Secrets in Scarlet

by Erica Monroe

  Knight entered, carrying a full tea tray.

  “I...” She must get better at thinking about what she was going to say around him before beginning. “This room. I can't believe you've...” Poppy slowly turned in place, taking in the full width of the library. “It's incredible, do you know that? So much literature in one place.”

  “I'm glad you like it.” His grin was contagious.

  Soon, she found herself smiling too. A real, honest smile, because in all of Poppy's life she'd wanted to be in a library like this one.

  She fought the urge to examine the shelf in front of her, for she'd seen a copy of Wordsworth and Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads. The summer of her fifteenth birthday, she'd spent many happy days sequestered in the window seat of Uncle Liam's office, reading those poems.

  Instead, she followed him to the sitting area. She poured the tea into two surprisingly feminine cups, adorned with pink roses and lace. Somehow, she highly doubted he'd picked out the china. Did Knight have a lover? A wife?

  He accepted the cup from her. “Ah, thank you.”

  She placed a lump of sugar into her tea. Then another, for from the look of his house, he could afford two lumps of sugar, and it was a delicacy she'd not pass up. “Such lovely china.”

  “I shall pass on the compliment to my mother,” he said.

  So, he was a bachelor. Relief besieged her, a strange, unsettling relief she shouldn’t have felt.

  He lifted the cup up, so it was at eye level, squinting as he inspected it. “You know, it's the strangest thing. I don't think I've noticed the pattern before. A cup is a cup, is it not?”

  “I suppose so,” she agreed.

  “Yet to my mother, this cup is an example of the stellar Knight pedigree,” Knight continued dryly. “It is all about appearances with my family. I have two brothers, one a clergyman and the other a banker. Both are fitting, respectable occupations for the grandson of an earl.”

  “An earl?” Poppy yelped. She definitely should have worn a better dress.

  “My father was the second son of a second son of an earl,” he continued, sounding as thrilled as if he'd announced he was the grandson of a dung beetle. “According to my mother, that's practically royalty. I keep waiting for King William to invite me to the palace, but it hasn't happened.”

  So much for Edna’s advice that she should set her cap at the sergeant. She felt as though she’d been stripped bare and made to stand on top of his coffee table. A crowd of jeering men would examine her wares and find her lacking.

  Tainted.

  Poor.

  A fallen Paddy with nothing to recommend her.

  A cold silence fell between them. She sipped at the tea, watching the clock on the mantel. Five more minutes before she could acceptably leave.

  “I like the scarf,” Knight said finally. “Silk, I see. The weaving is quite tight.”

  “Thank you.” Weaving was the one talent she knew she had. “I made it on my aunt's hand loom back home. She taught me to weave, actually.”

  “In Surrey,” he supplied. “Your work is exquisite. Larker Factory is lucky to have a weaver of your quality.”

  She hadn’t meant to talk about her past. But there was something about him. The quiet way in which he listened, perhaps, or the fascination that shone in his eyes as he looked at her.

  Time for a new plan of action: drink the one cup of tea. Then depart.

  She gulped down a quarter of the cup. Not particularly well mannered, but expediency was in her best interests. The warm liquid flooded her throat with blessedly strong tea, as she drank when visiting Atlas. She had the sudden desire to seize the entire pot and run off, so that Edna might experience it too.

  Poppy had been spending entirely too much time around thieves.

  “Are you off to the factory today?” Knight supped casually, as if it was no great indulgence. As if he had never known reusing leaves until the last dregs of it came out like mud.

  “Yeees,” she said, unsure if he was intent upon polite conversation or another round of interrogation.

  “It's this case. I cannot think about anything else when I'm on a case.” He leaned forward as he spoke, his usually stoic face transformed expressively. His deep baritone voice, once monotonous, now had a lilt of enjoyment to it.

  She watched him closely, intrigued by the changes wrought. “I imagine it would be hard to think of anything else when a criminal is on the loose.”

  “There is that to consider,” Knight acknowledged. “But I find it fascinating we are a nation that fears its police force, when the police should be beacons of safety and sanity.”

