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Releasing his hair, she planted a loud, smacking kiss on the back of his head.
He gave a shocked gasp.
She dropped another noisy kiss on the back of his grimy neck. He tensed. She kissed his dirty cheek.
He let out the breath he’d been holding in a stream of obscenities, and furiously squirmed out from under her. Before he could scramble away, though, she caught the shoulder of his ragged jacket and quickly came to her feet, hauling him up with her.
His shabby boot shot out at her shins, but she dodged, still holding fast.
“Quiet down,” she said in her best Obedience or Death tones, giving him a shake for good measure. “Try kicking me again and I shall kick back—and I won’t miss, either.”
“Piss on you!” he cried. He made a violent effort to wrench away, but Jessica had a firm grip, not to mention plenty of practice with squirming children.
“Let me go, you stupid sow!” he shrieked. “Let me go! Let me go!” He was pulling and twisting frantically. But she grasped one scrawny arm and managed to draw him back firmly against her and wrap her arms about him.
The squirming stopped, but the outraged howls did not.
It occurred to Jessica that he was truly alarmed, yet she could not believe he was afraid of her.
His cries were growing more desperate when the answer appeared.
Phelps came round a turn in the bridle path with a woman in tow. The child broke off midscream and froze.
The woman was Charity Graves.
It was the boy’s mother who had been chasing him this time and, unlike the hapless Athcourt villagers, she had a very good idea what to do with him. For starters, she would beat him within an inch of his life, she announced.
He’d run away a fortnight ago, and Charity claimed she’d been looking for him everywhere. Finally, she’d ventured to Athton—though she knew it was as much as her life was worth to come within ten miles of His Lordship, she said. She’d come as far as the Whistling Ghost when Tom Hamby and Jem Furse came running out, leading a dozen other angry men, who quickly surrounded her.
“And they give—gave—me an earful,” Charity said, bending a threatening look upon her son.
Jessica no longer had him by the collar. At his mother’s appearance, the boy had grabbed her hand. He was gripping it hard now. Except for the fierce pressure of that little hand, he was immobile, his body rigid, his dark eyes riveted upon his mother.
“Everyone in Dartmoor knows what he’s been up to,” Jessica said. “You cannot expect me to believe you heard nothing. Where were you, in Constantinople?”
“I’m a working woman,” said Charity, tossing her head. “I can’t be watching him every second, and I got no nanny to do it for me, neither. I sent him to school, didn’t I? But Schoolmaster couldn’t make him mind, could he? And how am I to do it, I ask you, when the boy bolts on me and I don’t know where he’s keeping himself?”
Jessica doubted that Charity cared where the boy was keeping himself, until she’d heard his refuge was Athcourt’s park. If His Lordship found out the “guttersnipe” was hiding out in the second marquess’s ornate, immaculately maintained summerhouse, there would be hell to pay, and Charity knew it.
Even now, she was not so boldly defiant as she pretended. Her green glance skittered away from time to time to take in their leafy surroundings, as though she expected Dain to explode through the trees at any moment.
Uneasy she was, yet she did not seem in any great hurry to be gone, either. Though Jessica could not guess what exactly was going through the woman’s mind, it was clear enough that she was sizing up the Marchioness of Dain and adjusting her approach accordingly. Having quickly perceived that the threats of dire punishment for Dominick were not meeting with approval, she had promptly shifted to blaming her difficult circumstances.
Even while Jessica was noting these matters, Charity was making further adjustments.
“I know what you’re thinking,” the woman said, her tones softening. “That I don’t look after him proper and a child don’t—doesn’t—run away unless he’s wretched. But it weren’t—wasn’t—me made him so, but the stuck-up brats at school. They told him what his mama’s trade was—as though their own papas and brothers didn’t come knocking at my door, and mamas and sisters, too, to get their ‘mistakes’ fixed. And them precious little prigs made it out like I was nothing but filth. And they called him names, too. Didn’t they, lovey?” she said with a pitying glance at Dominick.
“Do you wonder, then, he was vexed and made trouble?” she went on, when the boy didn’t respond. “And it’s just what they deserve, for picking on a poor tyke and giving him nightmares. But now he don’t like his own mama no more, either, and won’t stay. And look where the fool child comes, my lady. And won’t his pa have my head for it?—as though I done—did—it on purpose. He’ll have me taken up, he will, and sent to the workhouse. And he’ll cut off the boy’s keeping money, and then what’s to become of us, I ask you?”
Phelps was gazing at Charity in patent disgust. He opened his mouth to say something, but caught Jessica’s warning glance. He relieved his feelings by rolling his eyes heavenward.
“You’ve spent a good deal of breath telling me nothing I hadn’t figured out for myself,” Jessica said crisply. “What you have not told me is what you proposed to gain by coming to Athton in the first place, when you understood His Lordship’s sentiments, or why, in the second place, you have lingered in the vicinity, when you were aware of Dominick’s distress and the means he chose of expressing it. There must be something you want very badly, to take such risks.”
Charity’s hunted expression instantly vanished. Her countenance hardening, she gave Jessica an insolent head-to-toe survey.
“Well, then, Dain didn’t marry no feather-wit, did he?” Charity said with a smile. “Maybe I did have plans, my lady, and maybe the lad spoilt ’em. But maybe there’s no harm done, either, and we can fix it, you and me.”
A few minutes later, Dominick having been persuaded to release his death grip on Jessica’s hand, the group was slowly making its way back toward the main road. Phelps had drawn the boy a discreet distance ahead of the two women, so that the latter could negotiate in private.
“I’m no feather-wit, either,” Charity said, with a furtive glance about her. “I can see easy enough that you want the little devil. But Dain don’t want him, else he’d ’ve come and took—taken—him by now, wouldn’t he? And you know you can’t just up and steal my boy from me, becau
se I’ll make a fuss—and make sure Dain hears it. And there’s no one hereabouts’ll hide Dominick away and mind him for you, if that’s what you’re wondering. I know. I tried it. No one’ll have him, because they’re scared. They’re scared of Dain and they’re scared of the boy, because he looks like a little goblin and acts like one, too.”
“I am not the only one with a problem,” Jessica said coldly. “When Dain finds out you’ve been letting that child run wild in Athton, you’ll wish the workhouse were your next residence. What he has in mind is a one-way voyage to New South Wales.”
Charity laughed. “Oh, I won’t be staying to find out what he has in mind. You should’ve heard Tom and Jem a while back—and the others. They won’t be waiting on His Lordship’s wishes. They want me gone, and they’ll hunt me all over Dartmoor, they say, and have the dogs helping ’em. And if they don’t chase me into a bog, they’ll have me tied to a cart and whipped from here to Exeter, they promised. So I decided I’ll be on the first London coach tomorrow.”
“A wise decision,” said Jessica, suppressing a shudder at the prospect of little Dominick roaming the thieves’ kitchens of London. “Having encountered me, however, you have guessed that you need not leave empty-handed.”
“Gracious me, if you aren’t the quick one.” The smile she bent upon Jessica was perfectly amiable. Charity, clearly, was a businesswoman, and she was delighting in the challenge of a tough customer. “Being so quick, I guess you’ll figure out what to do with my little lovey if I give him up easy-like, with no fuss. Just like I’ll figure out what to do with him in London if you decide he isn’t worth the trouble.
“I do not wish to hurry you, but I am obliged to be at the church when services end,” Jessica said. “Perhaps you would be good enough to describe my ‘trouble’ in simple pounds, shillings, and pence.”
“Oh, it’s much simpler than that,” said Charity. “All you have to do is give me the picture.”
Chapter 17
