Page 29

“Are you a new girl, child?” the woman asked. She spoke in the East End accent Eliza had come to expect, but it was tempered somehow, as if she wasn’t native to the area but had lived there a long time.

“Yes, I am new.” Eliza nodded and used the same contrived accent she had used that night with Mr. Brody.

The woman sighed. Her voice was kind, but stern as she said, “Only customers come through this entrance, dovey. Go round to the back.” Then the woman gave her a thorough once-over and shut the door in her face.

Customers? What sort of house would have customers?

A sickening hollow opened up in her stomach.

There was really only one thing it could be, but she didn’t want to believe that Simon would frequent such a place.

Still, she hurried around the block to the back of the row of houses.

She counted to the third house down and knocked on the door.

A feminine voice yelled inside, though Eliza couldn’t make out the words.

That was followed by heavy steps. A series of locks were being unlatched; she could hear the springs and metal tapping against wood.

When the door finally opened, heat from the kitchen to the right wafted over her.

Ahead, the corridor loomed, dark and narrow, creating a straight path to the vacant front door.

The woman who had opened the door appeared to be the cook. She wore an apron and an affronted expression that Eliza would dare to appear there and disturb her. A trickle of sweat rolled down her brow, and she wiped it away with a hand reddened from the heat of the kitchen.

“I—I was told to come in the back,” Eliza said.

The cook huffed and waved her in before slamming the door behind her. Then she appeared to forget all about her as she returned to the kitchen and continued scolding the scullery girl who was on her hands and knees cleaning up a spill.

Eliza glanced toward the front of the house again and saw no sign of the woman in black. The woman’s voice drifted down the corridor to her from a front room, coupled with a man’s voice, but the man was not Simon. This was her chance. She needed to find him before someone stopped her.

A narrow and steep set of servants’ stairs was tacked to the side of the corridor, so she took them and cautiously made her way to the second level of the home.

The upstairs was narrow with several rooms turning off of the corridor.

One of the doors opened to reveal a young woman in a dingy white shift with nothing else underneath.

The lamplight spilling from the room lit her sparse frame from behind.

“Who’r you?” she asked, her brows drawn together.

“Anna—Anne,” Eliza answered, stumbling over the name she and Simon had decided she should have in Whitechapel.

“We already have one of those.” The woman’s gaze narrowed.

“I can change my name.”

The woman huffed and disappeared back into her room without another word.

Eliza stared for a moment at the other doors, wondering if Simon had gone into one of them.

Maybe he was even now undressing to take one of the occupants to bed.

She hadn’t thought he was someone who would visit a prostitute.

Not these poor women, anyway, who were likely forced into the job by circumstance rather than choice.

She hadn’t thought he was someone to take advantage of that, having seen the genuine desperation from the other side, but perhaps she had been wrong.

Though, honestly, it wasn’t only that that disappointed her.

It was that he could touch her the way he had last night and then come here today.

What was she supposed to make of that?

That it is none of your concern and that you should return home. Eliza pushed that voice of reason aside. She’d come too far to turn back now.

A footfall echoed on the stairs, and she looked up to see a man’s shoe go past on the landing above.

Perhaps it was him. She hurried around and up the next flight of stairs to the top floor.

She got there just in time to see the man, presumably Simon, disappear up a narrow set of stairs set into the wall that led to the attic.

She followed, her heartbeat pounding in her chest, and quietly walked down the short corridor to the bottom of those stairs.

A quick peek confirmed that the man was Simon.

She pressed her back to the wall and waited as he knocked on the single door at the top of the stairs.

It opened and she glanced again to see a dark-haired girl who couldn’t have been more than fifteen inside the attic room, her face pale and thin.

Her eyes lit up when she realized Simon stood there, and she stepped back to let him in, then the door closed behind him.

Cold prickled over Eliza’s scalp and down her spine.

The girl was so young. Why would Simon be visiting her?

He couldn’t really mean to bed her, could he?

Before she could properly consider all of the reasons, one of the doors on the corridor opened.

An older man stepped out, adjusting his clothing as he did.

She closed her eyes as she turned her head away.

“Are you new?” he asked in a tone that indicated he was entirely too interested.

“No, I’m not new. Get out of here,” she snapped, keeping her voice low so that it wouldn’t travel up to the attic.

He frowned but finished tucking in his shirttails as he walked toward the stairs to go down.

She waited for him to disappear from sight before she glanced back up the steps to the closed attic door. She wavered for a moment before ascending the steps. She had already come this far; she wasn’t about to turn back now.

Once at the top of the attic stairs, Eliza raised her hand to knock, but decided not to.

She didn’t want to give them time to pretend they were doing something else.

If he was sleeping with this girl, then Eliza needed to know.

She needed to see the seduction with her own eyes.

Then she would berate him for being a cad and leave.

At least it would settle the question of her future.

Sick to her stomach, she pushed gently and the door opened inward, as nothing had been latched from the inside. The room was not as small as she had thought it would be.

A narrow window was directly across from her; late-afternoon sunlight spilled across the bare wood floor.

A small bed was pushed to the wall on one side of the window with a table on the other side.

The bed was empty. The girl sat at the table and Simon sat adjacent to her.

A third set of eyes looked over at her as well.

An even younger child in Simon’s arms. Both he and the girl came to their feet at the sight of her.

“Eliza?” he said.

The girl’s eyes went wide with fright. The blanket she had been mending plopped to the ground, a needle poking out of it with a tail of red thread falling limply to lie on top of the blanket.

“Simon?” Eliza’s gaze was wrenched back to him and, more specifically, the child in his arms.

The little girl wore a simple yellow knee-length dress. Her light-colored hair had been neatly combed and left to fall in airy ringlets down her back. She couldn’t be more than three years old.

“Who is that, Papa?” the child asked in the soft tone of a toddler. Her blue eyes, so like Simon’s, were wide with curiosity.

Papa. The little girl had called Simon Papa. Eliza wrenched her gaze away from the child to Simon. He looked as stunned as she felt. His face was a frozen mask of shock, and he hadn’t moved since he’d catapulted to his feet.

“Simon.” This time it wasn’t a question. Eliza was too stunned to ask questions.

Simon had a child. A daughter. Had she been prone to fainting, she would have fallen dead away and rolled down the stairs.