Scandal Wears Satin (The Dressmakers 2)

“As soon as I get out of this infernal tangle, I’ll give you a cuff you won’t soon forget,” Longmore said. “Cousin, will you give him a firm thump or something to stifle him in the meantime?”

“I don’t think we should take him to the police,” she said. “I think we should take him with us.”

Longmore and the boy reacted simultaneously.

The boy: “Nooooo!”

Longmore: “Are you drunk?”

“No, you don’t,” the boy said. “I ain’t going nowhere with you. I got friends, and they’ll come any minute now. Then you’ll be sorry. And I think my chest’s got a rib broke from being bent like this.”

“Stifle it,” Longmore told the boy. He needed a clear head to find his way through Sophy’s rabbit warren of a mind. He couldn’t do that and translate the boy’s deranged version of English at the same time.

To Sophy he said, “What exactly do you propose to do with him?”

“He’s wonderfully quick,” she said. “He could be useful. For our mission.”

Occupied with horses and traffic, Longmore could give the urchin no more than a swift survey. He looked to be about ten or eleven years old, though it was hard to tell with children of the lowest classes. Some of them looked eons older than they were, while others, small from malnourishment, seemed younger. This boy was fair-haired under his shabby cap, and while his neck was none too clean, he wasn’t an inch thick with filth as so many of them were. His clothes were worn and ill-fitting but mended and only moderately grimy.

“I don’t see what use he’d be to anybody, unless someone was wanted to pick pockets,” he said.

“He could hold the horses,” she said.

“Could he, indeed?” he said. “You suggest I put my cattle in charge of a sneaking little thief?”

The boy went very still.

“Who better to keep a sharp eye out, to watch who comes and goes, to give the alarm if trouble comes?” she said.

The mad thing was, she had a point.

“You don’t know the brat from Adam,” he said. “For all we know, he’s a desperado wanted by the police, and due to be transported on Monday. He tried to steal my watch. And climbed up behind the carriage to do it! That wants brass, that does—or something gravely amiss in the attic—and if you think I’m leaving a prime pair of horseflesh in the grubby hands of Mad Dick Turpin here, I suggest you think again. And take something for that brain injury while you’re about it.”

“Oy!” the boy said indignantly. “I ain’t no horse thief.”

“Merely a pickpocket,” Longmore said, egging him on.

“What’s your name?” Sophy said.

“Ain’t got one,” the boy said. “Saves trouble, don’t it?”

“Then I shall call you Fenwick,” she said.

“What?”

“Fenwick,” she said. “If you don’t have a name, I’ll give you one, gratis.”

“Not that,” the boy said. “That’s a ’orrible name.”

“Better than nothing,” she said.

“I say, mister,” the boy appealed to Longmore. “Make her stop.”

Longmore couldn’t answer. He was working too hard on not laughing.

“That is not a mister,” she said. “That’s an actual lord whose pocket you tried to pick.”

“Yer lordship, make her stop. Make her stop breaking my arm, too. Which this is a monstrous female like nothing I ever seen before.”

Longmore glanced at Sophy. She was regarding the ghastly little foul-mouthed urchin, her expression speculative—or so it seemed. He couldn’t be sure. For one thing, he could spare only a glance. For another, the spectacles dimmed the brilliance of her eyes.

But he saw enough: the smile playing at the corner of her mouth, and the angle at which she held her head as she regarded the boy, like a bird eyeing a worm.

“Now you’re really in trouble, Fenwick,” he said. “She’s thinking.”

Sophy’s father had been a Noirot and her mother a DeLucey. Neither family could be bothered with charity, being too busy keeping one step ahead of the authorities.

Although Cousin Emma had taken in Sophy and her sisters and taught them a trade, they’d bounced back and forth for a time between parents and cousin. Their early life had not been sheltered. They’d learned how to survive on the streets. Among other skills, they’d learned to size up others quickly.

Sophy had seen and heard enough in a few minutes to understand that the lad was a rare find. With a very little training, this boy could be extremely useful. She was not going to let him be thrown into prison with ordinary criminals.

“We’re quite close to the Great Marlborough Street police office,” she said. “It would be no trouble to drop you there, Fenwick. Or, if you prefer, you could continue with us to our destination, and watch his lordship’s horses, and keep a sharp lookout.”

“And what would I be looking out for, I want to know,” the boy said.

“Trouble,” she said. “Do you think you can recognize it?”

“I haven’t the smallest doubt of his abilities in that regard,” Longmore said.

“If you do the job properly,” she went on, “I’ll see that you have a good dinner and a safe place to sleep.”

“Where, exactly, did you have in mind?” Longmore said.

“Don’t fret,” she said. “I wasn’t intending to foist him on you.”

“You certainly won’t foist him on yourself,” he said. “You don’t know a damned thing about him. He’s probably crawling with lice—”

“That’s slander, that is!” the boy cried.

“Sue me,” said Longmore.

“Don’t think I won’t,” the boy said. “There’s no more vermin on me than on you, yer majesty. I had a bath!”

“At your christening?” Longmore said. “But no, I forgot: You don’t have a name.”

“Fenwick’ll do,” the boy said. “She can call me Georgy Pudding Pie if she wants, if she gives me dinner and a bed like she says. But she won’t, will she?”

“Have you heard of the Milliners’ Society for the Education of Indigent Females?” Sophy said.

The boy narrowed his eyes at her. “Yeah,” he said in wary tones.

“You know someone there, it seems,” she said.

“Yeah,” he said.

“I’m closely acquainted with the women in charge,” she said. She could hardly be more closely acquainted: She and her sisters had founded the organization last year. “If you know of that place, you know we don’t make empty promises.”

They’d reached Bedford Square. “Look here, Fenwick,” she said. “There’s the shop his lordship and I mean to visit.” She nodded toward Dowdy’s. “Do you know the place?”

“They makes clothes for the nobs,” he said. “A girl I know used to work there, but they was all let go for no reason.”

Sophy hoped the girl had gone to the Milliners’ Society. She and her sisters had better look into what had happened to Dowdy’s discharged seamstresses.

But one thing at a time.

“While his lordship and I visit the shop, you’ll mind the horses as well as the business of everybody about you,” she said briskly. “Give a long, sharp whistle to let us know if we’re about to be interrupted. Do the job satisfactorily, and I’ll do as I promised. Have we a bargain, Fenwick?”

“No tricks?” the boy said.

“No tricks?” Longmore echoed. “The brass of the brat!”

“Do I look like the tricky sort to you?” Sophy said.

The boy gave her a long, searching look. He spent some time peering into the tinted lenses. “Yes,” he said. “Not to mention you got a grip like a manacle.”

She smiled. “There, I knew you were a sharp one. But no tricks.”

She released his arm. He made a great show of massaging it, and checking for broken bones. He muttered about “mad gentry morts” and “bruiser lordships.”

“Never mind the grumbling,” Longmore said