Hazel stopped and watched her, curious. And then, in the blink of an eye, she was joined by a man. No, not a man. A boy. A tall boy, all vertical lines and sharp edges. The two of them were talking, and the maid furtively handed off a piece of paper.
Could they be robbing Almont House? It was broad daylight. The square was far from abandoned—several carriages had already rumbled past Hazel as she stood watching the pair. No one seemed to be paying them any mind. True, they were hidden in the manor’s shadow, but surely even thieves preferred the cover of night.
Hazel crept closer, pretending to be fascinated by a small rosebush. Though she was only thirty yards away now, the two strangers didn’t look up. The maid with copper hair extended her hand, and the tall boy deposited a few coins into her palm. Now that she was closer, Hazel could make out a long, slim nose extending behind the boy’s dark hair. “Careful with that one, Jack,” the red-haired maid said.
With the coins secured in her waistband, the maid disappeared back against the stone exterior of Almont House, slipping around the corner, back through the servants’ entrance.
Strange, Hazel thought.
“Home, miss?” It was her carriage driver, Mr. Peters, calling from the end of the block. He gave the reins a quick flick and brought the horses into action.
The boy in the shadows looked up, and for a moment Hazel locked eyes with him, the hairs on the back of her neck standing at attention. His eyes were bright and clear and gray. With his long nose, he looked like a bird of prey, Hazel thought. He gave something that might have been a smile or a smirk or maybe just a trick of the light, because an instant later he was gone, trotting up toward the main road, where the smoke of the Old Town hovered black and thick, and Hazel was stepping into her carriage, back to Hawthornden, trying to conjure his face in her mind again, but the memory of it was already fading.
4
IT WAS AMAZINGLY EASY TO DIE IN EDINBURGH. People did it every day. There were grease fires, and stabbings in the alleys behind dingy bars. Scrapes that you thought you could ignore turned green and oozing, swollen and hot, until you were gone before you even had time to see the public doctor. Thieves were hanged in Grassmarket Square, Jack had seen them himself, the way the bodies twitched on the way down and then became still.
It was easy to die in Edinburgh, but Jack had made it seventeen years because he knew how to survive.
Jeanette was already waiting at the side gate of the house by Queensferry by the time Jack made it down the hill. “It’s a new job,” she said almost pleadingly, before he could even apologize for being late. “I’m fixing to keep this ’un, too. The food is good. Proper porridge for breakfast every morning, with cream.”
“It was you who told me to meet you in the middle of the bloody day.”
“I have a job now, Jacks, case you need reminding. Means I can’t be trotting off to your stink-holes day and night to deliver whats I know.”
The hairs on Jack’s neck lifted, his senses taut as a string pulled between fingers. There was a girl watching them, fifteen yards away, on the street. Jeanette didn’t notice. The girl was too far away to hear them, he guessed, but she had definitely noticed them, even though now she was pretending to smell a rose. She was wealthy—her clothes gave that away, the fine fabric and real feathers in her headpiece. She was the wife of someone, must be if she was out walking in the New Town without a chaperone, but she looked no older than he was. She was maybe sixteen or seventeen. With these wealthy girls, made up like paper dolls, it was hard to tell.
Jack watched her from the corner of his eye, the way a thin line of the bare back of her neck, so white it was almost translucent, became visible as she leaned down, the gap in the armor of her frock and her hair.
Jeanette cleared her throat. “You do want it, don’t you? ’Cause if you don’t, I got plenty of resurrection men who’d be happy to get a double order like this. I do, Jack Currer, don’t think I don’t!” She pronounced every syllable of his name with a roll of her tongue: Curr-er.
“No, no, I want it, course I do.” He snatched the paper Jeanette was offering him, and then fished in his pocket for the coins.
Jeanette talked out loud as she counted her payment. “One little ’un. Dead of something. Wasn’t sick, so I think it must have been a wet nurse overlaying him. Fancy that. Happens all the time. These little heirs all done up proper in their nightgowns and skirts getting a feeding from a woman who nods off to sleep. Other ’un is a man. Careful with that ’un, Jack—heard a groom say he thought it was the sickness.”