AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He only loosened his grip when he feared he might not be able to let go of her at all.
Chapter Nine
FOR ANOTHER MAN, THE memory of Miranda Darling might have faded over the days that passed.
But Smite’s memories never faded, and he found himself strangely reluctant to push thoughts of her from his mind entirely. It was easy to withstand loneliness when the alternative was to saddle himself with some doe-eyed innocent who could not follow his conversation, and whose only experience in deprivation amounted to a few hours of boredom. It was harder to resist thoughts of a wary, green-eyed woman who knew Greek plays and made her own way on the streets.
He could call to mind what it felt like to have her walking next to him in the rain, her cheeks pink with exertion, that wide smile on her face as she teased him about his name. He woke some nights, not from one of his usual nightmares, but hard with want, the memory of her skin swimming through his mind.
No matter how he tried, he couldn’t remember her scent—just that it had calmed him—and that failure was driving him wild.
He tried to tell himself it was nothing but lust. Except that he didn’t only think of the heat of her mouth, her response to his kiss. He lusted after her smiles. After the easy way she teased him. It was deeply irrational, that want. But then, it had been a long while since a woman had laughed at him, and he couldn’t help but treasure the memory.
There was nothing to do about such thoughts—nothing, that was, except to hope that she was eating well, and to send his clerk off to seek word of George Patten. But Palter had found nothing from the men in the gaol; days ago, he’d gone in search of those who’d been released since then. The inquiries were taking time.
This morning started as any other morning would. Palter brought him a summary of the prior day’s dealings: licenses issued, hearings held.
Midway through the morning, a constable came in. “I’ll need a warrant issued to hold a man until the Assizes,” he said.
Across the room, Jamison, a fellow magistrate, spoke without looking up from his reading. “I’ll sign,” he offered. “Give the papers over.”
“You can’t just sign,” Smite interjected. “You haven’t heard the evidence. The man hasn’t even been charged, and besides, there’s a bail hearing to be had.” He was long past feeling appalled at the lax way in which weighty matters of law were decided. He wasn’t past arguing, though.
“What’s the point?” Jamison shrugged. “The constable wouldn’t have brought the man in were he not guilty, and if he’s guilty, he’ll just run.”
“It’s almost an insult, sir,” the constable said, nodding his head. “When you ask all those pointed questions. It’s like saying that you don’t trust my judgment.”
Smite met the man’s eyes. “This has nothing to do with your pride or your integrity or any of your finer personal feelings. It is not about you at all. It is about fidelity to the duty demanded by the laws that we have both sworn to honor. Adhering to the requirements of the law is never a personal slight.”
“I see,” the constable said with a frown, “but still, it’s my judgment you’re questioning.”
Smite sighed and rubbed his forehead. “The law demands that an impartial observer consider the evidence.”
Jamison exhaled noisily behind them. “Then you consider it,” he said, turning a page of his newspaper. “I’m busy.”
Smite had had similar conversations any number of times in his tenure as a magistrate in Bristol. He always felt as if he were fighting a losing battle with his colleagues. How hard was it to listen? To truly think of the requirements of justice, instead of mechanically signing whatever came their way?
Apparently, it was next to impossible.
“You haven’t any family to speak of,” Jamison continued. “If you did, you’d not be able to devote the hours you do. The rest of us, well, we’ve found it useful to accept that some of the legal technicalities can be set aside. No point in being slaves to formality.”
“I have a family,” Smite said quietly. The man who was being held out there might have one, too. “That’s why I consider it imperative to discharge my duty to its utmost.”
“Well then.” The other magistrate waved his hand. “My sincerest compliments, Lord Justice.”
Smite gritted his teeth at that insult—at the implication that his duty was little more than a ribald commitment to a stone woman. This was how he ended up shouldering far more than his fair share of the work: nobody else would do it. Still, if he was the only one available… He stood.
“Well,” he said, “let’s see the fellow.”
The constable shook his head. “Bloke’s just this way.”
He turned the corner…and his heart sank. It wasn’t a fellow or a bloke. It was a boy.
To be more specific, it was a tiny rapscallion of a boy—scrawny, sullen, his hair mussed and standing up in untidy spikes. The tracks of fallen tears had wiped clean lines down his dirty cheeks. And when he saw Smite, his eyes widened in recognition.
Robbie.
Smite’s thoughts turned instantly to Miss Darling. I’m guilty the instant a constable lays eyes on me and decides I appear out of place, she’d said. Nobody listens.
I do, he’d answered.
But he could already feel his emotions engaging, searching for an excuse on Robbie’s behalf. He knew the boy. And he knew that if he authorized a grand jury to charge Robbie, Miranda would be devastated.
Smite took a deep breath. “Your full name, young master?”
“Robbie. I mean—Robert Barnstable.”
He’d just lectured Jamison and the constable on fidelity and honor and duty. His duty in cases such as these was clear. With his emotions engaged, he had to step down and ask one of his brother magistrates to hear the evidence in his stead. The law required an impartial assessment, and Smite very much doubted that he could deliver.
“Are you going to hang me?” Robbie asked, his voice shaking.
But if he didn’t act, who would? Jamison wouldn’t listen; he had practically announced as much. He wouldn’t think. He’d simply hold the boy for days until the grand jury laid an indictment.
There was no right choice. If Smite had any integrity, he’d walk away. If he cared at all about justice, he’d stay. But he couldn’t sit here and dither over his options. And so Smite took a deep breath, checked his instinct, and came to a decision.
THE INSIDE STEPS UP to Miranda’s rooms were always cold, but today the stairwell held a particularly drafty chill. She saw why when she came to the second-floor landing.
The window was ajar and Robbie sat on the sill, legs dangling out into open space as he stared at the city. Night had come on, and fog blanketed th
e buildings. A street away, a few lamps burned orange holes through the mist, but everything else was shadowed.
He wasn’t smoking. He simply glanced at her as she walked by and then looked quickly away, his shoulders hunching in misery.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
His chin fell, and he contemplated the top of the adjacent building, scarcely a foot away. But there was nothing there but coal-blackened brick and, far below, brown drifts of paper-dry leaves.
“Very well,” Miranda said, and slid past him.
He let out a second, wearier sigh as she went by. Just a noisy exhalation—not even his usual handful of terse, disapproving syllables. Still, the sigh said it wasn’t nothing, and at this point, Miranda would take any form of communication she could get from him.
She sat on the steps, just behind him.
“So tell me about this nothing.”
He shrugged. “It’s nothing.”
She’d been looking after Robbie in some capacity for seven years. His mother had been an actress—and one of the flightier ones at that. She’d attached herself to Miranda’s father’s troupe just before everything had fallen to pieces. Robbie’s mother had asked Miranda to take care of her son during the day, in exchange for a few pennies. For a few years, Miranda had watched Robbie. She’d not minded; they’d needed all the pennies she could find.
One day, long after the troupe had fallen apart, his mother had disappeared for good, leaving Robbie behind. For months, Miranda had tried to find someone—anyone—to take him. But nobody had wanted an abandoned eight-year-old child.
So Miranda had kept him. At first, she’d entertained hopes that the two of them might form a family of a sort. In books, women reduced to straitened circumstances always surrounded themselves with kind, adoring loved ones through pluck and determination.
The authors of heartwarming books apparently had no contact with actual adolescent boys. They weren’t kind. They didn’t know how to adore. They were just surly.
She’d hoped to mirror the laughing, tempestuous feel of her childhood, where family and friends merged. But instead of warmth and love, Robbie left Miranda in a constant state of near-terror. What was he going to do next? How was she to stop him?
