She shook her head. “No. When I was accompanying my mother anywhere, such as the opera on Thursday evening, she already knew.”
He frowned, leaning forward across the crusty table. “That is what I really don’t understand. She came to Covent Garden, where you were. She must have known you would help her. And yet it was me she asked to see, little more than a stranger.”
“Perhaps she wanted to tell you about the baby.” She flushed. “Because you are a doctor,” she added hastily. “And perhaps less apt to judge her than others she might know.”
He sat back. “Being foreign and revolutionary, and therefore an advocate of free thought and free love?”
“Are you?” she asked curiously because she really wanted to know, and then bit her lip because it was none of her business.
His eyes followed her reaction, lingering on her lips as he said, “I am an advocate of all freedom that does not step on the toes of someone else’s.”
“For example?”
“For example, in my country, the old freedoms of the nobility severely hampered the freedom of peasants and workers. And for another more nuanced example, I have a friend who led the early days of the revolution in Pest, who thought as I did. He fell in love with a noble lady who gave up her family to be with him without the ties of marriage. The last I heard, they had married in Turkey. Because it was better and safer for her. Because love trumps abstract ideals of freedom. One learns to live with shades of grey.”
She searched his haunted eyes. “Is the world just grey for you now?”
His lips quirked. “It has been. Now I see splashes of color. There is nothing grey about you, my lady.”
Before she could ask what he meant by that or object to the mockery of my lady, she was distracted by a small boy in a brave red cap, streaked with something black that might have been coal. Over his shoulder, he carried a canvas satchel that was clearly too large and heavy for him. But somehow, he heaved it onto the counter. The potman swept it casually onto the floor beside him and put a coin in its place. The boy’s hand streaked out, and the coin vanished.
The boy turned, leaning one shoulder casually against the counter in a gesture surely copied from many an alehouse denizen. Only a man would have leaned his elbow; the child couldn’t reach. He surveyed the patrons with very adult speculation. None of them paid him any attention until his gaze reached Griz. His little eyes sparkled in the grimy environment.
The potman muttered something, and the boy smiled at Griz, a deliberately winning, charming smile, before sauntering toward her.
“Bring you something, missus?” he offered. “Fetch you gin instead of that nasty ale, for only a penny? Or I can sweep the street in front of you, fetch you a horse or a cab—”
“Where would I get a horse?” Dragan asked with interest.
The boy touched the side of his nose. “I know. You don’t need to. But it’d be a good horse.”
“I’m sure it would,” Griz said, feeling inside the pocket of her cloak and coming out with a penny, which she gave to him. “We don’t need anything right now, but it’s a pleasure to meet you.”
The boy palmed the coin with the same speed he had the potman’s, though he regarded her with some suspicion. “You talk mighty posh.”
“I was well taught,” she replied, honestly enough. “What’s your name?”
“Nick. What’s yours?”
“Griz. Do you work for the tavern keeper, Nick?”
“Lord, no,” he said with what appeared to be genuine scorn. “But he pays me for odd jobs, sometimes. Lots of people do.”
“Don’t you go to school?”
He cast her a look that clearly questioned her sanity. “What would I do that for? No money in going to school.”
“Not in the short term, I suppose,” she agreed.
But Nick’s attention had moved on to Dragan as he asked cheekily, “What do you do then, Mr. Gress?”
Gress? Griz. She almost giggled when she realized the boy had given Dragan her name.
“You a Peeler?” Nick guessed.
Ah. Now Griz understood the boy’s approach. He had been sent to find out who the incongruous customers were and, no doubt, what they were doing here.
“A policeman?” Dragan asked, amused. “You have no idea how funny that is. What made you imagine such a thing?”
Nick shrugged. “You look like one of them that wear plain clothes. Worse than the uniforms, they are.”