Secrets in Scarlet Page 6

  Poppy stood, pushing her chair back from the table. She carried Moira over to the blanket serving as Moira’s play area. An empty apple box crate housed Moira’s toys, and Daniel had crafted some blocks for her. Sitting Moira down, Poppy knelt by her.

  Moira grabbed onto the edge of the coffee table, using it to pull herself up. She waddled over to her toy box, drawing out a stuffed bear. Jamming the bear’s ears into her mouth, she sucked on the cloth, grinning all the while.

  “Mama!” She waggled her fingers at Poppy.

  “Yes, dear,” Poppy replied.

  Edna sat down in the rocker next to the fireplace. “Tell me what is truly bothering you.”

  Poppy ran a hand across her skirt. “London was supposed to be a fresh start. A chance for Moira to grow up without my mistake over her.”

  Edna tilted her head toward Moira. “She’s doing well here because of you.”

  “I cannot help but wonder sometimes if it’s all for naught.” Poppy ran a hand along the hem of the blanket, where flecks of red paint lined the edge. Red paint that had once spelled out “whore” across Madame Genet’s shop window. She’d used the blanket to wipe up the paint, but the stains had persisted through multiple washes.

  The same people she’d grown up with in Dorking had turned against her as soon as they found out she was having a bastard child.

  “I wish you hadn’t kept that,” Edna commented. “You should have allowed me to burn it after the mess was cleaned.”

  Poppy folded the blanket over to hide the red mark. “It is perfectly good linen. We cannot afford to dispose of something simply because it is slightly soiled.”

  “You’re not a whore,” Edna stated. “Child, I agreed to go along with your widow scheme because I thought it’d be best for you to get a chance to move on. Don’t allow your past to anchor you. If you do, you’ll never be free, and there are so many opportunities for you here in London.”

  “I like it here,” Poppy replied. “The people are lively. I like that I can go down the street and see Irishmen mingling with the Jews and the Huguenots.”

  “I imagine that’s comforting,” Edna agreed. “To have people of your home race with you.”

  “Ireland isn’t home,” Poppy said, with more vehemence than she’d realized she felt. “In Ireland, they’d throw me into a Magdalene asylum, worse than the ones here. At least in the factories, they pay me.”

  Edna reached for her hand, giving it a tight squeeze. “You avoided that life, lass. No good to come from thinking of it now.”

  Edna had been there the night the nuns visited Uncle Liam’s farm. You’re not a sinner, Edna had said. You’re Molly’s beautiful niece, and I believe in you.

  Edna swiveled in her chair, inspecting the outside. “These rookeries are an odd place. All the same, I think this is the right place for you.”

  “But this isn’t a place for Moira when she gets older.” Poppy waved at Moira as she explored the room. “There’s no proper schooling. Even if she’s lucky enough to get into a school for the lower class, it’ll never set her up for anything more than a life of manufacturing work. I want more for her. She could be a housemaid. Or a governess. A teacher. Anything but like me.”

  “What’s so bad about being like you, lass?” Edna smiled. “You’re a sweet girl. You’re loyal to your family, and you’ll fight for them. I didn’t agree to come to London because I like the city, Poppy. I came here because I believe in what you can accomplish.”

  “Thank you,” Poppy murmured.

  “It is the truth,” Edna said. “London can be whatever you want it to be.”

  “What if I’ve spent so much time preparing this new identity that I’ve forgotten how to be me?” Poppy asked. “All I could think about when I met Sergeant Knight was how the Peelers have hurt my family. And you know, if he hadn’t been the man who saved Daniel, I don’t think I’d care how badly I acted. How can I raise Moira to be accepting of other people when I act like that?”

  “Then go apologize,” Edna suggested. “Make amends for how you acted. We all make mistakes, dear girl. It is how we recover from them that defines us.”

  “Jane pointed out that any contact with the Met could mean trouble,” Poppy said. “That’s the last thing I want, for the Larkers to think I’m helping a Peeler take down their factory.”

  “You don’t necessarily have to help him,” Edna wheedled in a sing-song voice. “You can go talk to him.”

