disgusting.” She shifted down farther into her collar where the air was fresher. “I’m not planning on showing my face—”
“Eh, Billy, who’s the fancy bloke?”
Billy turned with a snarl to the younger rough that had come upon them. “He ain’t no bloke! This ’ere’s Pan, a regular brick and me pal, so I’d watch me mouth if I was you.”
The rough, who was no older than sixteen, backed up. “No need to raise your dander.”
Billy gave a sharp jerk of his head. “Eh, hook it. An’ keep an eye on Meg. Lazy toffer’s been treatin’ her corner like a doss.”
The youth ambled off.
“Turned to the skin trade, have you?” Miranda asked. The idea of Billy as a pimp soured her stomach.
Billy gave a twisted smile. “A man’s got to make his livin’, hadn’t he?” He picked at something between his teeth and then spat. “An’ you’re getting too old to blend here, Pan.”
Which was more than likely true. Versed as she was in blending on these streets, she was now too tall to pass as a youth and too slender to look like a man, despite her bulky attire.
“We made a fair bit o’ tin together,” he went on, “but it ain’t safe. Even for you.” The hardness in his eyes would never truly fade, but for a moment, they softened in concern.
Looking at him, she felt the same sense of oddness as always in his presence. That he, the youth who would have raped her in an alleyway some three years ago, should be something close to a friend these many years later. Their paths had crossed for the second time when Father had lost his fortune and forced Miranda into a life of petty crime. Only Billy Finger, who’d been nipping palms, among other unsavory activities, found out one day, spying on her as she lifted a wallet from a nob walking down Bond Street.
He followed and, once again, cornered her in a dank alley. With no mysterious stranger to come to her aid, Miranda had been forced to show him just how unfriendly she could be. Only she’d become carried away, and the entire alley became engulfed in flames. His piteous screams tore into her conscience. Horrified by the damage she wrought, she stamped out the flames consuming his ragged clothes and took him home to wrap him up in cool cloths soaked in milk Miranda had filched from the market.
From that day on, Miranda had a partner. It was Billy who taught her how to be a bouncer, to pretend to be an honest customer in a shop, flaunting her beauty, distracting the clerk while Billy, as palmer, pinched his goods. The most miserable days of her life.
Yet they had become something of friends. He taught her more than any respectable lady could imagine. And when he was caught on the job, he held his tongue, and did not rat her out, but did his time. No longer was he her partner, but still an invaluable resource for information should she need him. She needed him now. No stone could be left unturned.
The fire in the gutters flickered then died, and the crowds surged in, an occasional nervous laugh the only sign that anything untoward had occurred.
“What do you make of this?” Miranda handed him Archer’s coin. He turned it over with his stubby fingers, and she caught a glimpse of the tight, shining skin rippling over his left wrist. Scars that had earned him the esteemed new moniker of Burnt Bill. Her fingers went numb.
“An odd sinker, this. Lookin’ for bit fakers, eh? I know a few…”
“No,” she said. “I don’t need counterfeit money.” The idea was laughable. “I thought perhaps it might be a marker for an address.”
“Might be. I’ve ’eard tell of fancy blokes usin’ such rubbish for their lil’ societies.” Billy’s blunt nose, crooked from too many breaks, twitched. “Right glockey, if you’re askin’ me.”
She smiled but only just; should Billy realize he had made her laugh, he’d wax comical to distraction. “It was just a thought,” she said with a shrug. A sinking realization that she might be spinning her wheels made her insides burn.
Billy shifted closer. Behind him, the laughter of street doxies seemed to swell before settling down into the din of West Street. “This isn’ about them peerage slayin’s, is it now? I ’eard your new cove is in the thick of it. Lord Archer, is it?”
Shock pounded against her temples. “How did you know?”
He rocked back on