Then the business of finding a wife would begin in earnest. He would leverage his current success. The young ladies would make their calculations concerning his future prospects. And he’d come to an agreement with one of them—a process of bargain and trade not essentially dissimilar from that which went on in a Delhi bazaar at all hours of the day.
So to the ball he would go. And dance. And talk of subjects that mattered no more to the course of history than a barnacle on the hull mattered to an ocean-liner. And then he would get up early in the morning for a meeting with the Lord Justice who’d sponsored him to Inner Temple.
He turned onto his street and stopped. There, not twenty paces from him, was a scene he did not associate with living in one of London’s best districts: a street brawl. Worse, it was two men against one woman. The woman fought hard, but she was no match against her assailants.
He broke into a run.
The men threw the woman to the ground. One of them sat down on her and lifted his fist high. Stuart grabbed him from behind and heaved him away. He vaguely heard the man connect with a lamppost as he grabbed hold of the man’s accomplice and hurled him in the same general direction.
The men groaned and scrambled to their feet. One of them reached for the reticule that had been dropped. Stuart put his foot on it. The men looked at the reticule, looked at Stuart, looked at each other, and ran as if their shirts had been set on fire.
The woman on the sidewalk slowly lifted herself to her elbows. Her hair had tumbled loose during the melee. A wild mass of curls concealed much of her dirt-smudged face. Her mouth was wide open in astonishment.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
And if she was, he’d return her reticule and get on with his own business. She was likely a prostitute whose healthy haul for the evening had lured her would-be muggers, and he owed her no more than a question of courtesy.
“I’m…I’m…” She looked about her person. “Oh, no!”
Her accent, all adamantine consonants and efficient vowels, did not sound like that of any streetwalker he’d ever met. And he’d met plenty during his years in the slums of Ancoats.
“It’s all right. I’ve your reticule.”
He pulled her to her feet. Her scuffed and dirtied reticule, along with her crumpled hat, he pressed into her gloved hands. She curled her fingers tight about her belongings.
“Thank you,” she said, her voice muffled. “Thank you, sir.”
At some point within the past thirty seconds, she’d begun to weep, her tears as copious as seawater. She fumbled in her reticule. Her hands shook; she couldn’t seem to find anything.
“Are you hurt?” He offered her his own handkerchief.
She shook her head and pressed his handkerchief to her eyes. But it was like trying to stop the Deluge.
No, not a prostitute, too soft for a life of streetwalking. He tried to place her. Her clothes, a good tailor-made jacket-and-skirt set, were less the choice of a tart than that of a respectable governess. Perhaps she was the employee of one of his neighbors, coming back from her evening off?
“Which house is yours, miss?”
She shook her head once more. “I don’t live here,” she said, her voice breaking. “I will see myself home, thank you. Please, don’t let me keep you.”
Again that accent, like the tapping of silver tines on a crystal goblet, more indisputably aristocratic than that of the viscountess with whom he’d conversed several days ago.
“I can hardly do that. You’ve already been set upon once,” he said. “Come with me. I’ll find you a hansom.”
As soon as he made his offer he realized he couldn’t very well walk with her while she was in such a state, disarrayed and sobbing. He took her by the elbow, turned her around, and guided her the short distance to his house. He unlocked the front door, stepped aside, and waited for her to precede him.
But the woman, who’d followed him with the docility of a spring lamb, did not do as he indicated. Instead, she drew back, alarmed at last. He could almost hear her jumbled thoughts. He is a stranger. The other men had only wanted her money. He could do far worse to her.
Good. So she wasn’t altogether stupid.
She gasped. Her face swung to him. From behind her veil of hair, he almost made out her eyes. She stared at him as if he’d materialized out of thin air, her reaction something between shock and paralysis.
“Would you like to wash up a bit before we look for a hack?” he asked. “Have the use of a mirror?”
She stared at him one more second, then her hand went to her hair. She squeaked. After that, she followed him meekly into the house. He turned on the lamps in the vestibule and the main hall and pointed at the stairs. “The bath is two floors up. Second door to your left.”
She ran for it.
And so her very well-justified mistrust of him had evaporated at the mention of the word mirror. Stuart shook his head. Perhaps she wasn’t altogether stupid, but neither was she much smarter than a sack of turnips.
Verity clung to the scalloped edge of the washbasin. Her hand hurt. Her back hurt. The outside of her thigh hurt where it had hit the ground when she’d been thrown down. But the pain was only a mute dissonance compared to the din in her head.