  Poppy tucked a loose red curl behind her ear, ignoring Edna’s grin. “I’m telling you, Edna, there is nothing more to this.”

  However handsome Sergeant Knight might be, he was dangerous. She didn’t want a man whose job involved infuriating her neighbors and friends. No matter how her heart had sped up when she’d been so close to him.

  If she was going to give Moira autonomy, it wouldn’t be as the daughter of a Met officer. In rookery standards, Poppy highly suspected that was several steps below bastard.

  Edna was undaunted. “If you’re worried about him suspecting things are amiss, wouldn’t the proper thing to do be to apologize to him? It’s less suspicious that way. You recognize you made a mistake and you want to thank him for what he did for Daniel. You’ll appear as if you have nothing to hide. Plus, you’ll get to appease your guilty conscience.”

  “I suppose that could work,” Poppy mused.

  All she had to teach her daughter right from wrong was her own example. As for the threat Knight presented, Edna had a good point. Poppy owed Knight her thanks for saving Daniel. It would be normal to visit him, expected.

  It was about doing what was right, not about how his athletic body had set her heart afire.

  Poppy nodded swiftly. “I’ll write to Atlas and ask if he can find out where Knight lives.”

  “That sounds like a good plan,” Edna agreed. “Now off with you, before you’re late for your shift.”

  To the average onlooker, the police station in Spitalfields was not an impressive building. Located at the corner of St. Matthew’s Churchyard and Wood Street, it reeked of standard protocol. It had once been the old watch house for the Charleys, appropriated two years prior by the H-Division.

  But to Thaddeus, the station house on Wood Street contained everything he’d spent his adult life working toward. Fifteen other sergeants worked in the H-Division, a portion reporting to Whiting and the rest to the other two inspectors. With the exception of Michael Strickland, Thaddeus felt a kinship to these sergeants. Unlike his family, these men understood why he toiled here. They didn’t care that they made a measly twenty-two shillings per annum. They expected to walk twenty miles every day around their district. And they knew damn well that the wear and tear upon their bodies from this job would end them in their prime if a bullet from a criminal’s pistol didn’t kill them first.

  They were in it for justice, for country, and for the people they served.

  They were the ones who’d stayed.

  As Thaddeus walked through the double doors, he passed the central lobby, waving at the secretary. The section house smelled of lemons, strong tea, and sweat. A combination that should have been outright grotesque, but instead comforted him.

  This was home.

  He had plenty to do on the Larker case. That encounter with Poppy Corrigan had set his mind to work. He’d reached out to a foot patroller he knew in the A-Division of Westminster to see if Boz Larker was a known fixture in the rookery of St. Giles. It was unlikely, for St. Giles was a carriage ride away on the west side of London. His contact’s missive had landed on his desk that morning.

  Thaddeus unfurled the parchment. “No one has heard of him,” the message said. Thaddeus flipped over the paper to see if maybe the foot patroller had written something on the back. It was blank.

  He sighed, setting the parchment on the stack at the right side of his desk for ideas that hadn’t panned out. The pile was twice the size of that on the left side, for ideas that had produced solid leads.

  Thaddeus pulled
at his neckcloth to loosen it. He sucked down the last of his tea, icy cold, and frowned at the clay mug. Just once, he’d like to drink a full cup of tea when it was piping hot. But that was as unlikely as Strickland solving a case with his wits, not his fists.

  The clock on the wall tolled three in the afternoon.

  He leaned back in his chair; feet perched on his awkwardly shaped desk. No more than a single board of sanded—but not stained—wood, nailed onto two logs that made up the legs. Designed with a far shorter person in mind, the opening to which he should have been able to pull up his chair was at the exact height of his shins. In consequence, Thaddeus sat with his long legs spread out on either side of the desk, hunched over to access his papers.

  Strickland strode down the hall toward him. “You’d think that they could buy the best sergeant a new desk.”

  Thaddeus was not a violent man by nature, but damnation, every time he saw Strickland, he wanted to punch the man in his nose.

