Page 33 of The Marriage Method

“Do come again, dearie!” she called to Nell with a mocking laugh. “We’ll find work for you!”

Nell faltered a step, her fingers tightening on the carved handle of her cane. She hadn’t had it with her when Miles had found her at the Academy, but she had retrieved it before they’d left and had been using it ever since.

“I prefer not to rely on it too heavily when I’m at home,” she’d told him.

And this wasn’t home. Not here. Not with him. And certainly not in the worst part of one of London’s most infamous neighborhoods.

Miles curved his hand around Nell’s corseted waist, urging her back down the squalid alleyway from whence they’d come. She didn’t flinch at his touch. Perhaps she was becoming used to it? He couldn’t begin to count the number of times he’d taken her arm or placed a hand on her back since that fateful moment the vicar had pronounced them husband and wife. As permission went, Miles’s right to render her such assistance had been quite literally witnessed and formalized by law. Nell was his now. And he took care of what was his.

“Another dead end,” she muttered crossly. “I can’t say I’m surprised. When I asked Miss Jean for names, Mrs. Silkweed and Mrs. Early were only afterthoughts. She specifically said to start with Mrs. Pritchard’s Gentlemen’s Establishment near Lost Hope Yard.”

A drunken fellow staggered past them at the intersection of the next street, face ruddy, and trousers poorly fastened. He leered at Nell.

Miles’s jaw tightened as he steered her past. Every fiber of his being revolted at escorting his new bride on what amounted to a tour of the slum. It was a gentlemanly response distinctly at war with that other part of him—the barely restrained, bloodhound-like instinct that drove him whenever he was in pursuit of a story.

It was the latter impulse that had compelled him to approach Nell’s list in as orderly a fashion as possible. If they were going to do this, and it seemed inevitable that they were, then they may as well do it right.

“Lost Hope Yard is furthest away,” he said. “It only made sense to prioritize the names according to location. Otherwise, we’d be doubling back over ourselves.”

Nell made a soft sound of disappointment. “Yes, yes, order and method. Yet, where have they got us? All we’ve learned is that, among the people willing to speak up—or more precisely, willing to accept your coin—no one will admit to having encountered either Miss Brent or Mr. Cowgill.”

Miles wasn’t unsympathetic to her frustration. Investigative dead ends were a common occurrence when pursuing a story. It made them no less exasperating. “Don’t let it discourage you,” he said. “Not every interview provides answers. It won’t stop us asking questions.”

Nell’s cane clacked sharply along the refuse-strewn ground as they traversed the dark, narrow lanes that intersected the East End. It was hours yet until sunset. The worst of the slum’s residents hadn’t yet emerged. Among the drunkards staggering the alleyways and prostitutes lurking in the doorways were the hardworking people who called the East End home. Costermongers, washerwomen, and peddlers hawking their wares. Ragged street children ran among them, laughing and shouting, just as Miles had done with his childhood friends in the Rookery.

“I suppose they could have been lying to us,” Nell remarked.

“I don’t think so,” Miles said.

They’d spoken with a handful of bully boys and working girls at the first two brothels. As for the madams, Mrs. Early had been unavailable to them, but Mrs. Silkweed had deigned to come down from her boudoir to answer some of their questions—for a fee. Among them all, most had been suspicious, and many of them sly, but when it came to the point, Miles detected the ring of truth in their words.

“Their establishments are fairly unambitious,” he said. “The madams are weary, the premises run-down, and the women faded and—” He stopped short of calling them well used. “Generally older,” he supplied instead. “We’re looking for someone cold and calculating. Possibly murderous.”

Nell cast him an alarmed glance. “You don’t suggest that this person might have killed Mr. Cowgill? Or Miss Brent?”

Miles frowned. “I don’t know what they might be capable of. Or even if they’re the one we’re looking for. We haven’t much to go on other than a few lines from Cowgill’s notes.”

In the moments before their train had arrived at the station, Miles had shared those lines with Nell. She wasn’t one of his reporters, or even a reporter at all, but she was thoughtful and intelligent. More than that, he had the sense he could trust her.

“Hertfordshire to brothels,” she mused. “Presumably meaning country girls come from Hertfordshire? But Miss Brent came from Surrey.”

“There mightn’t be any connection between the two.”

“In which case, we’re grasping at straws.”

“My instinct tells me no,” Miles said.

“Your instinct as a reporter?” Nell replied dubiously.

They turned down an even narrower lane. Cramped buildings teetered in on each other, so close as to temporarily block out the sun. Miles’s already heightened senses sharpened with renewed alertness. It was in darkness that the slums of London became truly dangerous. As he escorted Nell through, he didn’t let his guard down for a moment.

“I wouldn’t dismiss it,” he said. “In this business, instinct counts for a lot.”

“But it’s not fact. It’s only hunches and guessing. Even a capable newspaperman—”

“Brilliant, someone called me recently,” he reminded her, guiding her into the next street where the sunlight once again shone through. “And fearless. And a champion of truth, and justice, and…cats.”

Nell flashed him a repressive look. Her heart-shaped face was framed by the fetching tilt of her brown bonnet, its wide black ribbons tied loosely beneath her chin. “This someone sounds like a blithering idiot.”