The Wicked Trade (The Forensic Genealogist Book 7), Nathan Goodwin [little red riding hood ebook TXT] 📗

Ann tried to tighten her focus on the man and to force her brain to understand his questioning. But he hadn’t actually asked any questions, she realised, just blethered some open statements which had elicited a response from her.

‘Goodnight,’ he said, placing his hat upon his head and strolling towards the door.

‘Goodnight,’ Ann answered, trying to recall knowledge of him from previous smuggling runs. He was one of the tubmen, she thought. Or was he one of the batmen? Her befuddled brain refused to supply her with any further information and his attractive face quickly slipped away as the music thudded back into her head.

‘Rum, Miss Fothergill?’ one of the men said, passing her a pint of rum and water. It was Alexander Spence, a man whose superficial injuries she had tended after the last smuggling run four nights ago. Although the cargo had been landed without detection, Alexander had suffered minor rope burns to the palms of his hands.

‘Thank you, kind sir,’ Ann beamed, taking the drink with delight. Such rewards from the grateful men, whom she had helped to heal, had come forth in plentiful supply since she had been given a permanent role within the Aldington Gang.

‘And a dance?’ he asked with a lopsided grin, offering her his hand.

Holding his hand in hers, Ann examined his injured palms. ‘They be healing nice,’ she commented.

‘That be your medicine what did it—all that slime.’

Ann smirked at his obsequious comment, recalling how her remedy had first been received with scorn. Even Doctor Papworth-Hougham had doubted the merits of having an escargatoire of snails trailing over his burns, prior to the application of an aloe and honey poultice; but it had worked and healed the wounds. She sloshed some drink into her mouth, then set the glass down, before gently taking Alexander’s hand and joining him in a rollicking clumsy jig around the room. He spun her around in tight circles, weaving gracelessly between other dancing couples. Ann laughed as they stepped on each other’s feet. She flipped her head backwards, her hair trailing behind her. Upside-down glances of heaving bosoms and black-toothed merriment darted across her vision.

‘I be hearing you be on the lookout for lodgings,’ Alexander said.

Ann pulled her head up in line with his. ‘That be right—the mistress be wanting me out of Braemar Cottage in the morning… for the second time.’

‘Happen I be knowing somewhere,’ Alexander said with a coy grin.

‘Don’t be holding whist,’ she said, playfully slapping his chest.

‘My house,’ he revealed.

Ann rolled her eyes. Thankfully, the song had come to an end, met with a minor round of applause and a somewhat coy bow from Richard Wire. Ann shook herself free.

Alexander released his arms from around Ann’s midriff, one hand casually settling on her right breast. ‘Do you be fancying a little walk in the woods?’ he asked.

Ann picked off his hand and glowered at him. ‘Great grief, I bain’t no lushington and I certain-sure bain’t not going walking in the woods with you, Alexander Spence.’

Alexander muttered some expletives under his breath, storming his way across the room to his friends in the far corner.

He was generally a decent man, and, under other circumstances, she might well have considered him suitable for her. But not now, not after what Ralph had said a few days ago whilst they were treating the injured smugglers at the Bell Inn. He had taken her to one side—deliberately out of everyone’s earshot—and had said, ‘Listen, I’m terribly sorry for my shortness with you a few months ago, you see my wife had just died and, well…’

‘It be of no bother, Doctor—really it don’t,’ Ann had insisted, feeling an unexpected muddle of sympathy at his loss and a guilty sense of pleasure that he was no longer married.

Then he had said, ‘Please—call me Ralph,’ and he had touched her on the arm.

The warmth of the memory faded, leaving Ann with a fresh awareness of her surroundings. The air in the place had suddenly lost its allure and the stench of sweat began to make her feel nauseous. Striding back to her table, she picked up her rum and held it to her mouth without drinking. She gripped the glass there, pressed cold to her lips for some time. She was drunk, but not too drunk to see herself in a detached way—the way that others clearly saw her. Her skills as an apothecary and being in receipt of good regular wages had seen her rise from her vagrancy days in Dover and yet still she was perceived as a drunk no-good streetwalker.

For the first time, at least as far as her memory would permit, Ann left the barely touched pint of rum on the table and walked away.

She ambled slowly back to Braemar Cottage, craving the sobering sensation brought on by the freezing temperatures. Her whole body was quivering when, finally, she reached the front of the house. The effects of the alcohol had numbed the edges of her pain and stripped her errant thoughts back to a simple monotony of placing one foot in front of the other; nothing else was given space in her mind.

Ann looked through the un-shuttered parlour window at the dim room. The silhouettes of two figures flickered from the flames of the fire. Sam, with his back to the window, appeared to be talking to Hester. Ann watched them, mesmerised. They were a curious couple whom, despite having lived with them again for the past eight days, she had failed to understand. When she had tended to Sam during his largely unconscious period of fever, she had suffered daily under the oppressive temperament of his wife, Hester. Ann had fabricated a limp hollow personality for Sam, subservient to the demands of his imperious wife. The man whom she had resurrected, however, had been