fail.’
Her eyebrows rose ever so slightly, but she softened the cynicism with a smile that did things to him that no other woman’s smile ever had. It kept him standing here, talking, when he should have walked away.
‘You don’t believe me.’
‘A lucky charm that works without fail...?’ She raised her eyebrows again, teasingly this time. ‘Perhaps I should ask to borrow it.’
‘Are you in need of good luck?’
‘Is not everyone?’
‘Emma!’ Nancy shouted from the bar. ‘Six pints of porter here!’
‘Ned Stratham.’ He did not smile, but offered his hand for a handshake.
‘Emma de Lisle.’
Her fingers were feminine and slender within his own. Her skin cool and smooth, even within the warmth of the taproom. The touch of their bare hands sparked physical awareness between them. He knew she felt it, too, from the slight blush on her cheeks and the way she released his hand.
‘Emma!’ Nancy, the landlady, screeched like a banshee. ‘Get over here, girl!’
Emma glanced over her shoulder at the bar. ‘Coming, Nancy!
‘No rest for the wicked,’ she said, and with a smile she was gone.
Ned resumed his seat, but his eyes watched her cross the room. The deep red of the tavern dress complimented the darkness of her hair and was laced tight to her body so that he could see the narrowness of her waist and the flare of her hips and the way the material sat against her buttocks. There was a vitality about her, an intelligence, a level of confidence in herself not normally seen round here.
He watched her collect the tankards from the bar and distribute them to various tables, taking her time en route to him. His was the last tankard on the tray.
‘What’s a woman like you doing in a place like this?’ he asked as she set the porter down before him.
Her eyes met his again. And in them was that same smile. ‘Working,’ she said.
This time she didn’t linger. Just moved on, to clear tables and take new orders and fetch more platters of chops.
He leaned back against the wooden panelling on the wall and slowly drank his porter. The drift of pipe smoke was in the air. He breathed it in along with the smell of char-grilled chops and hoppy ale. Soaking up the atmosphere of the place, the familiarity and the ease, he watched Emma de Lisle.
He had the feeling she wouldn’t be working here in the Red Lion for too long. She was a woman who was going places, or had been to them. Anyone who met her knew it. He wondered again, as he had wondered many times before, what her story was.
He watched how efficiently she worked, with that air of purpose and energy; the way she could share a smile or a joke with the punters without it delaying her work—only for him had she done that. The punters liked her and he could see why.
She didn’t look at him again, not in all the time it took him to sup his drink.
The bells of St Olave’s in the distance chimed eleven. Nancy called last orders.
Ned’s time here for tonight was over. He drained the tankard. Left enough coins on the table to pay for his meal and a generous tip for Emma de Lisle, before lifting his hat and making his way across the room to the front door.
His focus flicked one last time to where Emma was delivering meat-laden platters to a table of four.
She glanced over at him, her eyes meeting his for a tiny shared moment, and flashed her wonderful smile at him, before getting on with the job in hand.
He placed his hat on his head and walked out of the Red Lion Chop-House into the darkness of the alleyway.
I trust the inadvertent and clumsy tread of my boot did your property no harm. He smiled. Emma de Lisle was certainly one hell of a woman. A man might almost be tempted to stay here for a woman like her. Almost.
He smiled one last time, then set off through the maze of streets he knew so well. As he crossed the town, moving from one parish to the next, he shifted his mind to what lay ahead for tomorrow, focusing, running through the details.
The night air was cool and his face grim as he struck a steady pace all the way home to Mayfair.
‘Is that you, Emma?’ her father called at the sound of her key scraping in the lock. She could hear the wariness in his voice.
She unlocked the door and let herself into the two small rooms that they rented.
‘I brought you a special supper—pork chops.’
‘Pork?’ He raised his eyebrows in surprise. ‘Not usual for there to be any pork left.’
There had not been. Pork was expensive and the choicest chop they offered. It was also her father’s favourite, which was why Emma had paid for them out of her own pocket, largely with the generous tip Ned Stratham had left, the rest covered by Nancy’s discount. ‘Happy Birthday, Papa.’ She dropped a kiss to his cheek as he drew her close and gave her a hug.
‘It is my birthday? I lose track of time these days.’ He sat down in one of the spindly chairs at the bare table in the corner of the room.
‘That is what happens with age,’ Emma teased him. But she knew it was not age that made him forget, but the fact that all the days merged together when one just worked all the time.
She hung her cloak on the back of the door, then set a place at the little table, unwrapped the lidded plate from its cloth and finally produced an earthenware bottle. ‘And as a treat, one of the finest of the Red Lion’s porters.’
‘You spoil me, Emma,’ he chided, but he smiled. ‘You are not having anything?’
‘I ate earlier, in the Red Lion. And you know I cannot abide the taste of beer.’
‘For which I am profoundly thankful. Bad enough my daughter chooses to work in a common tavern, but that she would start drinking the wares...’ He gave an exaggerated shudder.
‘It is a chop-house, not a tavern as I have told you a hundred times.’ She smiled. Although the distinction made little difference in reality, it made her father feel better. But he would not feel better were he to see the Red Lion’s clientele and her best customers. She wondered what he would make of a man like Ned Stratham. Or what he would say had he witnessed the manner in which Ned had bested five men to defend her.
Her father smiled, too. ‘And I suppose I should be heartily grateful for that.’
‘You know the tips from the chop-house pay very well indeed, much better than for any milliner or shop girl. And it will not be for ever.’
‘Perhaps not,’ he said thoughtfully.
