The silence stretched out for several long seconds before Bones grabbed her hair and dragged her down the hallway as she screamed and pleaded with him to stop.
Arista held her knuckles against her lips to keep from crying out. With sickening dread, she knew she was next. Her legs went weak, as if she would fall to the floor any second. If she went into the dark room again, she knew with certainty she would not come back out.
As Bones started back down the hall toward her, something brushed against her hand. The boy next to her still looked straight ahead, but his arm stretched behind her. She opened her fist and something was pressed into her palm.
Then Bones was standing in front of her.
“Do you eat or starve?” Bones asked. His eyes narrowed, and he was just about to grab her when she pulled her hand out from behind her back and shoved it at him. Arista had no idea what she was giving the man. What if the boy had set her up? He’d been treating them badly all day, yelling and ridiculing them when they failed to beg successfully for even a halfpence. What if he’d given her a rock?
But Bones growled out a warning, and she had to open her fingers. Two shillings gleamed in the lamplight. Arista had never seen so much money before, much less held it in her hand.
The boy had given that to her?
Why?
“This, my wee bits o’ baggage, is how it’s done. Mighty fine work on your first day, gypsy. You earned yourself an extra ration.” Bones shoved a chunk of bread twice the size of his hand at her and she grabbed it without thinking. She sank her teeth into the stale crust even before Bones stepped away.
“What about you, boy—where’s your offerin’?”
The boy shrugged nonchalantly, though Arista noticed that his fingers were curled tightly at his side. “Looking after these good-for-nothings all day took all me time.”
Bones backhanded the boy before Arista could swallow. She tried to protest, but her words were muffled by the chunk of dry bread clogging her throat. The boy lay panting on the floor, his gaze downcast.
“Show ’em where they’re sleeping.” Bones was halfway down the hall when he stopped and turned. “And Nic, my boy, next time you’ll be in the dungeon with the rest o’ the worthless ones.”
Arista met Nic’s gaze, and in that moment something happened. She offered him a hand up, and half her bread, while the other children looked on wide-eyed.
Nic led them to the room where they would sleep for the next ten years.
That night had only been the beginning….
A drunken shriek too close for comfort jerked Arista back to reality. Nic’s hand tightened on her arm.
He stared at her curiously. “Where’d ya go, gypsy? Not like you to be so quiet.”
Arista couldn’t meet his eyes. Unconsciously, she lifted her hand to touch the scarf she had wound around her wig. She never went out as Lady A without it.
Have you been to India? The phantom voice filled her head. How could she explain that she was not herself because she’d been so close to her dreams of escape?
“Nerves,” she answered. “I didn’t think that fat arse would fight.”
He seemed to accept her explanation. He stopped them in front of a familiar locked door. Though she was older now and not returning empty handed, the sick, strangling feeling from that first night never quite went away.
Nic squeezed her hand in understanding, then gave a series of knocks. After a moment, the door swung open. Becky stood just inside the door. Her eyes darted around like a frightened rabbit’s, but she opened the door wide enough to allow them inside.
Arista stepped back into her personal hell, leaving behind the brief illusion of freedom.
Becky held out a lantern and hurried them down the same narrow hallway where Arista had been led that first night. Somewhere on the other side of the wall, the sounds of men’s voices rumbled. Arista drew Nic’s jacket tighter around her shoulders.
No one outside these thin walls knew that the infamous Lady A lived only a few feet away.
At the end of the hall, Becky stopped in front of two doors and pulled out a ring of keys. She unlocked the door on the right, pushed it open, and disappeared inside the room she and Arista shared, taking the light with her. Arista blinked against the sudden darkness.
“Until we meet again, Lady A.” There was more than a hint of laughter in Nic’s voice.
“Parting is such sweet sorrow.” Arista used her best aristocratic vowels as she quoted a line from a Shakespeare play Nic had once taken her to see.
They had stood in the very back at the Haymarket Theatre, and Arista held her breath until the very last line echoed in the hushed room. The tale of doomed love had been unlike anything she’d ever seen before. Her heart had ached for days.
Nic had just shrugged. “Neither of them needed to die.”