Surrender to the Devil (24 page)

They’d been friends on the street, although they were under the care of different kidsmen. When Nancy turned twelve, she moved in with a boy three years older—Bob Sykes. It wasn’t uncommon for young girls to attach themselves to boys only a bit older than they were. They offered protection. For the boys, having a girl was a symbol of achievement. Frannie had always been able to tell which boys had taken in a girl because they had such large swaggers when they walked about, their status among the other boys raised by the apparent evidence of their manliness.

Frannie hadn’t seen Nancy since the night Frannie had been abducted and sold into prostitution. She and Nancy had planned to sneak into a theater to see a play that Nancy had been talking about incessantly. Instead disaster had struck. Fortunately for Nancy, she’d managed to escape, while Frannie had been carted into hell.

“I’m doing well, Nancy. How are you? Still with Sykes?”

“Caw, yeah. ’e’s not somebody yer loikely to leave, now, is ’e? Ye still working for the Dodger?”

Nancy was stooped over, cowering from the light, so Frannie pulled it back. She knew what it was like not to want to be seen under too harsh a light. Nancy’s clothes were worn and frayed, but Frannie could tell they’d been recently pressed as though she wanted to make a good impression. Although it was night, she wore a hat that sat askew on top of her piled-up hair.

“Yes, I’m still with Dodger,” Frannie said. “We have a cook who prepares food for the gentlemen all night—anything to keep them playing at the tables. Come inside to the kitchen, and I’ll find you something to eat.”

“Nah, thank ye, I’m fine. That ol’ gent taught ye how to speak right.”

“He taught me a good deal.”

“So everything wot ’appened that night, I guess it weren’t so bad after all.”

Frannie had been brutally raped. To even think that it wasn’t “so bad” was the same as comparing a knife through the heart to a pinprick of the finger. “I survived.” She glanced around. “It’s all damp out here with the fog rolling in. At least come up to my apartment, get out of the weather.”

“I ’eard yer taking in orphans,” Nancy said quickly.

“Yes, I—”

“Then take this ’un.” Nancy reached back into the shadows, then slung a boy against Frannie’s legs. “He’s one of Sykes’s boys. I ken bring ye more if ye’ll take this ’un.”

“Nancy—”

“Please. ’e’s my boy, too. I want something better than the streets fer ’im. ’is name’s Petey. ’e’s a good boy.”

Wrapping her arm around the lad, Frannie drew him up against her skirts. While he wore a jacket, she could still tell that he was little more than bones. Sykes was a burglar by trade, and she knew he worked hard to keep the boys small so they could fit through tiny places in order to get into a house and open the front door for him.

“You come with us, too, Nancy. I can provide a safe haven for you and the boy.”

Nancy scoffed. “I been with ’im since I was twelve. ’e ain’t likely to let me go easy.”

“I can find you employment in the country—”

She watched Nancy’s face crumple. “Ye was always so nice. I didn’t want to do it, ye know. Ye gotta believe that. I didn’t want to do it.”

“What are you on about?”

“It was Sykes. ’e made me. ’e said we’d make good money selling ye to that old woman. I never saw a “apenny.”

Frannie’s insides felt as though an ice storm had hit them. The old woman? The gray-haired woman who’d run the brothel where she’d been taken? Suddenly she found herself clutching the boy to keep herself standing.

“Ye look loike yer about to bring up yer supper. Ye didn’t know?”

Frannie shook her head. “No.”

“Ye was always so smart that I figured ye figured it out. Don’t hold it against my boy.”

“I’d never take the sins of the mother out on the child. Do you know what they did to me, Nancy?”

“I can well imagine.”

“No, I don’t think you can.”

“I imagine it’s pretty close to wot Sykes does to me ev’ry night. ’e’s an animal, that one is. A dog. Someone should put ’im down. I’ll bring ye more boys if I can.”

Before Frannie could respond, Nancy was running off into the darkness, her rapid footsteps muffled by the thickening fog. Frannie lowered the lantern and looked at the boy who’d been left behind.

He was the boy who went by the name of Jimmy.

The little thief was again in Sterling’s kitchen, sitting at the servant’s table, stuffing food into his mouth as though he hadn’t had a nibble since he’d last visited.

