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They walked farther until he heard Lucy’s labored breath. “Let me take Percy too,” he said, and lifted the sleepy pup from her arms.
“Thank you,” she said softly. “I think he may have gained weight over the day.” She rubbed her arms.
“Does Walsinghamthinkye are a traitor?” Greer asked his question slightly different from before. Although, he already knew the answer.Lucy and Cordelia Cranfield’s mother was a fanatical Catholic who tried to kill the queen two years ago. Although no connection between the daughters and the conspirators was found, I watch them closely.Walsingham’s warning proved he was looking for evidence against the sisters. And yet Lucy took chances like releasing dogs.
Lucy huffed, her exhale puffing out white in the freezing night air. “My mother was involved with a plot against the queen over two years ago now. Cordelia and I knew nothing about it, but we are still suspect.” She glanced at him. “I don’t mean to implement you in my need to rescue animals and children, but your assistance ’tis needed tonight.” Her gloved hand rose to rub Pip’s head. “There’s too much injustice in the world, as you probably know. Here in London, poverty is rife, and the poor are arrested if they’re found begging. Almshouses can only handle so many, and people like my three children end up sleeping in the streets.”
She shook her head as she marched forward, looking like a lad heading with conviction to war. Her boots crunched on the frozen straw that someone had thrown out to prevent people from slipping. She turned her face to his. “That’s where I found them, the three of them in rags huddled together beside a shop on London Bridge. I must help in some way, even if that puts me at risk.”
Greer studied her face before she turned forward again. Either Lucy Cranfield was the best liar he’d ever met, or she was a woman of strong conviction. Instead of sitting back and complaining behind silk and ostrich plumes, she was acting on those convictions.
Bloody hell.She acted on her convictions very much like an assassin would.
*
Rap. Rap. Rap. “Don’t let them run off,” Lucy said, her knuckles resting on the locked door. She heard Greer crunching along the snowy street after the dogs he’d set down.
Rap. Rap. Thump. Thump. She pounded harder. “Come along, Simmons.” Or Nick, Catherine, or Alyce. Something moved behind the door. “Simmons,” she called. “’Tis Lady Lucy. Open the door.”
Behind her, the dogs started to bark. “Come back here,” Greer said, his commanding voice making her turn. Two men and a lady hurried along the side of Cranfield House.
“Be gone,” one of the men yelled at the pups and brandished a walking cane.
“Stay back,” the lady said, taking the arm of another, taller man wearing a feather in his cap. He wore a coat but looked thin in it. The light from a distant tin lantern lit the man’s face, showing heavy brows and a shaved chin.
“Lady Lucy?” Simmons said in the open doorway. “How are you dressed?”
“Were you having a meeting?” she asked, her voice low, watching Greer scoop up both pups so they couldn’t chase after the people hurrying down the dark street on foot.
Simmons, his bald head covered by a bit of hair that he brushed over to hide it, peeked out into the night as if he didn’t know who she was talking about. “Just some details to make firm.” He turned back to her. “What are you doing here at this time of night, dressed like a lad?”
Simmons’s eyes widened as Greer strode back, the pups under his arms. “And who is that? And what arethey?” The last word was said with such dismay, she wondered if he’d quit on the spot.
No matter. It was cold outside, and she pushed past Simmons to enter. Greer followed her and set the pups down inside, where they each shook and began to run about. Pip found a scarf and ran with it, while Percy stuck his nose into every corner, his tail wagging.
“This is a friend from Whitehall who kindly helped me carry Pip and Percy. Where are the children?”
Simmons’s mouth hung slightly open as he surveyed Greer. Outside and in the massive rooms of Whitehall, Greer looked tall and broad, but in the confines of the Cranfield House entryway, he looked giant. With his northern wrappings and laced, fur-lined boots, he looked like a Scottish version of the Norse invaders of old. And very out of place in the cloth-draped walls with a crystal chandelier hanging overhead.
“Lady Lucy?” Catherine called from above, and Percy tore up the stairs to her.
“I am glad you’re here.” Lucy smiled up at her. “Are Nick and Alyce?”
“And two roosters,” Simmons said, judgement heavy in his voice.
Catherine smiled down at the elderly man. “We named one of the birds Simmons.”
Nick appeared. “I managed to save two of them from the fighting ring.”
“Even though I asked you not to,” Lucy said, giving him a frown.
His face turned red-hued. “I had to save something, and I didn’t know you’d go back for the pups.”
“Lady Lucy?” Alyce said as she came between the two others. Alyce didn’t have her hood up, and the circular burn scars showed clearly on her cheek. Burns that she’d confided to Lucy were from her uncle’s ring, which he’d heat up as a grotesque form of punishment. It explained why she’d sought the safety of the streets rather than remaining under his roof.
“I’ve brought Pip and Percy to live with you here,” Lucy said, smiling up at them.
Catherine gasped and crouched on the landing in a robe over her sleeping smock that Lucy had bought for her. “So sweet,” she crooned and laughed as Percy licked her face. Pip ran up to join in, abandoning the scarf halfway up the stairs. She laughed, glancing back at Nick. “They are much cuddlier than Simmons and Xerxes.”
