,” Lavinia said. “His grandfather would roll over in his grave to see him now. He’s mucking his own stalls and cooking his own food and was practically raised by traveling gypsies.”
The girl’s lips curled. “He’s a lord. That’s whatMatildacalled him.”
Matilda, it seemed, was as much a curse word asrich gent.
Lavinia nodded. “True enough. They haven’t yet found away to strip a man of his title when his bank account reaches zero. Though give them time enough...”
Surely Lucy’s grin meant that nothing truly horrible had happened to her back there. She had to believe it was so. “And you? That necklace would fetch ten pounds, I bet, if I were to hock it.”
Without even pausing to remember which one she had on—or wonder how much it had cost whichever ancestor had commissioned it—she took it off and held it out to the girl. “You had better drive a harder bargain than that, or I’ll be insulted. I daresay it’s worth at least a hundred.”
Lucy’s brows winged up. “Ladies don’t give up their jewels. No more than pawn brokers give retail price.”
“Who said I’m a lady? I’m the daughter of a murderous traitor.”
Lucy eyed her as if that were the most outlandish story ever to be spoken in Mayfair—fair point—but she also took the necklace from her hand. And looked back to Yates. “Oi—you mean to bring them down, you’re gonna need help. You’ll wanna hire Barclay for that.”
“Will I now?”
She nodded easily, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “You’re gonna need dirt on them. The kind written down. Yeah? Paper trails?”
Yates lifted his brows.
“Barclay can find them for you. Help them escape their files, let’s say. He reads real good, does Barclay. And my sisters, they can get anything from a gent, and no one even notices they were there.”
Lavinia didn’t know how to classify the glance Yates sent to her. Part amusement, part amazement, part wonder. He tilted his head when he looked back to the girl. “How old are you, Lucy?”
She shrugged. “Twelve or so, we think.”