That Frannie had brought him here and not to her orphanage spoke volumes. Unfortunately, she wasn’t saying quite as much, and Sterling sensed that whatever was troubling her was far more worrisome than discovering the lad’s parentage.

“So he’s Sykes’s son?” he repeated.

“According to Nancy, yes.”

“I suppose that explains his inability to appreciate your taking the lad.”

“I’m afraid if I take him back to the orphanage that Sykes might come after him there.”

Sterling shifted his gaze to her. She was looking up at him with absolute certainty in her eyes that he would offer the solution without misgivings.

“If he’s to stay here and sleep in one of my beds, he’s to be bathed first. I don’t care the hour.”

She gave him a beatific smile that warmed the cockles of his heart. Blast her. Was there anything he could deny her? He’d let her go once and he didn’t know if he’d be able to do it again. To watch her walk away had been the hardest thing he’d ever done.

“I also think you should stay the night.” He didn’t like the idea of her being out on her own. Besides, knowing her, she’d head to the rookeries to confront this Sykes fellow. As much as he disliked her friends, he was considering alerting them to the situation. No, she’d see it as betrayal. He should see about hiring guards to follow her around.

“If you don’t mind—” she began.

“I wouldn’t have offered if I minded. You should quit working at Dodger’s.”

She released a half laugh. “Dodger’s provides me with the means to do as much as I do for orphans.” She nodded toward the urchin. “We probably shouldn’t let him eat as much tonight.”

“I concur. One pie is all he’s getting.”

She squeezed his hand, may as well have squeezed his heart. “I know you don’t like light fingers in your residence, but I’ll see that he doesn’t steal anything.”

He touched her cheek. “He brought you back. He can steal anything he wants.”

Her laughter was soft and for a moment it erased her worries, but he could see them return with force. Once his company was abed, Sterling would seek to entice out of her what was truly troubling her. It was more than the boy. Of that he was certain.

He awoke the youngest of his footmen and had a bath prepared in the kitchen for the lad. While Frannie was scrubbing the little devil clean, Sterling went to his boot-boy’s room and grabbed a few items. The clothes would be a trifle large but should suffice.

When he returned downstairs to the kitchen, the boy was out of the tub and Frannie was toweling him off.

“Caw, blimey! Yer scraping off me skin!”

“Stop your complaining,” Sterling demanded, before Frannie could reply. “I’ll have you know I’ve paid good money to have beautiful ladies towel me off.”

She jerked her head around to look at him, and a charming blush crept up her cheeks.

He grinned at her. “Some foreign countries have lovely customs.” He held up the clothes. “He can have these.” With the toe of his shoe, he nudged the rags on the floor. “These we should probably burn.”

“Probably.” Reaching for the clothes, she dropped the towel and it pooled on the floor.

Sterling didn’t mean to stare, but dear God…“He really is nothing more than bones.”

“I’m afraid so, yes.”

Sterling could see some marks on the boy’s side, on his shoulder. He turned him around—

“ ’ere now!” the boy bellowed.

Ignoring him, Sterling studied the crisscross of faint scars on his back. “Did someone whip him?”

Turning him around, Frannie had him raise his arms and began working the nightshirt over his head. “The authorities,” she said quietly. “He was apparently arrested for stealing sixpence. Rather than sending him to prison, he got the lash.”

“But…but he’s a child.”

“Some gent fancied his sixpence more.”

“Wot ye bothered fer?” The boy crossed his bony arms over his skinny chest. “I didn’t cry.”

“How old are you?”

“Don’t gotta tell ye nuffin’, bloody nob.”

“He’s eight,” Frannie said. “Do we have a bed for him?”

Sterling nodded. “Yes.”

The room he chose was just down the hall from his. He thought Frannie might want to pop in and check on the boy from time to time. He stationed the footman inside the room with the order not to let the boy go anywhere.

He looked even smaller tucked into that massive bed with Frannie combing her fingers through his dark hair.

“You need to stay here, Peter,” Frannie said quietly. “It’s what your mother wants. Tomorrow we’ll have a nice breakfast and get you some proper clothes. Everything is going to be all right. I don’t want you to be afraid.”

“I ain’t afraid of nuffin’.”

“Don’t run away again, all right?”

He shrugged, nodded, rolled over, all at the same time.

Frannie rose and smiled softly at Sterling.

