Lord Day and Lady Night

25. Home Sweet Home

"Who...who are ye?" a soft voice came from the inside of the coach. The voice of a child.

A scared child.

At that moment, a searing hot anger shot through Amy. They hadn't been wrong. They. Had. Not. Been. Wrong. And yet, in that moment, she wished so much that they had been. Better blood on her own hands than tears on the face of a child.

"It's all right," Patrick said, stepping forward, his voice gentle. "You're safe now."

The girl inside the coach, however, didn't seem to find that very reassuring, judging by the way she tried to scramble up onto the luggage rack. Patrick was about to take another step forward, when Amy held him back.

"But...I was only trying to reassure her."

"I know." She smiled sadly at him. The bloody fool really didn't see it, did he? "But ye're a man."

Understanding flashed in his eyes. With a nod, he stepped aside and held the door open for her. "Well, then I shall adhere to old wisdom and custom. Ladies first."

Giving him a grateful nod in return, Amy stepped forward and cautiously stuck her head into the carriage.

"'ello?"

It was only thanks to instincts born of years of surviving in Devil's Acre that she managed to dodge the broken-off brass knob from the luggage rack.

"Aaah! Easy, girl!"

"I won't let ye take me! I won't! I won't let 'im get me!"

"Dat's nice!" Making another dodge, Amy raised her hands to shield her head, just in case. "'cause we ain't with 'im!"

The small figure clinging to the luggage rack hesitated, hand still raised to strike. "Ye ain't?"

"No."

"'ow do I know ye're tellin' da truth?"

Amy considered for a moment how to prove that she was not, in fact, in the employ of an insanely rich, aristocratic, sexually deviant megalomaniac—then stepped aside, revealing the charming view of the dilapidated little charcoal burner's hut. "'cause dis is da place we took ye to."

There was a moment of silence.

"Oh. Right, I guess ye're tellin' da truth den."

"Glad ye think so." Amy extended her arms. "So...won't ye come out? Dat luggage rack doesn't look too comfortable."

After a few moments, the scruffy little figure in the shadows nodded and started climbing down. The foldable stairs of the coach creaked, and, an instant later, a slender foot emerged into the light, followed by the figure of a little girl. When Amy caught a sight of the state she was in, she wanted to murder someone. And, never being one to deny her wants and needs, she put that on her to-do list for later today. The girl was dressed in a tattered light brown dress, her hair in a tangle. And it hadn't gotten that way from a hardy breeze. There were several tears in her dress. One of her shoes was missing, the ankle red and bruised. Trembling, she only barely managed to keep herself upright.

"What happened to you?" Titus asked, for once not at all sounding as if he were in a joking mood.

"I...they...they came and...oh God, please..." Rushing forward, the girl threw herself into Amy's arms.

The story came flooding out. In one rush, she told them all about living in a tiny village a few miles away, a peaceful village, a beautiful village—a village under DeLacy's control. It was a story very like ones Amy had heard dozens and dozens of times from country girls lured to the city. A poor community of tenant farmers. A lord who owned all land and controlled everything, and the fear of whose power was so omnipresent that no one would dare stand by a single family who had provoked his ire and speak out against him. One day, the lord rode through the village and happened to glance out of his carriage as a girl called Grace worked in the fields. The next day, the lord's steward appeared when the girl was home alone to inform her that she had been chosen as a "personal maid" to His Lordship.