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to be plucked. In the black, fog-drenched London night, she went ever so slowly. She’d no desire to miss a step, plunge to the rotten ground, and die of a broken neck on the edges of a slum.
    If she was entirely honest with herself, it was her heart that made her heavy and slow as a granny as she ascended. Matthew. Matthew’d left Ireland, the land he loved with every fiber of his heart and soul, to come to London. There could be only one meaning in such a thing.
    A price was out on his head.
    Pressing her lips together lest she lash out at him for putting himself into such danger, she reached into her reticule and pulled out her small iron key. As she fumbled to shove it into the lock and push open her door, her breath blossomed in white puffs before her face. Without moonlight or any sort of gas lamp in this part of town, she used the tips of her numb fingers to find the latch, and at last, she pushed the key home and tumbled the lock. The door creaked crankily for lack of oil on its rusting hinges and too many years of service.
    The chamber was small, pokey, and square with a tiny coal fire burner in the corner. A bed just big enough for her lurked in the shadowy corner, and her small table bore a daguerreotype of her mammy, her da, and Matthew as a baby. Beside it rested two books. Victor Hugo and the new writer Marx, who’d been living in Soho for years.
    She crossed to the table and swiped the small matchbox up from beside the single candle and struck it. The strong scent of sulfur sizzled through the room. Once she’d lit the wick, she dropped her reticule and the matchbox to the splintering tabletop. “Light the fire, will you?”
    Without urging, Matthew hurried over and picked up a few pieces of coal with his cracked fingers, tossed them in, and had a blaze going in the black iron burner within a few breaths. As soon as he clapped the little iron door shut, he shoved his hands into his pockets and then turned his beautiful, cheeky face to hers. If there was mischief in this world, it lay in Matthew’s handsome face.
    How she loved those features. Had done since he’d been all of two, stumbling about the house with nicked knees and jam on his cheek. It didn’t matter that he was seventeen now, almost a man.
    His russet hair feathered about sharp brows and cheeks hollow with lack of food, but his eyes, green as the grass of Eire, had a spark that would have lit the devil himself. Despite that gorgeous, cheeky glow, she knew all too well that under his boyish charm rumbled the hardness of a killer and a boy who’d been forced into manhood by the bitter taste of death and then more death.
    A boy driven wild by his passion for justice and hunger for revenge.
    She should send him on his way. Now. Without delay. Her own inner sense whispered how foolish she’d been to let him in. Matthew involved himself with dangerous men, and by letting him stay, she was opening her door to possibly their presence and, worse, their schemes. But she couldn’t boot him. Not her Matthew. Her little brother who had sat more oft upon her knee than their mother’s. Their mother who offered herself up to a God that had never answered her prayers. Prayers that had been more numerous than the sands upon the shore. Nor had that God been swayed by the sufferings she’d undertaken to save her fellow Irishmen.
    Even now, if Margaret listened, she could hear the whisper of the Hail Mary, the beads clinking as Brigid Cassidy shuffled them through milk-white fingers until her skin had worn, exposing raw flesh. Margaret shook her head, determined to dispel the memory. Determined to find out just what had driven her brother to the country he hated so much.
    She reached inside her skirts, pulling forth a small linen sack. It was a small affair, barely bulging with her meagerly purchased wares. “Are you hungry, Matthew?”
    He rubbed his coal-stained hands together before the fire, the glow lighting his face. “And couldn’t I eat an entire