“We’ll have sandwiches, cakes, and hot chocolate in the library, as soon as possible,” he heard her tell Morey, her footsteps brisk as she crossed the black-and-white-marbled entry hall. The room filled with the scent of coal smoke and fresh manure and grimy boy.
“This is Drummer,” she said, releasing the child’s hand so that she could loosen the ribbons of her bonnet and yank off her gloves. “He’s a crossing sweep at St. Giles, but he also works in the Haymarket in the evenings, helping gentlemen too shy to descend from their carriages to find girls.” She gave the boy a nudge forward. “Make your bow and tell his lordship about Jenny.”
The boy stumbled forward, a grubby wideawake cap clutched in both hands, his skinny chest jerking with his agitated breathing.
“Jenny?” prompted Sebastian when the lad remained mute.
“Jenny Davie,” supplied Hero. “She’s seventeen, and last Sunday evening she was hired by a gentleman in a hackney who was known to procure girls for a nasty old goat living in St. Botolph-Aldgate.”
Sebastian led the boy closer to the fire, where the black cat looked up in slit-eyed annoyance at their intrusion. “What did this gentleman look like?”
Drummer raised a shoulder in the offhand shrug of a lad to whom one member of the nobility was pretty much like the next. “I reckon ’e looks like a nob.”
“My age? Younger? Or older?”
Drummer frowned with the effort of thought. “Younger, I’d say—by a fair bit.”
Sebastian and Hero exchanged glances. So Jenny Davie’s procurer had not been Samuel Perlman.
“Fair?” asked Sebastian. “Or dark haired?”
“’E’s got a mess o’ curls as gold as a guinea. The girls always go with ’im real quick, because ’e’s so good-lookin’. But ’e ain’t never ’ad nothin’ to do with any of ’em. Jist takes ’em to that old codger.”
Blair Beresford, thought Sebastian. Aloud, he said, “Tell me about Jenny Davie.”
Again that twitch of the shoulder. Circumstances had obviously taught Drummer long ago to take life—and people—as he met them, with little time for analysis or criticism. “Wot’s there t’ tell? She’s a doxy.”
“Where does she live?”
The boy’s gaze slid away. “She used t’ keep a room at a lodgin’ ’ouse in Rose Court.”
“But she’s not there anymore?”
Drummer shook his head. “There’s been a mess o’ people lookin’ for ’er.”
“Oh? Such as?”
“Well, the curly-’eaded cove what ’ired ’er, fer one.”
Interesting, thought Sebastian. “Who else?”
The boy’s shoulder twitched. “Some Frenchman. “’E’s been lookin’ fer ’er real ’ard. He’s even offered blunt to any o’ the lads what could tell ’im where she’s gone.”
Sebastian saw Hero’s eyes narrow and knew that the boy had not yet told her this part of his tale. “What does he look like?”
“’E looks like a Frenchman.”
“Tall? Short? Old? Young? Dark? Fair?”
Drummer frowned. “Older than you, and shorter—but not real old or real short. I reckon ’e ’as a real bad pockmarked face, but I didn’t pay him a whole lot o’ mind. I mean, I ain’t about to bubble on Jenny, so why would I? She said if anyone was to come lookin’ fer ’er, we was t’ keep mum.”
“So you do know where she is.”
The boy sucked in a quick breath as he realized his mistake. He edged toward the door but was stopped by the entrance of Morey, who came in bearing a heavy tray loaded down with sandwiches, small cakes, and a pitcher of steaming hot chocolate.
Hero said, “Here, let me fix you a plate of sandwiches. Do you prefer ham or roast beef?”
The boy swallowed hard. “Can I ’ave some o’ both?” he asked in a small, hopeful voice.
“You certainly may.” She heaped the plate with a generous selection of dainty sandwiches. “Is Jenny a London girl, born and bred?”
Drummer shoved a sandwich in his mouth and shook his head. “She and Jeremy—that’s ’er brother—grew up Bermondsey, down in Southwark. I remember ’im tellin’ me their family ’ad a room over the gatehouse o’ some old abbey down there. But their folks died o’ the flux some years ago, and they didn’t ’ave no kin, so they come up to the city lookin’ for work.”
“Is that where she’s gone now?” asked Sebastian. “To Southwark?”
Drummer swallowed another bite of sandwich. “Nah. I wouldn’t a told you if it was.”
Hero poured the boy a mug of hot chocolate. “We want to help Jenny, not harm her. She needs help, Drummer. I’m afraid those other men you mentioned who are looking for her might kill her if they find her. And they are determined to find her. You must tell us where she is.”
The boy paused in midchew, his gaze going from Hero to Sebastian and back.
Hero said, “I understand it’s difficult to know whom to trust.”
Drummer swallowed, hard.
“Tell us,” said Sebastian, his voice quiet but implacable.
“White ’Orse Yard,” Drummer blurted out, his chest jerking with the agitation of his breathing. “She’s got a room at the Pope’s ’Ead in White ’Orse Yard, jist off Drury Lane.”