he repeated. ‘Where do you live?’
He released her shoulder and took her chin in his gasp, pulling her gaze to his. His heart slammed against his ribs with a stronger punch than any Wren had managed.
Seizing her around the waist, he lifted her to the door. Stopping outside, he let her feet flutter to the floor. She kept moving downwards and he pulled her up, tight against him. Her colourless face wasn’t far from his own, yet she offered no resistance.
He had a knife in one hand and a woman in the other. The door still open, he led her to the taproom, trying to keep her on the side opposite the patrons.
Everyone in Wren’s looked towards the curtain when he strode through. They’d heard the commotion apparently, but hadn’t moved. Sylvester’s cards fluttered to the table.
A customer entered at the door. Light filtered on to the woman’s hair, showing the unusual colour to all in the room. The stranger stared at William, unmoving. Uncertainty stilled him as if he couldn’t decide whether to enter or run for safety.
Sylvester’s voice jarred the moments, reminding William of the others. ‘Cousin—you must introduce us to your friend.’
‘Yes, I must.’ William tramped forward. ‘Just not today.’
He glared at the man at the door, gesturing him aside—and then Will realised he gestured with the knife. He dropped the weapon and the man jumped backwards, pulling the door with him. William stopped the swing with his boot. The man darted away.
Sprinting the woman into the fading sunlight, William moved towards his carriage. He shouted to the driver, ‘Just go. Keep us moving.’ The driver stared, then his posture straightened and his chin snapped up in agreement.
Once inside the vehicle, William reached across her to lower the shade on her side. She gasped and the sound slashed into him. She pressed against her side of the carriage.
With the same control he’d used when he spoke to Wren, he turned to her.
He opened his mouth to ask her where she lived, but closed it again. He could not deliver such a bedraggled miss anywhere. She’d been so prim on the bench. And her dress had been ripped even then.
‘You must stop shaking.’ He spoke in the tone that could soothe two sisters trying to strangle each other over an apricot tart.
One at a time, he reached for her hands, holding tight to one when she tried to pull away, but freeing the other. He couldn’t have her darting from the door of a moving carriage.
He stared at the slice on his own knuckles and then remembered her arm. If it had meant losing the horses to put himself in Wren’s while she was there, then he would thank Sylvester—at least silently.
He reached into his pocket and took out a handkerchief. Even in the darkening light, he saw the moisture, but the wound on her arm only trickled blood.
He pressed and waited, making sure it wasn’t serious. ‘Just relax,’ he spoke in the apricot-tart tone, ‘you’ll be all better in a minute.’ If it would have been his sister, he would have started singing a nursery song, because it always worked, even if they complained about the nonsense.
‘You’re hurt,’ she said.
Relief flooded him. She was aware of something other than the fright.
‘I’m fine.’ He daubed at the dried blood on her shoulder. ‘My horses give me worse bruises and we call it fun.’
She looked at the handkerchief and then her shoulder. ‘Oh,’ she squeaked, not in pain, but surprise.
‘Yes.’ He pressed the cloth at her injury again, not really needing to. ‘But it will mend quickly. I’m sure you’ve had worse.’
She reached up to relieve him of the cloth and for a moment their fingers tangled, then their eyes met, and she breathed in and pulled away.
He hated to move, but he did. He would ask her the location to deliver her and he would see that she arrived safely. Even if it was some distance away, he could direct the coachman easily enough. But his question changed before he spoke.
‘Why were you in Wren’s?’ he asked.
She gazed at him. ‘I was seeking work there.’
He’d been so wrong. His voice strengthened and the first words he thought flew from his mouth. ‘In a brothel?’
Life returned to her eyes. ‘You insult me.’ She straightened. ‘Do I look like someone who would—?’ Her eyes opened wide. She cried out, using both hands to pull the dress over her bare shoulder, then adjusting her grasp, pulling the rip in her skirts closed. ‘Do I look like a...fallen woman?’
‘Not... No. No. Not at all.’ She looked well past fallen, but he had learned as a youth that a pre-emptive reassurance was easier than stopping tears.
‘I must go back,’ she said. ‘You must take me back to that terrible, forsaken place.’ Her eyes widened. Pleading. ‘I need your help.’
‘No. You are not going back.’
‘You don’t understand. I left my satchel. All I have in the world. A dress. My funds.’ She held the handkerchief at her shoulder while reaching to clasp his wrist. Her eyes searched his face and then she sighed, and relaxed.
Letting her hold him, he extended an arm around her shoulders, barely touching, but close enough that he could free her hand of the fabric and hold it in place for her.
‘Is it a great sum of money?’ he asked. She certainly shouldn’t have been in Wren’s if she had funds.
Her voice barely reached him and her head tilted so he couldn’t see her expression. ‘It’s not truly all I have in the world,’ she said. ‘It is not truly all I have. It is just the rest of my things are on the way to Sussex.’
‘How much did you leave in Wren’s?’ he pressed.
‘My songs. A dress. A fan which had paste jewels on one edge. Hair ribbons. Enough to buy a bowl of soup.’ She made a fist. ‘I cannot believe I left the fan. The fan was a gift from three dear friends, but I’m sure they would understand if I sold it to buy food.’
She tensed, moving to stare at him. ‘I am not a tart. I am not a fallen woman. A Jezebel. Or whatever else. I am a...’ Her chin rose. ‘A singer.’ She lowered her face. ‘Or I was to be. That evil debacle of a man was to pay me to sing.’
‘You sing?’
She looked directly at William. ‘Yes. Songs. To sing songs. Wren hired me. He’d promised me wages.’ She snorted, then caught herself. ‘I do have a good voice and the wages were not such a large amount to make me suspicious.’ She straightened her fingers, saw blood on the gloves and shuddered. ‘I have always been told my voice is a gift.’ Her words faded away.
Her hand rested in her lap and her head bowed. ‘My songs are in that satchel. With a picture my friend Grace drew of us singing and laughing with Joanna and Rachel.’
‘So you are a Songbird.’
