Page 7 of An Extraordinary Lord

“Yes.”

“According to the records, you thanked him for it,” Merritt interjected. “Why?”

“He was lenient.” She faced straight ahead, not daring to take a direct look at him. Sparring with him had been a foolish mistake—an absolutely exciting, heart-pounding, blood-coursing mistake. One she’d gladly make again in a heartbeat. “He could have transported me.” Or ordered her to swing. Yet how many times during those six months in prison had she thought hanging would have been more merciful than the hell of Newgate?

“After six months,” the undersecretary continued with his quiet interrogation, “you managed to escape.”

“Yes.” From the corner of her eye, she saw Merritt’s mouth twist. Was that a grimace or grudging admiration?

“How, exactly?”

She had no intention of answering that. She’d find herself back there soon enough, and—

“She might need to escape that way again, so she won’t tell you,” Merritt answered for her, as if reading her mind. Oh, he was sharp. Of the two men interrogating her, he was the more dangerous. “There’s no point in asking.”

Wisely, the undersecretary left that question alone. “You escaped, yet you remained in London. Why?”

Because I had no place else to go.What she’d wanted since she was a girl and lost her mother and home was to find a place where she could belong. This city and the existence she’d stumbled into here wasn’t it, she knew that in her bones. It would never be a true home. But Filipe was here, so she’d stayed.

“What better place to disappear than a city like this?” she dodged.An overcrowded, impersonal rabbit warren of alleys and passageways…where everyone comes and goes and nothing ever seems to be permanent?

“So you became a thief-taker,” he murmured thoughtfully, his eyes narrowing as he studied her.

“I had to support myself somehow. You’d rather I went back to stealing?”

The two men exchanged another glance, another private communication. But this time, Veronica had the feeling that the undersecretary had somehow gained the upper hand over Merritt Rivers.

“How does that work, exactly?” He leaned back on his chair and gestured casually toward her to tell her story, as if they were simply making pleasant conversation. “An escaped convict walking another criminal into the watchmen’s house for arrest doesn’t seem the best way to avoid attention.”

“That’s why I don’t.” Both men’s curiosity settled on her, and she explained, “I work with a man named John Fernsby, a former—”

“A former thief-taker with Bow Street who cut his teeth for years as a guard at Newgate before he became a runner,” Merritt finished.

A chill passed through her in uneasy warning. How did he know Fernsby?

“One of the few thief-takers who wasn’t corrupt.” He frowned. “But he’s old and arthritic now, can barely walk from one end of Hyde Park to the other.”

“He doesn’t have to,” she corrected. “I bring the criminals to him. He delivers them to the watch, and we split the reward.”

“Seems an odd way to make a living,” the undersecretary half mused. “You risk being caught yourself.”

“I trust Fernsby.”And he knows I’m innocent.The man told her what she’d needed to know to escape Newgate, for heaven’s sake. She trusted him.

“Why not do what most thief-takers do?” Merritt interjected. “Bribe the criminals yourself to let them go and not bring Fernsby and the watch into it at all.”

“And destroy all honor among thieves and thief-takers?” She tsked her tongue at him with mocking exaggeration. Then she answered honestly to the undersecretary, “I do it because it helps Fernsby.” That wasn’t completely a lie. But it also wasn’t the only reason. “He has no other way to earn income, and I won’t let an old man starve on the streets. Or hurt his pride by simply giving him blunt.”

“Told you so,” the undersecretary muttered to Merritt, although his eyes never left her.

Merritt said nothing, but his chest rose and fell in an irritated breath beneath his still-crossed arms.

Unease pricked at Veronica’s nape. Whatexactlyhad the two men been discussing about her? She didn’t like where this interrogation was going.

“Still seems like an awfully dangerous career for so little in potential reward,” the undersecretary considered. “After all, if the criminal you apprehend protests that Fernsby didn’t catch him, that it was a woman who did, you’d never be able to appear in court to testify. He’d be set free, and you and Fernsby wouldn’t receive your reward.”

“What man would publicly claim he was bested in a fight by a woman?” She glanced at Merritt over her shoulder. “I beat you tonight, Mr. Rivers. Didyoutell your friend that?”

The undersecretary cleared his throat to keep from laughing. “Now that we’ve established your character—”