She offered no greetings to the room, looked at no one,but there was no mistaking the heaviness in her expression. Something was worrying her, and she so seldom let that show.
He moved to where she stood. “Gemma?”
She seemed only a little startled, likely on account of how softly he’d spoken. She looked at him. Worry and hope collided in his chest, setting off an explosion of confusion.
“What’s the matter, Gemma?”
“Nothing I cain’t sort out.”
He took her hands in his. “You’ve trusted me before,” he whispered, uncertain how much she wanted the rest of the room to overhear. “You can trust me now.”
Gemma watched him, emotions battling in her eyes. She looked to Vera. “Have you a room we could slip into for a moment?”
“Any room at the top of the stairs.”
She kept her hand in his as they left the sitting room but let go as they climbed the stairs. She stepped into the first room on the landing. He closed the door behind them.
Her breathing was so tense he heard it.
“My family is looking for me,” she said, her voice shaking.
Fear seized his heart. “Your father’s dead.”
“He ain’t the only Kincaid. They’re all terrors. Every blasted one of ’em.” She paced away, though she couldn’t go far in the small room.
He watched her, his mind spinning. Was she safe? Did she need to be hidden? Ought he to involve the DPS? “Tell me what you’ve heard.”
“The Kincaids’ve come into a heap o’ work, not the ‘snatch a job as you’re able’ variety. There’s a man, a dangerous man, who’s hired them on to resurrect people on the regular. This rum cove what hired them, he hushes people, then has my family dig them up to make everyone else that much more afraid of him.”
A shiver tiptoed down Barnabus’s spine. She was talking of the Mastiff; he was certain of it.
“They’ve steady work now, but if they’re to keep pace, they need more hands that know how to do the job without needing to be taught.”
She had been forced into their trade from a young age. He knew from countless conversations and late nights when nightmares had plagued her that she’d hated it.
“Whispers are hovering all over South London that they’s looking for someone. That someone ain’t likely to be anyone but me.” She pressed her fingers to her forehead. “If my family finds me, either I have to go back to that life or I’m dead where I stand.”
Her eyes met his once more, and it wasn’t weariness or mere concern he saw there. She was afraid. He held his arms out, hoping she would accept the offering. That she did so without hesitation proved both a relief and a worry.
“My job ain’t terribly far from Southwark. I cain’t be too close to that area of town. It’s where the Kincaids all still live.”
He rubbed a slow circle over her back. “You could—You don’t have to—” He’d not gotten tongue-tied until now. How was it that she still managed to upend him sometimes? “We’ll find you something else, Gemma. Something nowhere near Southwark.”
He felt her sigh against him. “That could take time, though. I cain’t make my next start without coin in my pocket.”
That dropped like a weight on his heart. He’d always known she’d leave again, but he’d held out hope that she’d stay long enough to find a means of making things work. She had to have been deeply unhappy to want to leave a safe place when she was in such danger.
“What did you do, Baz, when you were younger and you were in trouble, but you couldn’t go back to where your motherwas ... working, and you had nowhere else to go? What did you do when you didn’t have nowhere else to hide?”
She was the only person he’d ever told about the terror he’d felt when, at only six years old, he’d been tossed out on the street. The cruel woman who’d run the bordello where his mother had been trapped had declared he was too old to stay, that he was costing the woman business and money—no matter that his mother had provided ample coin for the food he ate, coin he’d supplemented himself by his efforts on the streets each day. When at the house run by that unfeeling woman, he’d kept to the attics, out of sight, out of the way. There’d been no reason to toss him out other than cruelty.
“There was safety in not being alone. I kept to crowds during the day and the urchins’ hovels at night.”
“But what did you do when you were full spent and hadn’t a day’s worth of survival left in you?”
He closed his eyes, better able to remember without agony while she was in his arms that way. “I met my mother every morning at the back wall of that house. I’d get to see her and talk to her, and that helped.”
“And that was when she’d tell you she loved you?”