A Night Like This (Smythe-Smith Quartet #2)(66)

Granby nodded. “It is exactly how I might have described her.”
“What did you tell him?” Daniel asked, trying to keep the urgency out of his voice. Granby was feeling guilty enough for not having come forward sooner, he could see that.
“I told him that we had no one in residence who matched that description. As I said, I did not like his aspect, and I would not jeopardize Miss Wynter’s welfare.” He paused. “I like our Miss Wynter.”
“I do, too,” Daniel said softly.
“That is why I am telling you this,” Granby said, his voice finally finding some of the vigor with which it was usually imbued. “You must find her.”
Daniel took a long, unsteady breath and looked down at his hands. They were shaking. This had happened before, several times back in Italy, when Ramsgate’s men had come particularly close. Something had rushed through his body, some kind of terror in the blood, and it had taken him hours to feel normal again. But this was worse. His stomach churned, and his lungs felt tight, and more than anything, he wanted to throw up.
He knew fear. This went beyond fear.
He looked at Granby. “Do you think this man has taken her?”
“I do not know. But after he left, I saw her.” Granby turned and looked off to the right, and Daniel wondered if he was re-creating the scene in his mind. “She had been in the sitting room,” he said, “right over there by the door. She heard everything.”
“Are you sure?” Daniel asked.
“It was right there in her eyes,” Granby said quietly. “She is the woman he seeks. And she knew I knew.”
“What did you say to her?”
“I believe I remarked upon the weather. Or something of equal unimportance. And then I told her to carry on.” Granby cleared his throat. “I believe she understood that I did not intend to turn her in.”
“I’m sure she did,” Daniel said grimly. “But she may have felt that she must leave, nonetheless.” He didn’t know how much Granby knew about the curricle accident at Whipple Hill. Like everyone else, he probably thought that it had been Ramsgate’s work. But Anne obviously suspected otherwise, and it was clear that whoever had tried to hurt her did not care if anyone else was injured, too. Anne would never allow herself to put one of the Pleinsworth girls at risk. Or . . .
Or him. He closed his eyes for a moment. She probably thought she was protecting him. But if anything happened to her . . .
Nothing would destroy him more completely.
“I will find her,” he told Granby. “You can be sure of it.”
Anne had been lonely before. In fact, she’d spent most of the past eight years feeling lonely. But as she sat huddled on her hard boardinghouse bed, wearing her coat over her nightgown to keep out the chill, she realized that she had never known misery.
Not like this.
Maybe she should have gone to the country. It was cleaner. Probably less dangerous. But London was anonymous. The crowded streets could swallow her up, make her invisible.
But the streets could also chew her to bits.
There was no work for a woman like her. Ladies with her accent did not work as seamstresses or shopgirls. She’d walked up and down the streets of her new neighborhood, a marginally respectable place that squeezed itself in between middle-class shopping areas and desperate slums. She’d entered every establishment with a Help Wanted sign, and quite a few more without. She’d been told she wouldn’t last long, that her hands were too soft, and her teeth too clean. More than one man had leered and laughed, then offered a different type of employment altogether.
She could not obtain a gentlewoman’s position as a governess or companion without a letter of reference, but the two precious recommendations she had in her possession were for Anne Wynter. And she could not be Anne Wynter any longer.
She pulled her bent legs even tighter against her and let her face rest against her knees, closing her eyes tight. She didn’t want to see this room, didn’t want to see how meager her belongings looked even in such a tiny chamber. She didn’t want to see the dank night through the window, and most of all, she didn’t want to see herself.
She had no name again. And it hurt. It hurt like a sharp, jagged slice in her heart. It was an awful thing, a heavy dread that sat upon her each morning, and it was all she could do to swing her legs over the side of the bed and place her feet on the floor.
This wasn’t like before, when her family had thrown her from her home. At least then she’d had somewhere to go. She’d had a plan. Not one of her choosing, but she’d known what she was supposed to do and when she was supposed to do it. Now she had two dresses, one coat, eleven pounds, and no prospects save prostitution.
And she could not do that. Dear God, she couldn’t. She’d given herself too freely once before, and she would not make the same mistake twice. And it would be far, far too cruel to have to submit to a stranger when she’d stopped Daniel before they had completed their union.
She’d said no because . . . She wasn’t even sure. Habit, possibly. Fear. She did not want to bear an illegitimate child, and she did not want to force a man into marriage who would not otherwise choose a woman like her.
But most of all, she’d needed to hold onto herself. Not her pride, exactly; it was something else, something deeper.
Her heart.
It was the one thing she still had that was pure and utterly hers. She had given her body to George, but despite what she had thought at the time, he had never had her heart. And as Daniel’s hand had gone to the fastening of his breeches, preparing to make love to her, she had known that if she let him, if she let herself, he would have her heart forever.