“Turpin,” he nodded coolly. “No time to waste I’m afraid. I’ve an appointment.”
The man stood half a foot taller than Avery, his brownish-white shirt splattered with stains across the front. His jacket was threadbare, the cheap fabric thinning in many places. “Come in for a pint, my lad, and tell us about the fine house you serve in. Fancy a bruiser like you polishing buttons and wiping a lordship’s arse!” He tossed back his head and laughed, and Leah turned her head away quickly from the sight and smell of his open mouth. Ugh, she should have GeekGirlsDontDateDukes.indd 99
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brought a sack of toothbrushes with her through that damn mirror.
“Another time.” Avery turned on his heel and Leah stumbled in shock as he gripped her arm to steer her forward.
“At the Houndstooth tourney? You’ll be there, won’t you, lad?”
Avery didn’t slow, apparently pretending not to hear the question.
Leah moved on her toes, driven by Avery’s strong but gentle grip.
Shut up, she inwardly hissed to her fluttering heart.
Anyone would think she’d been kissed passionately at the way her excited heart was thumping. She was apparently so desperate for human companionship that her upper arm had graduated to erogenous zone. At least, she tried to convince herself that it could have been anyone, not just the strong, quiet man beside her that was making her heart turn cartwheels.
Or maybe it was just the fear of the environment. She made use of their proximity to grip his coat in nerveless fingers. What had that Turpin guy meant “a bruiser like Avery”? A tourney?
She opened her mouth to ask him, but her train of thought was derailed when they crossed the road. The smell was awful, even worse than it had been before.
Mud stood in the streets, fetid pools that made her wonder if they were just dirt and water, or something else. The buildings, if she could be so generous, looked about ready to collapse at any moment. But the thing that made her want to close her eyes and not open them until she got back home was the faces.
There were thousands of them. Young, old, decorated GeekGirlsDontDateDukes.indd 100
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with visible dirt or wiped clean, it didn’t matter, they
all held the same expression— hopelessness. It saturated their gaunt cheeks, their pointed chins, but most of all, it haunted their empty eyes. It was like walking through a horror movie. She caught herself praying that Avery had never been among their number, although she knew better.
She curled her fingers tighter into his sleeve. “Avery, are you sure we should be here?”
“We’ve arrived.” He pulled free of her grip and opened the door for her. Damn it, how did he sound so calm? And why’d he have to let go of her arm? She ducked through the low doorway into a narrow staircase.
The smell wasn’t as bad here, and she breathed a shaky sigh of relief. Even her normally strong stomach had been close to losing it at the conditions outside. How had he come through a life in this place?
The stairs creaked beneath their feet. At the top, Avery produced an ancient key and pushed it into the lock of the narrow door.
“Aunt?”
The only answer in the dim room was a hacking cough from the bed in the corner. The heavy, cloying scent of sickness and unwashed human filled the room.
Avery moved inside, and Leah stuck close to his back.
She didn’t want to be here. She should have stayed back at the house. She could have figured out how to handle herself on her own, couldn’t she?
No way to fix it now. She was in the middle of England with no way of getting back to Granville House except the man who was bending over a tiny bed by the room’s single window.
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“Aunt, I am here.” His gruff voice was as tender as she’d ever heard it. A soft moan was the only answer from the rail-thin form beneath the covers.
Leah leaned to the side to get a better look at the woman.
A lank braid lay on the pillow. Her cheeks were sunken, her skin held the sickly pallor of the nearly dead.
Her lashes, long and thick, rested on her sharp cheek-bones. Apparently, the moan hadn’t been in response to Avery’s greeting at all.
Leah shifted her weight anxiously. This had once been a beautiful, strong woman. Now she laid here in this tiny room, dying all alone? Worrying the inside of her cheek with her teeth, Leah looked at the rough floorboards.
It really put her own life into perspective, and Leah didn’t care for the comparison. She’d been selfish and completely narrow-minded. But what could she have done differently?
The question seemed moot.
“How has she been faring, Mrs. Comstock?” Avery said as another woman entered the room behind them and dumped a bucket of water into the ewer.