  He peered at her expectantly, as if expecting her to voice her opinion.

  “I suspect…” she began tentatively, “you presume the majority of London wishes to conduct themselves with decorum and rationality.”

  When he nodded, she continued, warming up to her theory. “I have been in London for three months, but in that time, I've worked beside children in the factories who are not much older than my own daughter. These conditions are not those that inspire one to be mindful, Sergeant.”

  “Ah, so you support the theory that poverty shall breed revolution.” He propped his elbow up on his knee, resting his chin in his hand.

  She'd pleased him.

  “I've never thought of it in those terms.” She set her cup of tea back on the table. “I confess my knowledge of theory is rather limited.”

  Poppy regretted this confession immediately. The first thread of panic occurring to her was that she didn't live up to his expectations—she wasn't intellectual enough—instead of worrying he’d discover her secret.

  That alone should have been enough of a reason to flee. Yet his rapt gaze was still on her, and suddenly she wanted to be a part of this exchange. She could trace her usual conversations to four topics: weaving, the factory, her family, and Moira. No one had ever expected more from her.

  She stood, indulging in her desire to examine the bookshelves. “How long did it take you to acquire such a collection?”

  “I've been buying books since I was a boy.” He came to stand next to her, almost shoulder-to-shoulder, if not for the height difference between them. Plucking Waverly from the shelf, he ran his hands over the cover with such delicacy she knew herself to be in the company of a fellow book lover. “This one my father sent me when I was at Eton. Back in the days when he thought I'd become a surgeon like him, or a barrister. My actual profession was quite the disappointment.”

  She winced, knowing how it felt to disappoint family. Uncle Liam’s voice echoed in her ears. Didn’t you realize the shame you’d bring upon us?

  Poppy shook her head, concentrating on the shelves again. As always, books would anchor her.

  “What about this book?” She pulled down Frankenstein, flipping it open with relish. “I devoured this last year. The idea of a monster built from human corpses...”

  “Does it remind you of the resurrection men in your brother's case?” Knight tapped at the cleft in his chin. “The cracks in the spine of that volume are from when I was helping with the trial of Finn.”

  “A bit, yes.” She smiled ruefully. “Daniel said you were the only one who believed him. Thank you for that.”

  "I was just doing my job,” Knight shrugged. “Plus, I admire a good bit of investigative work. O’Reilly and Miss Morgan had put together a nice case for me. That said..." He gave her a pointed look, his tone more formal. "I should hope they haven't returned to their previous illegal activities."

  "Of course not," Poppy said quickly.

  Too quickly.

  He eyed her, the corners of his lips turning up shrewdly. She didn’t know what to make of that. Would Knight turn in Kate after all? She wasn’t so convinced now.

  She found herself wanting to trust Knight, and that made him even more dangerous to her.

  She ran her fingers across the spines on the shelf, soothed by the texture as much as the smell of old parchment and ink. “I cannot thi
nk of a time when I've not willed away pain with a book.”

  For a second, their eyes met, and Poppy saw in his gaze more understanding than she cared to admit. Kindred souls, opposite because of the paths of their lives, but joined in mutual tastes. He could spot a tight weave and he knew the merits of Shelley, but he was a Peeler, nonetheless.

  “If you like Shakespeare...” He crossed behind her, going to a shelf less orderly than the rest, with volumes stacked on top of each other. “Then this is the place for you. I've got every one of his plays, plus copies of his sonnets as well.”

  From the shelf, he selected King Lear. “This is my favorite of all his plays. I like that in the end, Lear has finally learned who he can trust. He’s shed his misassumptions.”

  She knew whom she could trust: no one. “I haven’t read it.”

  “What is your favorite, then?”

  “I have always liked Much Ado About Nothing,” she answered without hesitation. “I like Beatrice and Benedick.”

  “I do enjoy that one.” Knight inclined toward her, his voice low and conspiratorial. “But to be honest, I've always found Claudio an absolute buffoon. Willing to shun Hero when I highly doubt that he himself was virtuous.”

