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He put out a strong, clean hand, slim-fingered, immaculate-nailed, and grasped the railing near hers, but did not touch her.
She looked at his hand a moment, then back at his face.
“Wotcher want?” she said slowly.
“Do you want to discuss it on the step? You’ve got nosy neighbors—upstairs, if nowhere else.?
?
“Fanny Bragg? Jealous ol’ cow. Yeah, she’d love the chance ter throw a bucket o’ slops over me. Come on inside.” And she took out a key and inserted it in the door, turned it and led him in.
The room was dark, being lit by only one window, and that below street level, but it was larger than he would have guessed from outside, and surprisingly clean. The black potbellied stove gave out a considerable warmth, and there was a rug of knotted rags on the floor. There were three chairs of various colors and in different states of repair, but all of them comfortable enough, and the large bed in the shadows at the farther end was made up and covered with a ragged quilt.
He closed the door behind him and looked at her with a new regard. Whatever else she was, she had done her best to make a home of this.
“Well?” she demanded. “So yer come from Angus’s wife. Wot abaht it? Why? Wot does she want wi’ me?” Her lips tightened into an unreadable grimace. Her voice altered tone. “Or is it Caleb yer wants?” There was a world of emotion behind the simple pronunciation of his name. She was afraid of it, and yet her tongue lingered over it as if it were precious and she wanted an excuse to say it again.
“Yes, Caleb too,” he agreed. She would not have believed him had he denied it.
“Why?” She did not move. “She never bothered wi’ me afore. Why now? Angus comes ’ere now an’ agin, but she never come.”
“But Angus does?” he said gently.
She stared at him. There was fear in the back of her eyes, but also defiance. She would not betray Caleb, whether from love of him, self-interest because in some way he provided for her, or because she knew the violence in him and what he might do to her if she let him down. Monk had no way of knowing. And he would like to have known. In spite of the contempt with which he had begun, he found himself regarding her as more than just a means to find Caleb, or a woman who had attached herself to a bestial man simply to survive.
He had assumed she was not going to answer when finally she spoke.
“ ’E in’t got no love for Angus,” she said carefully. “ ’E don’ understand ’im.”
There was something in her inflexion, the lack of anger in it, which made him think that she did not include herself in the feeling, but it was too subtle to press, and far too delicate.
“Does he ever go uptown to see him?” he said instead.
“Caleb?” Her eyes widened. “No, not ’im. Caleb never goes uptown. Least, never that I knows. Look, mister, Caleb don’t live ’ere. ’E just comes ’ere w’en ’e feels like it. I in’t ’is keeper.”
“But you are his woman.…”
Suddenly there was a softness in her face. The harsh lines of anger and defense melted, taking years away from her, leaving her, for an instant in the uncertain light, the twenty-five-year-old woman she should have been, would have been in Genevieve’s place, or Drusilla’s.
“Yeah,” she agreed, lifting her chin a fraction.
“So when he asks you, you go uptown to see Angus.” He made it a conclusion, not a question.
Again she was guarded. “Yeah. ’E told me ter go if he’s short on the rent. But I in’t never bin ter ’is ’ouse. Wouldn’t know w’ere to look fer it.”
“But you know his place of business.”
“Yeah. So?”
“You went on the eighteenth of January, in the morning.”
She hesitated only fractionally. Her eyes never left his, and she knew he must have spoken to Arbuthnot.
“So wot if I did? ’E in’t complainin’.”
“Caleb asked you?”
“Like I told yer, I goes up if the rent’s up an’ Caleb or I in’t got it.”
