Why Mermaids Sing

Chapter 15

Kat set the casquet at a rakish angle on her head, then turned this way and that, studying her reflection in the shop’s looking glass. Once she’d dressed in rags, a frightened child alone on the streets of London who’d learned to beg and steal just to stay alive. Now she owned a wardrobe full of clothes, but it wasn’t enough. It would never be enough to make her forget.

After the death of her mother and stepfather, Kat had found a brief refuge with her mother’s sister, an ostentatiously religious woman named Emma Stone. Determined to prevent Kat from following her mother’s path to sin and damnation, Aunt Emma had wielded her whip with brutal purpose. But it was the lecherous advances of Mr. Stone that had finally driven Kat to escape into the night. The experience had left her with a bitter contempt for sanctimonious piety and a child’s delight in the joys of soft sheets and fine clothing.

This particular hat’s brim was of cherry velvet, with a bunch of silk flowers tucked beneath a darker ribbon at the crown, and the entire effect was—

“Charming,” said a deep male voice behind her.

Kat spun around to find a tall, dark-haired man regarding her through a quizzing glass. Nattily dressed in buff-colored breeches, an olive coat, and gleaming Hessians, he leaned casually against the frame of the shop’s open doorway. Behind him, she could see the bright sunshine of a fine September afternoon, the street crowded with dowagers and matrons in elegant carriages and town bucks on horseback. Yet she felt—and understood herself to be—utterly alone.

She knew him, of course. His name was Colonel Bryce Epson-Smith. Once an officer in the Hussars, he had for some three or four years served as the personal agent of Charles, Lord Jarvis, cousin to the King and the acknowledged power behind the Regent.

“Why, thank you.” Lifting the cheery confection from her head, Kat reached for a chip hat with a forest green velvet band and a matching wisp of a veil. “Or do you prefer this one?”

“Why not take both?”

Kat smiled. “Why not, indeed?” She turned to the woman behind the counter, a thin slip of a thing who had suddenly gone very quiet. “Wrap them up for me.”

Dropping his quizzing glass, Epson-Smith pushed away from the doorframe and took a step toward her. “Miss Boleyn will be sending someone to pick them up.” He spoke to the girl behind the counter, but he kept his gaze on Kat.

Kat met his inflexible stare. “I’d rather take them with me now.”

“Unfortunately, that won’t be possible. Lord Jarvis would like a word with you. He doesn’t appreciate being kept waiting.”

In spite of herself, Kat knew a flutter of fear. People had been known to simply disappear when Jarvis expressed an interest in seeing them. Others were later found dead, dumped in outlying fields after frightening things had been done to their tormented bodies. “And if I refuse?”

Epson-Smith’s eyes were gray and hard. It took all of Kat’s courage and determination to continue to hold his stare. “I don’t think you’re that stupid.”