  Her jaw dropped.

  “Madam, my working for the police doesn't make me a complete brute,” he teased.

  He believed Claudio should have forgiven Hero, whether or not she'd had sex prior to marriage. But it was an entirely different matter to apply that belief to reality.

  She turned, reaching for another cup of tea. Sensing what she wanted, he slid forward to pour for her—a misplaced attempt at chivalry, perhaps—and their hands brushed against each other. The slight touch was all she needed to remember pressing up against his chest. Feeling his breath against her cheek. The way he’d smelled of lemon and sage.

  He hadn't moved his hand. For a second, though it seemed far longer to her, they lingered. Hands in tandem, eyes fixed on one another.

  He was too near her now, yet she couldn’t part from him. Idly, she wondered what it would be like for him to slide his finger beneath the neckline of her gown. To stroke her breast with the pad of his thumb.

  Would he be gentle? Rough?

  This was madness. She was wicked to have such thoughts.

  He pulled away, pouring the tea into the cup unsteadily. A bit sloshed onto the silver tray. “Pardon me, I'm woefully clumsy. The curse of human nature—we all make mistakes.”

  But some mistakes were far worse than others were, and she needed to remember that.

  “Sergeant Knight, it has been delightful,” she told him. “Please understand how grateful I am to you for saving my brother's life. If I'd known who you were...” She pursed her lips.

  If she'd known who he was, wouldn't she have turned and run the other way since he already knew too much about her family? But a hero deserved to be treated like one. “I would have told you so then. My entire family owes you a debt of gratitude.”

  Knight stood, bashfully surveying her. “If it all meant I'd meet you, Mrs. Corrigan, I'd do it again.”

  In that instant, all Poppy desired was to tell him she'd enjoyed meeting him too. That she thought him kind, inexplicably so. Her heart fluttered in a maudlin way she knew too well as the stirrings of attraction. She'd felt it before with Edward.

  Trepidation clawed at her, wrapping around her heart. Women in love were flighty, irrational creatures who made the worst of mistakes. Romance was a malleable concept with no place in her life. Moira was her focus now.

  She couldn't risk Knight figuring out her whole life in London was a lie.

  Poppy Corrigan’s visit to his townhouse had left Thaddeus befuddled, an unaccustomed state for him. Outside of cases for the Met, he tended to avoid anything that might leave him emotionally confounded. People had an alarming habit of hopping from one topic to another without a single logical connector. Inevitably, the simplest of conversations turned into a two-hour affair, for which he had neither the time nor the patience. Every call at his parents’ house produced the same results: he was either bored or dissected for his life choices.

  Yet with Mrs. Corrigan, he hadn’t wanted to steer her toward the door at the earliest opportunity. In fact, he’d delighted in showing her his Shakespeare collection. And even more curiously, she’d seemed to enjoy his library. No one had ever delighted in his library the way he did.

  He remembered how breathless she’d been, praising his reading room. How she’d run her finger down the spine of Frankenstein. Before he knew it, he was imaging those delicate hands stroking him with the same reverence. Her breath uneven and heady because he’d made her experience a different form of pleasure, perhaps more exciting than even a fully stocked library.

  He indulged in this vision for entirely too long. She’d thrown him off his timetable.

  He looked over at his shelf of theoretical textbooks. Man is as strong as the woman he chooses, he mused, unsure where the idea had come from. In the past, he would have said man was as strong as his government, or some other acceptable bureaucratic entity.

  It was inconsequential. All this talk of literature had made him maudlin.

  He remained in his library for several hours after her departure, with all his notes spread about him, hoping for some sort of inspiration. Two things continued to catch his eye: the sketch of Anna Moseley, and the report Joseph had brought him detailing the factory finances.

  Neither made any real sense. Oh, to be sure, the sketch was well done and rather typical. This regularity disconcerted Thaddeus. What was it about Anna Moseley that had led to her murder? Why pick this girl?

