Page 130 of When We Touch

Jamie left a sadly discouraged Abberline.

Then, he took to the streets himself.

* * *

“How am I?” Maggie asked Mireau anxiously.

He stared at her, then at Cecilia. “Quite incredible. I’d swear you were sixty, if you were a day.”

Cecilia smiled, and reached out to assure that one of the muttonchops was securely set upon Mireau’s face.

“Eustace . . . the coachman needs to let us out here. Then you must spend some time a distance away . . . Those ogre-dwarfs, or whatever you want to call Jeremiah’s ruffians, are all about, watching all the time. And I believe every one of them is lethal.”

“I don’t like being too far, my dear,” Eustace said. “What if something should go wrong?”

“It can’t go wrong,” Maggie said.

“Ah, if only all life could be so positive!” Eustace said, smiling. He looked at Mireau then. “And, my good fellow, you are armed?”

“I have the knife you gave me, and I’m not a total weakling.”

“Didn’t mean to imply that you were,” Eustace said.

“Maggie?”

“I have the little pistol. And I do know how to use it.”

“Ah, yes! You did marry a policeman. She’s awfully busy for her tender years, isn’t she, my love?” he said to his wife.

Cecilia grinned back at him. Whatever their diversions away from one another, they were a remarkably happy couple, Maggie noted. She was sorry that she had mocked Eustace in the past.

“Eustace,” she said.

“Yes?”

“Thank you.”

He smiled, shrugging casually, his hands resting upon his dapper cane. “Think nothing of it. All right, you had best get out here . . . the street is empty. Maybe all the little whores are staying home tonight.”

They piled from the carriage. They were several blocks away from the Hennesy’s house, and as they briskly walked the distance, they were stopped by a policeman.

“Hey, there! You . . . where are you off to, at this time of the night?”

“Visiting friends,” Mireau said. “My auntie’s cousin.”

“At this time of night? Are you daft? Could you not have heard of the double event last night?”

“We’re traveling together, and tight. And this is my wife, this our auntie. My good fellow, we are not soliciting on the streets!”

The officer nodded then, and shook his head, as if with disgust that folk just seemed to have no common sense. “Fine, then. Go on where you’re going!”

Maggie quickened her pace, very afraid that they might be waylaid again. She was so desperate to reach Arianna.

“You should have brought Jamie in on this,” Mireau breathed.

“I couldn’t.”

“Because he was so angry?” Mireau asked. “How amazing . . . he stayed a very long time after asking me out of the library! And in your room, at that.”