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Captain,” she said. “Fancy a bit?”

Chapter Five
     
    I looked down. Black Nancy, so called because of her long, dyed, blue-black hair, sauntered along beside me, grinning at me to display her crooked teeth. A few of her colleagues sashayed just beyond her.
    Nance could not have been much more than sixteen, and my constant rejection of her offers was a great puzzlement to her. She pursued me with a doggedness almost comical, I suppose assuming that one day, she would eventually wear me down. In her world, she was considered to be growing elderly—in mine, she was still a child.
    She wore her favorite gown today, a worn russet velvet cut to show off her generous bosom. She’d topped it with a blue wool jacket at least ten years out of date. She was good-humored, but she hunted her flats—the gentlemen she lured to her—with a ruthlessness that made Napoleon Bonaparte’s campaign to conquer Russia look like a frivolous Sunday outing.
    “I’m a poor man, Nance,” I began, embarking on the familiar argument.
    She winked. “I know. Maybe I fancies ya.”
    One of the other girls laughed. “He likes ladies as bathe, Nance. You ain’t had a bath in a twelvemonth.”
    “Shut your yap, Margaret. I seen him first.”
    Nance tucked her arm more firmly through mine. The other girls grew bored with teasing me and dropped away, turning to likelier marks. Nance lingered, strutting along beside me, smiling with her red-painted mouth.
    “Ain’t seen ya in a few days, Captain. You hiding from me?”
    “I’ve been busy.” I stopped, thinking. Every day and well into the night, Nance moved all over Covent Garden, up and down the Strand, and everywhere in between. If anyone was likely to observe things there, it was she.
    “What’re you thinking, Captain?” she asked. “Your eyes go all dark when you do that. Do you really know how handsome you are, or are you just teasing me?”
    I ignored her. “What would you say to earning a few shillings?”
    Her eyes lit, and she melted against me. “Ooo, thought you’d never ask.”
    I frowned. “Not for that. I am looking for a coachman. Do you speak to the ones who wait at Covent Garden Theatre?”
    She gave me a look of disappointment and pushed herself away. “Sometimes. They share a nip of gin when the weather’s cold. What you want with one of them? You don’t have a coach.”
    “I am looking for one in particular, a coachman for a family called Carstairs. Do you know him?”
    Carstairs was the name of the family who’d sent their coach for Miss Jane Thornton and her maid that fateful afternoon, so Alice had told me.
    Her look turned sly. “I could find him for ya. For a price.”
    “I can give you a shilling now, and another when you find him.”
    She smoothed the lapel of my coat. “You keep your money, Captain. I’ll find this coachman to a gentry-cove. You pay me then. If I don’t find him, you’re out nothing.” She slanted me an inquisitive look. “What you want him for?”
    “I need to ask him something. You find him and tell him to visit me in my rooms.”
    “Now you got me curious. Ain’t you going to tell me? I won’t peep.”
    “I’d rather not until I speak with him.”
    Her fingers drifted down my coat. “You know how to string a girl along. I’ll find him for you, Captain. Maybe you can pay me another way.” She glanced at me from under her lashes.
    I tried to give her a severe look. “I am old enough to be your father.”
    She cackled, but withdrew her hand. “You’re older than me dad, but you’re that much prettier.”
    “You are too kind. Now I am hungry. Let me go and have my dinner.”
    She obeyed, uncharacteristically. I felt her small hand on my backside as she departed, and I watched her dart away, her hair swinging in a black wave.
    As I walked on toward the Gull at the end of the square, I surreptitiously checked my pockets to make sure that all my coins were intact.
    *** *** ***
    Much later that night I was wandering