It wasn’t uncommon for Jack to go a few weeks without doing a job with Munro. Their partnership was a matter of convenience, and often Munro would prefer to partner with a newcomer out on a dig, with the assumption that he could swindle him out of his proper share. But none of Jack’s old contacts from Fleshmarket had seen Munro, and the innkeeper at the inn by the docks where Munro had been staying for the past few months said he hadn’t come by to collect his things. A sallow-skinned sliver of a woman, she had let Jack up to Munro’s rooms for the low price of a charming smile and a thin lie about being Munro’s brother. The room looked exactly as Munro would have left it before a dig: soiled blankets on the unmade bed, an extra pair of shoes in the corner of the closet, and—Jack knew to feel for it amid the matted straw—a purse of coins sewn into the filthy mattress’s underside. There was the smallest chance that Munro might have skipped town without saying goodbye, but he never would have left without his money. Jack had neatly replaced the coin purse and made a silent promise to Munro as he closed and locked the door that he would figure out what happened to him. Even if he was dead, Munro deserved a proper Christian burial. Even sinners deserved a headstone.
Jack licked the juice from his fingers and let the acidic tingle of the citrus wake him up. “I have to admit,” he said, stepping closer to Hazel and seeing her hair hidden under her hat, “you as a man is more convincing than I imagined.”
Hazel rolled her eyes. Behind Jack stood a wheelbarrow containing two spades, some burlap, and candles.
“I’ve got some strikers and a candle, too, case we need some light, but it’s best to try to adjust your eyes as quickly as possible, I’ve found. We’ll have the walk for that.”
The cemetery behind Saint Dwynwen’s was not too far up the road, less than an hour’s walk. Whatever the danger that was coming to resurrection men, it was smarter for him to stay out of the city for a while, avoiding the high-profile area of Greyfriars Kirkyard, right in the heart of Edinburgh’s Old Town. Too many distractions, too many people, too much risk.
Maybe it was an abundance of caution, but he hadn’t consulted with Jeanette about finding the body. He didn’t have any reason to suspect Jeanette of having something to do with Munro’s disappearance, but he didn’t have any reason to trust her, either, and staying alive meant trusting only himself. And apparently—he thought to himself—trusting some noblewoman’s daughter playing dress-up, for some reason. Really, why was he trusting her?
He tried to reason through it: one of the first lessons he’d learned in the narrow closes and tight hidey-holes of the underbelly of Edinburgh was never to rely on someone with less to lose than you did. He knew the way it was for these society girls, the restrictions placed on them, how precariously they balanced on the precipice between promise and ruin. Imagine what would happen to her reputation—to her family’s reputation—if it got out that she was off sneaking around at night, unchaperoned, with a poor boy who worked in a theater. It was in her best interest not to get caught tonight too. That was the logic of it, anyway.
But, if Jack was being honest with himself—if he allowed himself to acknowledge the tiny, hidden truth nestled somewhere in his brain—he didn’t have any good reason to trust Hazel Sinnett, but he did so anyway.
She was unlike any girl he had ever met—the sound of her syllables narrower and more refined than those of Jeanette or even Isabella. The girls at the theater wore thick oil makeup; there was something startling about standing close to Hazel, being able to see her freckles and the fine downy blond hair along her cheeks.
Jack couldn’t explain it. She wasn’t more beautiful than Isabella. She was small, and arrogant, and wealthy. Her nose was sharp, her features were boyish, and her lashes and eyebrows were too pale for her dark hair. And yet.
And yet.
Since Jack had met Hazel Sinnett outside the Anatomists’ Society, he had found himself tracing her jawline in his mind before he went to sleep. He could see the thin arc of her pale lips, the freckles almost invisible on her cheeks. Her face was burned into his memory, and it remained there: an echo but undiminished. A haunting. From the moment he had first looked into her wide brown eyes, the warm brown of burnished wood or polished amber reflecting the sunset, Jack had trusted her, and he would keep trusting her for far longer than his survivor’s instinct warned him was prudent.
“Did you say ‘walk’？” Hazel said. “Why would we walk? I told the stableman to prepare a pair of horses. You do know how to ride, don’t you?”