“That wasn’t exactly a promise now, was it,” he said.

Shaking her head, she headed for the door. Sterling stopped by the footman and said in a low voice, “Expect trouble.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Fetch me if there is any.”

“Yes, Your Grace.”

Sterling went into his bedchamber, grateful to see that Frannie was there, sitting on the sofa in front of the fireplace where a low fire burned on the hearth. Her bare feet were drawn up on the cushion and she was rubbing her arms as though she were chilled. He went to a table where he kept his nightly brandy, poured two generous snifters, and joined her.

She took the snifter from him and drank deeply before balancing it on her thigh and holding it with both hands. Her gaze was far, far away.

“Tell me what’s wrong,” he stated quietly.

“You don’t think that child deserves worrying over?”

He rubbed his thumb between her furrowed brows. “Something else is upsetting you. Tell me what it is.”

She shook her head, tears welling in her eyes.

“There is nothing you can tell me that will change…the affection I hold for you.”

“Do you have affection for me, Sterling?”

He feared he had a good deal more than that, but that admission would lead them toward a road they couldn’t travel and would make things so much more difficult in time. “I care for you very much, Frannie. I don’t like to see you so unhappy. The boy is clean, fed, and in bed. He’s back in your care. That should be a reason for joy. But, Frannie, my darling, you look as though your heart is breaking.”

She nodded, squeezed her eyes shut, and took another gulp of the brandy. Shifting around, she faced him. “Nancy…she was my friend. She wasn’t one of Feagan’s children. But she was there, on the streets, one of us. She was two years older. When she was twelve, she moved in with Sykes. Girls do that on the street. You survive the best way you can. But we were friends. Friends.”

She seemed to be stuck on that word.

“You were friends,” he repeated. “Did you play together?”

She laughed and shook her head. “The game we played was called the Lucifer Drop. I had two boxes of matches and I’d walk along offering them to people. Of course everyone ignored me, because I was a beggar. I’d very skillfully knock into someone and drop the matches into the mud. I’d start crying and Nancy would start screaming that our mum was going to kill me. The fellow I bumped into would pay us handsomely to quiet our attention-drawing dramatics. We made out quite well.”

“So you feel an obligation to do right by her son?”

A tear spilled over onto her cheek. With his thumb, Sterling captured it. He folded his fingers around her neck. “Frannie…”

“One day she told me about this wonderful play and that she knew a fellow who would let us into the theater through the back door. Feagan had always told me, ‘Frannie, darling, the night isn’t a place for you. Always come back to me before the dark.’ But I wanted to see the play. So I stayed with Nancy until it got dark. And we walked down an alley…and someone jumped out at me and put a sack over my head and I screamed for Nancy to run…”

She released a strangled sob and more tears fell. He took the glass from her, set it on the table along with his own. He wanted to comfort her, but he knew that she had more to say. She looked at him imploringly, as though he could take away the pain, and God knew he wanted to, but until he knew what was causing it—

“All these years, Sterling, I thought I’d deserved what happened.”

“No one deserves what happened to you.”

She shook her head forcibly. “I’d been bad. I was where I wasn’t supposed to be, doing what I wasn’t supposed to be doing. Feagan had warned me not to be out at night, and I’d discarded Feagan’s warning. When I was taken, I thought it was my punishment. And dear God, when Luke killed Geoffrey Langdon and they arrested him, I thought they’d hang him, and it was all my fault. You can’t imagine how guilty I felt.”

“Frannie, you are to blame for none of this.”

She wiped at the tears. “Tonight, Nancy…Nancy told me that she and Sykes arranged everything. They set things up so that I’d be taken like that.”

“Ah, dear God, Frannie.” He drew her onto his lap, holding her close, rocking her while she wept.

“They knew what would happen and they did it on purpose.”

He tamped down the fury simmering through him. Now was not the time for him to start destroying things or venting his own anger. He had to care for her. Had to console his precious Frannie.

“I was taken somewhere. I didn’t know where. My clothes were stripped from me. I was tied to a bed. This horrible, horrible giggling man examined me. I had to be a virgin, you see. Virgins don’t yet carry disease. Some men will only bed virgins.”

He felt her tears soaking his shirt.

“I thought I’d pushed all the horror away, but somehow it’s so much worse knowing someone wished it upon me, made it come to pass.”