Page 42 of The Marriage Method

“Like what?”

“That depends,” Verity drained the glass. She set it back on the table with a hard clink. “How much money are we talking about?”

Nell pushed her untouched glass of gin toward Verity. “Would a gold guinea be sufficient?”

Verity gave a slow double blink. “You’re jesting.”

“I’m not. I’ll give you one guinea to tell me about my missing girl, and another if you’ll answer a second question.”

Verity snorted. “Well?” She picked up Nell’s glass and took a drink. “Let’s see them, then.”

Nell withdrew two gold guineas from her reticule. She set them on the table before her, out of Verity’s reach.

Verity stared at them for several long seconds before giving a slow, almost reflexive, nod. “All right.” She lowered her glass. “Happen I did see a girl on Monday. A new girl, what the missus found at the railway station. She were there until yesterday.”

Nell’s heartbeat quickened. “She’s not there anymore?”

“Busted out, didn’t she? Let out one of the missus’s disinclined guests, too. Caused a right uproar. I saw her myself. The missus was after the man, and Silas was after the girl. She gave him a proper scratch with her nails before she bolted.”

Nell stared at Verity, scarcely daring to hope. “She got away?”

“Aye, she did—the stupid little tart. Mrs. Pritchard’s ain’t all bad, you know. Not if you behave.”

Nell slid one of the guinea coins to Verity across the table, keeping the second one in reserve. Relief coursed through her, knowing that Miss Brent had managed to get free, but Nell wasn’t done yet. “What do you mean, one of Mrs. Pritchard’s disinclined guests?” she asked.

Verity snatched up the first coin. “Some bloke what owed her money. She’d locked him in the attic ’til they could come to terms.”

Nell promptly withdrew Miles’s notebook from her reticule. Opening it, she discreetly showed the sketch of Mr. Cowgill to Verity. “Is this the gentleman?”

Verity looked at it. She gave another burst of inebriated laughter. “Aye, that’s the man. Out of his wits he was. Drunk or something. But I had naught to do with it. I had a punter of me own to deal with. I told the missus to keep it down and I shut me door and that were that.”

Nell pushed the second guinea partway across the table, but she didn’t relinquish it. Not yet. “What about the man? Did you see him again?”

“Naw,” Verity said. “I reckon he paid his tariff and went his merry way. The missus don’t let men get the better of her, but she ain’t hard-hearted, neither. Once they pay up, she sends them off with her blessing.”

I bet she does, Nell thought acidly.

She slid the coin the rest of the way to Verity. “Your mistress won’t like to hear that you’ve answered my questions. If I were you, I’d forget you ever saw me.”

Verity took the second guinea. She dropped it along with the first one down the front of her bodice, secreting it in her ample cleavage. “Already forgotten, ma’am. Happy to forget even more if there’s another guinea in it.”

Nell hesitated for a moment before withdrawing another coin. “Here,” she said to the woman. “Take it with my good wishes. And do look after yourself, my dear. It’s a treacherous world out there.”

11

Nell sat back in the seat of the hired hackney as she and Miles traveled west along the river, leaving the East End firmly behind them. Having shared all of the information she’d learned with him, she no longer had the thrill of the hunt to buoy her battered spirits, nor the joy of discovery, nor even the threat of danger. All that remained was a growing pit of bleak melancholy sunk deep into her stomach, and another feeling—a worse feeling—that was something very like the fear she’d experienced as a little girl when those two elderly servants had left her at the gates of the Academy so long ago.

Outside the window of the cab, the sun was slowly setting over the city. With every second that elapsed, they drew closer to Miles’s house in St. James’s Square.

If Miles sensed Nell’s growing apprehension, he didn’t show it. He’d fallen into a meditative silence of his own after she had related what she’d learned from Verity. It wasn’t until the hackney was passing along the embankment that he finally spoke. “It’s illogical,” he said.

Nell had spent the past twenty minutes trying and failing to calm her racing pulse. Logic had ceased to matter somewhere between collecting her luggage from the railway porter’s office at Shoreditch and sitting down across from Miles in the cab. “What is?” she asked.

“What danger could Cowgill have posed to Mrs. Pritchard?” Miles asked in return. “Brothel keepers are already known to procure girls. It’s common enough knowledge to have brought you to the East End in search of Flora Brent. The practice isn’t strictly legal, but neither is it a secret. Not one worth killing over.”

“Your point?”

“Why did she lock up Cowgill? What could he possibly have known that would have done a woman like that any actual harm?”