Unraveled (Turner #3)(17)

“I would.” He glared at her. “I do listen to people like you. Every day.” He took a step closer, and she shrank against the wall. “If you’re so innocent,” he pressed, “why were you there?”

But her gaze fixed on something just beyond him. Her mouth rounded. “Look out,” she called. “Behind you.”

He didn’t take his eyes from her. “A feeble attempt. There’s nobody there. You won’t be evading me so easily.”

And that was when something struck him from behind. He experienced a sharp, splintering pain in his head—a savage sense of disbelief—and then, the sure knowledge that his knees were giving way beneath him.

Darkness flooded his vision before he hit the ground.

Chapter Five

SMITE WOKE TO HEAD-POUNDING confusion. A twisting burn of pain at the back of his skull warred with the dryness of his mouth. Straws poked his back; a warm, wet cloth lay on his forehead. The air around him was thick with a perplexing mixture of smells: heavy coal smoke, overboiled wheat, lye soap, and over everything, a heavy, distasteful scent that put him in mind of the worst of the street’s refuse.

Gradually, memory returned. He’d chased after Miss Darling in the gloom of a cloudy afternoon, ducking through the alleys of Temple Parish. He’d put his arm around her. She’d yelled at him. And then, the last thing he could bring to mind: her eyes cutting up and to the right, widening at what she saw behind him.

So. Her surprise hadn’t been a ruse.

That explained the knot of hurt at the back of his head. Someone had struck him from behind.

And now he didn’t know where he was or who held him. The thought of moving made his head whirl. He wasn’t precisely in a position to fight his way to safety.

“Wash your hands,” a voice said, not so far away. “It’s time to eat.” Not just a voice; it was Miss Darling. Rather a relief; he didn’t think she intended him any harm.

Smite also didn’t think that a bare nod to hygiene would make any difference, not with that scent of sewage so prominent. An unfortunate consequence of living in the poorer areas. No matter how the authorities tried to stamp out the practice, people would toss the contents of their chamber pots in the streets.

“I don’t want to.” That voice was unfamiliar. Flat and monotone, it hovered just barely above baritone range.

Miss Darling sighed. “Don’t be difficult.”

“You’re not my mother.” There were clinking sounds—dishes being moved, perhaps? He tried slitting his eyes open, but his head was turned full toward a window, and the red rays of sunlight left him temporarily blind.

“What does it matter, Robbie?” Miss Darling said. “I’m trying to do what’s best for you. Can’t you see that?”

“Ha,” came the morose response from the other occupant.

Smite couldn’t see him, but he could form an image in his mind of this Robbie. Young and hulking, if one trusted that voice. Muscular. A sweetheart, perhaps? He found himself vaguely annoyed by the thought of Miss Darling entertaining so boorish a lover.

“I can’t believe you hit him,” Miss Darling said.

“Huh,” came the man’s brilliantly articulate reply.

Wood scraped against wood. Smite moved his head a fraction, angling it away from the window, and slitted his eyes open again. From beneath his eyelashes, he could make out silhouettes against the light.

By the voice, Smite had expected Robbie to be a large, surly fellow, barely into manhood. But Robbie was a thin reed of a child, his voice desperately outsized in a scrawny body. Miss Darling, not precisely tall herself, towered a good six inches over him.

“You don’t let me do anything,” Robbie rumbled. Or rather, he attempted to rumble. His voice quavered on the last syllable, hanging on the verge of breaking until he cleared his throat and deliberately dropped it a handful of notes. “Can’t take work at the mills. And now Joey says I’m not to be allowed to work with him either. That’s ready money you’re stopping me from getting, to be had for the taking.”

“We both know how Joey gets his money. He’s working with the Patron. I don’t want to see you hanged.”

“Ha,” Robbie repeated.

Smite was unsure what Robbie was, but he was fast building up a list of things that he was not. He was not an adult. He was not Miss Darling’s lover. He was not a stunning conversationalist.

“If you go to work for the Patron, Robbie, so help me I will toss you out on your ear. It is not safe. Now promise me you won’t even try.”

Sullen silence. Then—“What, I’m not even allowed to try a little dipping, but you can do whatever you wish?”

“What do you mean?”

“Why else would you be so angry when I hit that cove? You were planning to sell it to him.”

Miss Darling gasped, and a slap echoed. That sound made the silence that followed all the more pressing. Smite could barely make out the details of the scene—Miss Darling, holding one hand in the other, looking down at her fingers as if she couldn’t believe what she’d done, and Robbie, his own hand rubbing his cheek.

“Right, then,” Robbie rumbled. He shoved away from the table and opened the door. Smite felt a breath of cool air against his face. “Charge him double. After all, he brought company.”