smoke was in the air. He breathed it in along with the smell of char-grilled chops and hoppy ale. Soaking up the atmosphere of the place, the familiarity and the ease, he watched Emma de Lisle.
He had the feeling she wouldn’t be working here in the Red Lion for too long. She was a woman who was going places, or had been to them. Anyone who met her knew it. He wondered again, as he had wondered many times before, what her story was.
He watched how efficiently she worked, with that air of purpose and energy; the way she could share a smile or a joke with the punters without it delaying her work—only for him had she done that. The punters liked her and he could see why.
She didn’t look at him again, not in all the time it took him to sup his drink.
The bells of St Olave’s in the distance chimed eleven. Nancy called last orders.
Ned’s time here for tonight was over. He drained the tankard. Left enough coins on the table to pay for his meal and a generous tip for Emma de Lisle, before lifting his hat and making his way across the room to the front door.
His focus flicked one last time to where Emma was delivering meat-laden platters to a table of four.
She glanced over at him, her eyes meeting his for a tiny shared moment, and flashed her wonderful smile at him, before getting on with the job in hand.
He placed his hat on his head and walked out of the Red Lion Chop-House into the darkness of the alleyway.
I trust the inadvertent and clumsy tread of my boot did your property no harm. He smiled. Emma de Lisle was certainly one hell of a woman. A man might almost be tempted to stay here for a woman like her. Almost.
He smiled one last time, then set off through the maze of streets he knew so well. As he crossed the town, moving from one parish to the next, he shifted his mind to what lay ahead for tomorrow, focusing, running through the details.
The night air was cool and his face grim as he struck a steady pace all the way home to Mayfair.
‘Is that you, Emma?’ her father called at the sound of her key scraping in the lock. She could hear the wariness in his voice.
She unlocked the door and let herself into the two small rooms that they rented.
‘I brought you a special supper—pork chops.’
‘Pork?’ He raised his eyebrows in surprise. ‘Not usual for there to be any pork left.’
There had not been. Pork was expensive and the choicest chop they offered. It was also her father’s favourite, which was why Emma had paid for them out of her own pocket, largely with the generous tip Ned Stratham had left, the rest covered by Nancy’s discount. ‘Happy Birthday, Papa.’ She dropped a kiss to his cheek as he drew her close and gave her a hug.
‘It is my birthday? I lose track of time these days.’ He sat down in one of the spindly chairs at the bare table in the corner of the room.
‘That is what happens with age,’ Emma teased him. But she knew it was not age that made him forget, but the fact that all the days merged together when one just worked all the time.
She hung her cloak on the back of the door, then set a place at the little table, unwrapped the lidded plate from its cloth and finally produced an earthenware bottle. ‘And as a treat, one of the finest of the Red Lion’s porters.’
‘You spoil me, Emma,’ he chided, but he smiled. ‘You are not having anything?’
‘I ate earlier, in the Red Lion. And you know I cannot abide the taste of beer.’
‘For which I am profoundly thankful. Bad enough my daughter chooses to work in a common tavern, but that she would start drinking the wares...’ He gave an exaggerated shudder.
‘It is a chop-house, not a tavern as I have told you a hundred times.’ She smiled. Although the distinction made little difference in reality, it made her father feel better. But he would not feel better were he to see the Red Lion’s clientele and her best customers. She wondered what he would make of a man like Ned Stratham. Or what he would say had he witnessed the manner in which Ned had bested five men to defend her.
Her father smiled, too. ‘And I suppose I should be heartily grateful for that.’
‘You know the tips from the chop-house pay very well indeed, much better than for any milliner or shop girl. And it will not be for ever.’
‘Perhaps not,’ he said thoughtfully.
‘No perhaps about it, Papa,’ she said sternly. ‘Our savings begin to grow. And I have made an application for a position in Clerkenwell. It is not Mayfair, but it is heading in the right direction.’
‘Managing a chop-house.’
Managing a tavern, but she did not tell him that. ‘One step at a time, on a journey that will eventually lead us back to our own world.’
He smiled. ‘My dear girl, have I told you that you are stubborn as a mastiff?’
‘Once or twice. I wonder where I might have acquired such a trait? I do not recall my dear mama having such a defect.’
He chuckled. ‘Indeed, I own the blame. The apple does not fall so very far from the tree.’ He gently patted her hand. ‘Come, take a seat. You must be tired after working all evening.’
Emma dropped into the seat opposite. ‘Not so tired at all.’ And although her feet were aching it was the truth. She thought of Ned Stratham and the interaction that had passed between them earlier that evening and smiled. He was a man without an inch of softness in him. Probably more dangerous than any of the other men that came to the chop-house, and the men that came to the Red Lion were not those anyone would wish to meet alone on a dark night. Definitely more dangerous, she corrected, remembering precisely what he had done to Black-Hair and his cronies. And yet there was something about him, something that marked him as different. Pushing the thought away, she focused her attention on her father.
‘How were the docks today?’
‘The same as they ever are. The good news is that I managed to get an extra shift for tomorrow.’
‘Again?’ The fatigue in his face worried her. ‘Working a double shift is too much for you.’ Working a single shift in a manual job in the London Docks’ warehouses was too much for a man who had been raised and lived as a gentleman all his life.
‘What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander,’ he said. ‘Do not start with your scolding, please, Emma.’
She sighed and gave a small smile. It was his birthday and she wanted what was left of it to be nice for him. There would be other days to raise the issue of his working double shifts. ‘Very well.’
‘Fetch your cup. I shall propose a toast.’
She did as he bid.
He poured a dribble of porter into her cup. Raised his own tankard in the air. ‘God has granted me another year and I am happy and thankful for it.’ But there was a shadow of sadness in his eyes and she knew what he was thinking of. ‘To absent loved ones,’ he said. ‘Wherever Kit is. Whatever he is doing. God keep him safe and bring him home to us.’
‘To absent loved ones,’ she echoed and tried to suppress the complicated swirl of emotions she felt whenever Kit’s name was mentioned.
They clunked the cups together and drank down the porter. Its bitterness made her shudder. Once it had been champagne in the finest of cut-crystal glasses with which he made his birthday toast and the sweetest of lemonades, extravagantly chilled with ice. Once their lives had been very different from the ones they lived here.
As if sensing her thought, he reached his hand to hers and gave it a squeeze. Her eyes met his, sombre for a moment with shared