  Strickland crept closer with an aquiline grace better befitting a dancer at the coster halls than the well-built Corinthian he was. Thaddeus knew for a fact that the bounder spent most of his nights off either at the Red Fist, where the fancy crowd gathered, or at the pugilist gymnasium in Shadwell.

  “I don’t need a new desk,” Thaddeus said, with the particular degree of hauteur he reserved for people he knew to be significantly below his intelligence.

  Strickland snickered. “Aye, that’s a good chap, Thaddy. You’ll make do. You always do.”

  “Don’t call me that,” Thaddeus replied, though he knew it would do little good. No one but his mother—and Strickland—had called him Thaddy since he was a child.

  “Why not, Thaddy?” Strickland stood behind him, peering over his shoulder at his parchment.

  Thaddeus heaved a great sigh. He turned the foolscap over so that Strickland couldn’t read it. Returning his quill to the inkwell, he pushed his chair out from the desk and faced the other officer. “Why are you here? Don’t you have a route to patrol? My route, in fact.”

  Strickland’s sneer faltered, but he recovered hastily. “Whiting called me in for a meeting. Said the route could wait.”

  Thaddeus’s eyes narrowed. “Excuse me?”

  “You’ll have to take it up with Whiting. I’m merely a humble servant following orders.” Strickland leaned back against Thaddeus’s desk; his hands folded behind his back. “I don’t know how you do that route every night, Thaddy. It’s all balls and bores down Cat and Wheel Street. You’d think there’d at least be a brothel to toss it up a bit.”

  “I asked for that route,” Thaddeus retorted. “Did Whiting tell you what this meeting was about?”

  “He didn’t, but even a fool could figure it out,” Strickland said. “Inspector Doughty is taking leave soon. He’s got tots crawling out of his ears, that one. Needs to watch them during the day or they’ll burn his home to the ground.”

  Grimacing, Strickland ran a hand through his wavy brown hair. “Can’t imagine a worse fate.”

  Unbidden, Poppy Corrigan appeared in his mind’s eye, with her laughing babe in her arms. He wondered what it’d be like to come home to a woman like her, strong and independent. To have a family of his own, a daughter to raise and protect.

  “Must be wretched,” Thaddeus remarked dryly.

  “They need somebody to replace him soon. ’Course it’ll be me.” Strickland cuffed Thaddeus on the shoulder so hard Thaddeus fell forward, almost hitting the desk. “I’ll expect a pint from you when I get the job.”

  Thaddeus was saved from a choice remark by the appearance of Whiting. The inspector motioned for Strickland to enter his office.

  Watching Strickland leave out of the corner of his eye, he sifted through the piles of parchment for the sketch he’d had drawn up of Anna Moseley. If Strickland was selected for the inspector job, he wouldn’t do anything to help the rookeries. His main concern was fame and fortune from solving cases for the aristocracy. Strickland craved his name in the broadsheets. More and more people would fall through the cracks in the law, with no one there to support them.

  Thaddeus had to get that post.

  Sketch in his hand, Thaddeus went after Strickland to join the meeting in Whiting’s office. If anyone was going to be promoted, it was going to be him, not Strickland.

  No matter how much he’d rather be out investigating, he’d play these petty bureaucratic games if it saved more Elizabeth Stewarts and Anna Moseleys.

  He’d failed them once, but he would not fail again.

  5

  Thaddeus Knight lived in a two-story townhouse, set on the edge of Spitalfields, a stone's throw away from the crime and vice of the rookery. Poppy had heard that Peelers didn't make much in the means of salary, but Atlas claimed that Knight was from a family of decent means. She'd expected him to be in Cheapside, an area befitting his class.

  It was hellishly early, but the only time she could see him. Two days had passed since she'd met him outside the factory. Whatever leniency the Larkers had been exhibiting that day had surely passed, for she'd worked sixteen hours yesterday.

  She readjusted her bonnet, so that it better shaded her eyes from the rising sun. A short visit, not longer than fifteen minutes at most. Not worth the time it had taken for her to walk here, if not for the fact that she'd be absolved of the guilt. Atlas had claimed Thaddeus Knight worked morning to evening, getting off work as the sun dipped down. Most likely, he wouldn't be home, and that was a much preferable alternative. She'd simply drop the note she'd written and the box with the scarf on his stoop and run.

