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wrong with her,” Simone theorized. “You know, maybe she got kicked in the head by a horse.”
    They both looked at her, but it was Lord Ryland who managed to ask first, “Do you know very many people who have been kicked in the head by a horse?”
    “Two. Ada and Sally. Their das sold them to Essie ’cause they couldn’t do nuthin’ else. Ada came from a farm and Sally’s da’s a tinker.”
    To be sold into prostitution by your parents. It happened all the time, Caroline knew, but still . . . “How very sad.”
    “It’s the way life goes sometimes,” Simone offered with a shrug. “Nuthin’ you can do to change it. Some’s lucky and some’s not.” She paused, shrugged again, and added, “ ’Course what’s luck and what ain’t depends on how you look at it. Ada never had shoes till she came to Essie’s place. For her it was good to be sold off like she was. Sally . . . I don’t know nuthin’ ’bout Sally. She don’t talk.”
    “How long have you been there? At Essie’s?” Lord Ryland asked quietly.
    “This would be the third winter a-comin’. Ma rented a room from her for a little while. She died a few months after she moved us in there. Essie takes a cut out of those what comes through the door and picks from the parlor, so lots of the girls go out to make extra that Essie don’t know about. Essie said my ma didn’t have no sense about how to choose her customers. One afternoon she went into an alley with the wrong one and . . . ” She lifted her chin and drew a dirt-encrusted finger across her throat. “That was that.”
    And that was that.
Caroline couldn’t think of anything to say. The child’s mother had been found dead in an alley, her throat cut, and that was that. How long had it been before Simone had noticed that her mother was missing? Had she been distraught? How long had she had to search until the grim truth had been found? God, what sort of life had she lived that the gruesome murder of her mother was a simple fact of life?
    “I’m very sorry,” she heard Lord Ryland say gently. “No one’s end should be so brutal and so unexpected.”
    “Not unexpected,” Simone countered. She shrugged again. “Like I said, some’s lucky and some’s not. Some’s smart ’bout people and some just ain’t. Sad to say, but Essie was right ’bout my ma. Wasn’t anythin’ I didn’t know already.”
    “Still,” Caroline offered, thinking of her own mother’s passing, “you must miss her terribly.”
    “Can’t say that I do.” She sighed, smiled thinly, and turned to look out the window. “How long till we get to the inn?”
    “Fairly soon,” Lord Ryland said.
    “That’s good. I’m tired a talkin’. It’s makin’ my head hurt.”
    No, Caroline thought, it wasn’t her sister’s head that hurt; it was her heart. But in the world in which Simone had grown up, being vulnerable was dangerous. Pretending that you were carved of stone wasn’t an easy way to live, but openly caring and hurting made you easy prey. Better to be stone cold and alive than stone-cold dead.
    But, as Simone had said, some were lucky and some weren’t. And to Caroline’s thinking, Simone had to be the most fortunate young woman in all of England. She’d survived long enough to be plucked from the edge of hell. From here on out . . .
    Caroline stole a glance at their benefactor, their guardian. He sat looking out the other window of the carriage, his expression pensive, almost sad. Yes, he was pompous and far too arrogant to be tolerable. He could raise her temper faster and more effectively than any man ever had. He decreed, he pronounced, he instructed, he expected everything to go his way, on his schedule.
    On the face of all that, he wasn’t the least bit likable. Devilishly handsome, roguishly tempting, yes. But not likeable at first blush. There was more to him than the Great Commander, though. He’d seemed genuinely distressed by the tale of Simone’s mother’s death. The