him against the wall. “You’ll mind how you speak to her or you’ll not have a tongue to speak with at all! Is that understood?”
The man nodded, sobbing in fear by this point. Winn dropped him and he sank to the floor, still sniveling. Winn looked at the man’s dinner once more and, with one swipe of his hand, sent the tray flying. Crockery and cutlery clattered about him and the majority of it wound up on his clothes. “I should force you to eat every bite until you choke on it.”
“He isn’t worth having it on your conscience,” Callie said. “Let’s just leave this place. Let’s leave it and leave him to live and die with his many sins.”
Looking back at her, Winn noted that there was a steeliness about her he had not seen since she’d stood toe to toe with him, yelling at him in his library. It was good to see the color back in her cheeks, but nothing could disguise how exhausted she was. Taking her arm, he strode toward the door. After undoing every single lock, they stepped out onto the small landing at the top of the rickety stairs. As they were making their way to the bottom, Winn asked a question that he dreaded the answer to. “What did he do to you?”
“He was as fond of the cane as Monsieur Dumont,” she answered evenly. “But I think his enjoyment of the punishment might have been more licentious in nature.”
“Did he—”
“No,” she said, the word emphatic and sharp. “He did not. For him, beating little children was all that he required for his pleasure. And the guards were more interested in girls who were slightly older than I was, those just in the first bloom of womanhood, as it were. I was still very much a skinny, sickly child. I suppose I can be grateful that the near starvation I endured left me wholly unattractive to every man here.”
Euphemia Darrow deserved to be recognized as a saint, he thought. “Let’s leave this place. You’ll never return here… but I will. And if it’s the last thing I do, I will see that man removed from power. I will see this place being run fairly, with proper food and shelter for those who reside here.”
She frowned at him. “Why would you do that?”
Winn reached out and cupped her face gently. He didn’t kiss her. Not in that hellish place, but he said, “For reasons you are not yet ready to hear.”
“I don’t want to leave London,” she said.
“It’s too dangerous to stay. I can’t protect you and the children unless we are all under one roof.”
“Then we shall be. I shall simply move into your home on Piccadilly and we’ll deal with the consequences of that when we must. All the answers are here. In London. We can’t stop this problem by running from it—from them.”
Winn met her steady gaze. This wasn’t the hollow-eyed and terrorized girl he’d seen that morning. Somehow, bringing her back to the horrors of her childhood had helped her rediscover just how remarkably strong she was. “If that’s what you want, then we’ll stay here. I’ll send a note round to Effie and to Highcliff. We’ll convene at the house tonight and discuss our course of action.”
Calliope looked around at the women and children laboring over needlework in the yard. “How terrified my mother must have been to depend on a place such as this for aid.”
Winn ushered her down the stairs and they left the St. James Workhouse behind. But even as they exited the gate, he recognized one indisputable fact. They might leave it, but it would never leave her. For better or worse, the place had marked her to her soul.
Chapter Eighteen
B undled into the carriage once more, they made their way back to the house on Piccadilly. Callie looked at the children’s faces and prayed she was making the right choice. The very last thing she wanted was to put them in more danger. But surely, traveling the countryside and being isolated at an estate far from town and far from anyone who might provide assistance would only increase the danger to all of them, she reasoned.
As if reading her thoughts, Claudia said, “I’m glad we’re not going to the country. We’ve only just arrived here, after all. And there’s so much about London to enjoy. And Uncle Winn’s library. It’s very grand.”
“It is grand,” Callie agreed. “And today, we’ll go there and make