  She knocked on the door.

  A moment later, the door opened. Knight dipped his head, surprise flitting across his face but quickly suppressed. God, if he didn't look spectacular in the sunlight, the intense morning rays lightening up his tousled dark hair. Without his police uniform, he seemed freer. He wore gray breeches that highlighted his well-developed legs, and a white cambric shirt that was not fine in quality but somehow made him appear rustic and utterly masculine.

  She gulped, desperately averting her eyes from his arms, clad in shirtsleeves. The last time she'd seen a man like this...

  She'd taken him to bed.

  And afterwards, she’d learned that every whispered word, every caress, every kiss had been part of a larger scheme to ruin her. A bet made with his friends to pass the time while trapped in a dull town.

  Poppy looked up, but that was a mistake, for Knight hadn't bothered to put on a neckcloth. How could the bare line of his neck look so tempting? She swallowed again.

  “Mrs. Corrigan,” he said mildly, as though it were quite a usual occurrence for a random woman to show up outside his door at dawn.

  “I wanted—” No, that wasn't right. She didn’t want anything from him. “Might I come inside?”

  “Certainly,” he nodded, stepping back from the door so that she might enter.

  The door closed behind her with a resounding click. “This is for you,” she announced, thrusting the box with the scarf in it.

  He took the box and opened it, lifting out the scarf. “It is quite wonderful.” He ran his fingers over the smooth silk. “But I'm not entirely certain why?”

  “I came to apologize,” she said.

  Knight blinked. “Apologize for what?”

  “For how I treated you,” Poppy clarified. “My brother told me what you did for him. You saved his life, and I acted as though you were the most dastardly of villains. I should have been thanking you.”

  Knight was unruffled. “While I appreciate your apology, your reaction was expected, given the circumstances.”

  “What circumstances?” she squeaked, her stomach roiling.

  “I'm a Peeler,” he stated. “In Spitalfields.”

  “Ah,” she said, for he'd imparted this obvious truth as if it explained everything.

  “What I mean is I'm not normally well-received. Though admittedly, women don't oft refuse my offer to walk them home.” He chuckled. Suc
h an adorably boyish sound.

  And she couldn’t help but be ashamed of her behavior. When not clad in his blues, he was another man, not much older than she was, with feelings of his own.

  She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “I'm sorry for that too.”

  He turned around to place the scarf on the table by the door. His shirt stretched across his back, rippling with the movement of his body.

  Her cheeks burned red hot. For goodness’ sake, Poppy. He’s a bloody Peeler. The kind of man who could destroy her family if he wanted to. Not the kind of man whose arse she should be inspecting.

  She felt his eyes on her before she looked up, a caress to a tired part of her that longed to be noticed. To be wanted again.

  “With everything that happened with Daniel, I've grown suspicious of Peelers. You understand, don't you? Daniel almost lost his life because of them...” The words tumbled out faster than she could stop them. Anything to keep her eyes on his face and not at the tantalizing triangle of naked flesh peeking out from the opened collar of his shirt.

  “Which isn't to say that you're like that.” She wet her lips with her tongue.

  He came back to stand across from her, taking in her crimson cheeks. Comprehension flashed in his eyes, and he too looked sheepish. “I thought you were one of the foot patrollers.” He indicated his casual dress. “Would you give me a minute? I haven't a valet, but I should be able to be able to make myself suitable.”

  Poppy nodded gratefully. He waved her to an open door, off the side of the entranceway. She found herself in a grand library, with windows overlooking the street. A fireplace was to the left, with two chairs and a table positioned in front.

  She stood in the middle of the room, surrounded by floor-to-ceiling shelves of books, arranged by subject. Literature off to the left side, followed by poetry, plays, philosophy, and finally a startlingly large collection devoted to policing. It was the most glorious room she’d ever seen. She longed to stay here for days, working her way through the shelves.