Page 29 of The Lady’s Deception

How could he have forgotten that poor creature? Rescued by his sister a year ago—no, two, of course. How time did fly. She’d found it during one of her botanical expeditions to the very outskirts of Dublin, farther afield than she was supposed to wander alone and therefore forbidden. For that reason, she’d been determined to keep the hedgehog a secret. She’d almost succeeded, until the night it had escaped its box and somehow made its way down to the kitchen, where Cook had heard it grubbing about and gone, skillet upraised, to investigate. Molly had reacted just in time to prevent the slaughter of innocents—both the hedgehog and Erica.

Erica had made a sort of pet out of the thing. Only she had ever managed to learn the trick of persuading it to unroll from its defensive ball so its soft belly could be stroked. He remembered once joking in a low voice with Henry Edgeworth, who had often dined with the family: “How do hedgehogs mate?”

Henry had regarded him with an unreadable expression for a long moment before cracking something meant to be a smile. “Very carefully.”

Shortly thereafter, Henry had proposed to Erica and been accepted. Paris had thought it an odd match, persuaded Henry’s interest lay in another direction and believing Erica unsuited to marriage at all. No doubt a true friend and a responsible elder brother would have tried to keep the two of them from making a terrible mistake.

Paris had merely shrugged off his concerns and offered them his felicitations.

“Do you remember what became of that hedgehog?” he asked Molly.

“Not I.” The maid looked thoughtful. “You don’t suppose Cook managed to sneak it into a stew?”

As he sputtered into the coffee he’d been sipping, Molly began straightening the piles he’d left on the desk. Wordlessly, she placed last night’s dirty glass on her tray, but the assessing look she sent over her shoulder drove him from the room.

Outside the door to his bedchamber, he paused. He’d listened to the girls troop down to the kitchen for breakfast and Rosamund’s lighter ascent to the schoolroom sometime later. Molly would be occupied downstairs for some time. He would be safe, finally, in collapsing into oblivion. But a comfortable bed was the last thing he deserved.

Instead, he went in, removed his wrinkled coat, and hung it over the back of a chair. Molly had left hot water. Somehow, she managed the near-impossible task of keeping the household running smoothly, even anticipating its occupants’ needs. For that, he was more than willing to put up with a little sauciness. After shedding his waistcoat, cravat, and shirt, he shaved—though where he was going, no one would notice if he looked like death warmed over—then donned fresh linen and a brown coat that he knew from experience wouldn’t show the grime.

When he left the house, a steady drizzle was falling. He flipped up the collar on his greatcoat, tugged his hat lower over his ears, and considered a hackney. But cabs were few and far between on the Dublin streets, and none would want to take him where he was headed. He’d reach his destination sooner on foot.

In an hour—during which time the drizzle had turned to rain and he’d been splashed with mud and worse by a passing dray—he stood before the hulking gray stone walls of the New Gaol in Kilmainham, larger than its predecessor but already almost as fetid.

Even outside, the odor of unwashed bodies hung thick in the air. The guard recognized him and let him through the gate with a sneer. Of late, Paris had expended all of his considerable legal acumen trying to save at least a few of those whom the system was designed to damn. He almost always failed, as Graves had surely known when he’d presented him with the Kilready case.

Part of him wondered whether he was supposed to fail this time, too.

Inside the jail, men, women, and children were penned together indiscriminately, murderers beside pickpockets, like hogs allowed to fatten by feeding on one another as they awaited slaughter. On every visit, Paris fought the temptation to clutch a handkerchief over his nose and mouth to filter the air, too thick with the stench of human misery to breathe. Each time, he made himself go on without it. If the prisoners could survive it, he could too.

Of course, a good many of them would not survive. A steady noise of moaning, coughing, and keening nearly drowned out his footsteps as he walked through the dark corridor lined with cells.

But silence would be more frightening still.

A few eyes had already begun to follow him. “Fagan?” he called out, dreading what would follow. “I’m looking for Thomas Fagan.”

The replies, as always, ran the gamut. Some men claimed an identity that wasn’t theirs, clutching at the mere flicker of hope it offered. Others, whose hope had long since died, loudly denied the existence of such a fellow. From the shadows, someone offered to suck his cock. Whether the lewd words were intended to draw him closer or drive him away, Paris had never tried to determine.

The women and children were quieter, though they watched him with hollow eyes from the corners of the crowded cells, where they’d been driven by the men. While he stood waiting, one elbowed her way to the front of her cage, snarling at those who would refuse her passage. “’Tis here you’ll find him, sirrah.”

It might have been a trap. Nevertheless, Paris stepped closer. “Yes?”

“T’ lad took sick in the night,” she explained, and she bravely nudged a few more bodies aside so that he could see a figure lying on the dirty straw, his face turned toward the wall.

“You, there,” Paris called to the guard at the far end of the corridor. “I need to speak with this prisoner.”

With a great show of reluctance, the man rose from the battered table at which he’d been seated, dealing himself a solitary hand of cards, and slowly approached. Paris had never seen him before. He must have been newly appointed to his post. “How’s that?” the man grunted.

“I need to enter this cell.” A wiser man wouldn’t have made a habit of it. No one inside that cage had a thing to lose.

But Paris had also lost a great deal. Too much to fear disease or a makeshift knife between the ribs.

The guard looked from the gathered prisoners to Paris and gave a mirthless laugh, revealing a mouthful of rotted teeth. “It’s your funeral.” He shrugged. “All right, then. Back, you. Back!” he shouted, rattling the bars with a club to drive the men away. The ring of keys at his side jingled, but there was no merriment in the sound.

The woman who’d called Paris over had returned to the boy’s side. “What ails him?” Paris asked her. Typhoid, cholera…the possibilities were legion.

That foolish question earned him another guffaw from the guard. “Naught but what this club would cure.”

Paris caught the end of the man’s cudgel in one hand and shoved him backward with it. “Enough. Unlock the cell.”