Page 31 of The Lady’s Deception

“Och, me poor mam,” Tommy cried. “She’s naught but a washerwoman. Quin’ll see to it she starves if he finds out I turned traitor.”

The woman ran a grimy hand down the boy’s cheek. “Hush, now,” she soothed. “Don’t you worry about your mam. She’s a strong woman. She’d not want to see you take on so.”

“I’ll do everything I can, Tommy. You have my word.” He squeezed the boy’s hand, though Fagan’s grasp had grown weaker. When he rose, the woman did too. “Tell me his mother’s name.”

She shook her head. “An’ how should I know it, sirrah?”

“But you said she was a strong woman. I assumed—”

“Ain’t met a washerwoman yet who weren’t, Mr. Burke.”

He swallowed the epithet on his tongue. “Of course.” In prison, people either knew everything or nothing. One glance around the cell told him that Fagan’s fellow inmates, who had no doubt overheard enough of the conversation, were content to pretend the latter. They cleared a wider path this time as he made his way back to the cell door and called for the guard, who took far longer than necessary to find his keys and release him. “I’m going to send a physician to look after the boy,” Paris told the man, who showed even less interest than the prisoners. “If he’s not treated, the sickness may well spread.”

“Save us the cost o’ the rope, that will,” he replied with a chortle.

Paris let his hand curl into a fist at his side, but he did not raise it. A brawl might mean he’d be forbidden to return. “Fever is no respecter of persons, my good fellow. Why, it might even spread to the guards.”

That caught the man’s attention. His shuffle increased to a trot as he escorted Paris to the mouth of the cavernous building. “You won’t delay, Mr. Burke?”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

Outside the rain still came down. Despite its chill, he stood for a moment in the courtyard and let it sluice over him, washing away what it could of New Gaol. Some stains, of course, could not be touched with mere water.

Eventually he made his way east through the city, past houses that gleamed with the glow of lamplight, though it was only just past midday. The people who lived in them would never know the horrors inside the prison that hunched in their shadows. Soon enough he found himself near Trinity. The coffeehouse beckoned, warm and dry. He might yet have refused its lure, if Graves had not been sitting in his favorite window.

Paris went directly to the man’s table. “You’ve been to Kilmainham,” Graves observed. “I can tell by the smell.” His quill continued to scratch along his paper. “And?”

With a flourish, Paris tossed his wet hat onto the table, spraying water onto the work spread across its top. Graves gave an exclamation of annoyance. But he also looked up at last.

“Send a doctor to the boy,” Paris said flatly. “Without delay. Otherwise there’ll be no case at all.”

Graves set his mouth in a grim line and nodded. Quickly he wrote out a few words on a clean and mostly dry sheet of paper, folded it, and then signaled for a waiter. With the exchange of a few low words and a coin, the note was soon dispatched. Paris prayed the physician himself would soon follow.

“What did you learn?” Graves asked when they were alone again.

“More than I hoped. More than I liked, to be perfectly honest. The boy claims Dashfort is a…relation, we’ll say. A close relation.”

Graves lifted his brows, though not exactly in shock. “I wonder the man doesn’t take a more personal interest in the case.”

“I mean to see that he does. I’m going up to Kilready to investigate.”

Graves’s mild expression transformed into a grimace. “I wouldn’t if I were you, Burke.”

“Ah, but you are not I—a fact for which you no doubt give daily thanks.” Certainly such a trip would not be the most pleasant thing Paris had ever done. But staying home had its own difficulties and dangers. “Good day, Graves.” Retrieving his hat, Paris turned on one heel and left before the man could utter more feeble words of caution.

The rain had lightened, and Grafton Street was now crowded with shoppers who had been delayed in setting out. He was almost past the milliner’s shop when a display of spring bonnets in the window caught his eye. He had hoped this morning’s excursion would put last night’s exchange with Rosamund out of his mind, at least for a little while. Yet even in the darkness of prison, she had lingered at the edge of his thoughts, the way the fragrance of her namesake perfumed a room even after the window onto the garden had been closed.

Good God. What had he done? The woman had fled the improper advances of her last employer. He had no right to be thinking of her as anything other than his sisters’ governess. And had he not hired a governess to relieve himself of the burden of having to think of certain things at all?

He laid a hand on the shop door. Perhaps one more act of penance was in order…

When the door swung inward abruptly without any assistance from him, he nearly lost his balance. A bell jangled harshly, masking his exclamation of surprise as a woman charged from the shop and almost collided with him.

He collected himself enough to step backward into the street and bow. “Why, Mrs. Fitzhugh, fancy meeting you here.”

With a glare of stern disapproval she looked him up and down, her frown deepening as she took in his dripping clothes and the grime he’d accumulated over the course of the morning. “I beg your pardon. Have we been introduced?”

“Paris Burke, ma’am,” he said, touching two fingers to the brim of his hat. “At your service.”