What if “Millie and he”werepossible?
Not just an aspiration or a dream, but something on which to concentrate his efforts when this nightmare with John finally ended?
Could he make a future with Millie? Or was hisIdeaa curiosity best ignored?
A curiosity, most certainly.
A curiosity deserving of as much derision as the Prince’s Bomb, the Cádiz Memorial unveiled on the Prince’s birthday. Mortar stolen from the French had been fired and shaped into the statue. But what was to have been a grand monument had since become an object of humor and ridicule.
Just as he would become if he approached Millicent with an offer of courtship.
He shook his head. He had to purge himself of theIdea, at least for the present.
Tonight had a single purpose.
Step by careful step, he drew ever closer to the theater’s impressively imposing façade. He was only steps away from crossing Bow Street when, at his elbow, a young female interrupted his journey, offering him his choice of her small collection of miserable-looking fruit.
From the produce’s shape and color, Neville could not discern if the shriveled spheres were oranges, lemons, or limes. Without sampling her wares, he paid the poor thing a trifle and then waved her away.
Then, suddenly, spurred by a tingling sense, he brought his hand roughly down.
“Oi!” The squeak of a young boy.
Or, at the very least, an urchindressedas a boy. Between the dim light and the dirt on the child’s face, Neville could hardly tell.
Keeping a firm grip on the greasy mop of hair belonging to the squirming mass, he scooped up the urchin’s hat. Thank goodness he’d worn buff-colored gloves instead of his usual pure white. Even so, they’d likely need to be tossed.
He winced as the boy uttered a stream of verbal filth almost as abhorrent as the dirt caked and cracking on his cheeks. Men and women alike, either fearful of being kicked or revolted by the smell, gave him and the pickpocket a widening berth.
“Stop squirming, thief!” Neville ordered.
“Get yer fam off me strummel, you—youRustyguts! Ain’t no coney-catcher!”
Neville looked down in consternation, attempting to translate the unintelligible. His understanding of cant was limited. Then, a feminine presence stole up to Neville’s side.
“Right then, Tommy,” the woman said in a thick accent. “Be off—this flat belongs to me.”
“Take the clinker! Don’t want ‘im anymore.”
Neville looked down into the boy’s wide eyes, all bluff and bravado. He thought of John and let go of the boy’s hair.
“I’d pike on the bene, too, if I was you! Just look at ‘em.” The boy warned the woman just before he disappeared back into the crowd.
Sensing the show was over, the people around Neville began to move. He turned toward the woman and found himself looking down into the eyes of his witness, Mrs. Cartwright.
Or, at least, Mrs. Cartwright was the name she’d given him.
She beamed up at him, an approving expression that left him slightly ill. Were it not for the fleeting thought of John, he would have turned the boy over to the watch. Even in her case, he might have notified the watch of a suspected Paphian’s presence, had he not needed her help.
He assessed Mrs. Cartwright anew.
Though she would not pass for a lady of the first stare, just like last time they met, she was sharply and tastefully dressed. Not in the vulgar cut and color of a common streetwalker—someone who might ply her trade quickly, and under the stars—but like a struggling but dignified woman who’d fallen on hard times.
Perhaps that was all Mrs. Cartwright was, after all.
Perhaps she had even purchased her dress at the same rag-and-bone shop Neville’s man had collected the clothes he currently wore.
She slipped her arm beneath his.