  Off the top of his head, he could think of three motives he might ascribe to the Larkers and they all had to do with fear: fear of discovery, of losing capitol, of being seen as weak. The former seemed like the most logical, knowing what he did of Boz Larker.

  So, what had Anna seen, or discovered, that led to her death?

  Mrs. Corrigan had mentioned a locked room the Larkers supposedly used to store the finished fabrics. As soon as he had a better handle on what this case was truly about, he’d head to the factory and demand access to that room. Until he had more information, he preferred the Larkers remain unaware of his investigation.

  This made Poppy Corrigan’s appearance at his townhouse more interesting. That moment when they’d both reached for the tea. He could have sworn she’d felt it too, this strange surge of longing when they touched. Had he misinterpreted it? She’d left shortly after.

  He was a Met officer first and foremost, so no matter how beguiling he found it that she could converse intelligently on literature, he had a duty. He had a sneaking suspicion she knew more than she was saying. If Mrs. Corrigan had something in her past that could affect the outcome of the Moseley murder, he needed to know it.

  So, he stood and went to his writing desk. He took out paper, sharpened his quill, dipped the quill in ink and composed a letter to Jean-Paul Beauregard. A friend from his time at Cambridge, Beauregard had moved to Surrey and set up as a solicitor.

  It was not uncouth to pry into a woman’s past when it was in the name of criminal inquiry. Mrs. Corrigan was hiding something. He was sure of it.

  He finished the letter and folded it precisely, the edges crisp. Should Mrs. Corrigan’s past bear no relation to the Moseley case, Thaddeus would burn the contents of the letter. That’d be the end of it.

  But somehow, he knew he wouldn’t be done with Poppy Corrigan, regardless of Beauregard’s response. From the lilt of her Surrey accent to the fiery red of her hair, she riveted him. He liked how her eyes danced when she told him about Much Ado, and the slight turn to her lips as she argued theory with him.

  Soon, very soon, he’d see her again. If not at the factory, then somewhere else. He’d make the time.

  6

  The next day, Thaddeus clung tightly to his truncheon as he picked between the piles of rubbish that lined Little Paternoster’s Row, the back alley that connected Dorse
t with Brushfield Street. He hadn’t the slightest inkling how Little Paternoster got its name, but it had become synonymous in these wretched days with the worst part of Spitalfields.

  While Dorset Street itself was not a particularly long or wide street, it made up for this by packing at least five hundred debauched, desperate people into the small area.

  This was a land of thieves—the pickpocket, the sneak, and the bullyback made their careers, undeterred by the elegant criminal.

  Everywhere he looked, he saw someone who had given up on life. In the doorway of number 26, a man had fallen asleep with a gin bottle, splotches of blood where the cracked glass dug into his bare hands. A slattern woman watched Thaddeus from her stoop, hands clenched around her broom, ready to use it against him. He tipped his hat to her but made no move to question her.

  He’d get little information from these people.

  It was not a particularly cold day, but he wore the red silk scarf Mrs. Corrigan had gifted him. Tight around his neck, the jaunty ends hanging out over his uniform, he felt somehow more courageous. The silk against his neck centered him. Though these people scowled as though he was the worst of blackguards, he knew one woman in the rookeries thought he was a gentleman.

  The sounds of music and drunken revelry filtered out into the street from number 32 Dorset, the Blue Coat Boy public house. In the window, a sign advertising “rooms for let” had faded over time, as ill repaired as the rooms themselves most likely were. Thaddeus passed by the Blue Coat Boy quickly. Strickland would be patrolling the adjoining Crispin Street about this time, and he was as anxious to avoid the fool as he was a fight with one of Dorset’s residents. He kept going, past three brothels, a grocer, and a chandler all crammed into one row.

  Monk and Ems Moseley lived at No. 15, a crumbling dosshouse referred to as “Queen’s,” after the surname of the proprietor. Once, the building had been new and beautiful, built of brick and then faced over with stucco. As with much of Spitalfields, time had taken its toll. The lodging house now served primarily as home to immigrants who called their street “Dosset” or “Dossen” and socialized with their specific ethnicity.