“Aye.” Heeding an instinct experience had taught him not to ignore, Ian asked, “Any chance you’ve a moment to accompany me to the exact place you found me? We aren’t so far from the river we couldn’t walk over, are we?”
At his invitation Edwina paused, confessing she needed to confer with her own intuition to determine whether the tide would still be out sufficiently to allow him to view the site. She seemed to hold back a smile as her eyes lit with an amber glow once the answer came to her. “It isn’t any use explaining,” she said. “I hardly understand how I know such things myself, but we have time to walk the foreshore briefly.”
She agreed to escort him to the spot, and while he understood the danger of returning to the site where he was attacked, and with one of only two persons he knew to be there with him when it happened, his need for answers outweighed his apprehension. So, after explaining their intention to her sister and fetching a prim hat and unusually long black shawl, Miss Edwina Blackwood stood by the door ready to be of assistance. Meanwhile, he broke the news to Hob it was time to shoo off into the shadows. The little elf complained, but in the end, after finding a wicker basket to jump into, he was compelled to do as told. With Hob safely out of sight and Mary minding the shop, the pair took off at a businesslike pace to explore the foreshore and recapture his missing four days.
Chapter Twelve
“Who killed Cock Robin?” The boy took aim at Edwina with his pretend bow before releasing a mock arrow as the pair walked out the shop door. “I, said the sparrow, with my bow and arrow, I killed Cock Robin.”
“What’s that all about?” Ian asked as they headed for the river.
Edwina shook her head. “He’s a local boy. Lives around here somewhere. Likes to tease. He knows my sister and I are . . . different, but can’t quite figure out why, so he makes fun.”
“Who saw him die?” called the boy once they passed. “I, said the fly,” he answered with a grin, after making them look over their shoulders at him.
“This way,” Edwina said, walking quickly to put the boy behind her. She veered them down a lane that emptied onto the embankment. From there they dodged several horse-drawn wagons, a parade of bicyclists, and a motorized cab before heading a short way east toward the pier, where a stone stairway led down to the foreshore. As she’d predicted, the river tide was rising, but there was still time to walk the distance below the embankment wall. The shore would be exceptionally muddy in places. A step in the wrong spot could land one in a sinkhole and swallow the foot and leg up to the calf, yet she’d neglected to fetch her old boots out of a concern for vanity.
Yes, she admitted it. She’d wanted to appear ladylike and attractive in her lace-up ankle boots rather than donning her work boots made for trudging through mud. Her old knockabouts were all right for traipsing about with her sister in the dark but definitely not suitable for strolling beside a gentleman—albeit a rough-around-the-edges handsome one whose prospects were yet as unknown as they were unsavory. She’d taken a good look at him while he’d lain unconscious only to discover his nose was slightly crooked from being broken, he bore a small scar that split his left eyebrow, and he required a bath and shave. Yet when he’d awoken in her father’s bed with his mind and memory restored, she’d rather thought there was no man to match him once that genial gleam returned to his eyes.
Feeling a flush, Edwina turned her attention back to the river. On the opposite bank, steam shovels dug in the mud to erect a new pier. The city seemed to be in a perpetual state of repair and renovation. Burying the old and building up the new until the layers of the city resembled the sedimentary work of the river. But where generations of the past had relied on hands and shovels, coal and steam were the tools of the modern city. Coal barges in the dozens floated by to fill the constant demand, blaring their horns for fishermen and ferries to mind their passing.
“Bit treacherous down here, isn’t it?” Ian descended the steps first before gallantly reaching out for her hand to steady her. “Do you and your sister often come to the river unaccompanied in the dark?”
The contact of his rough skin against her bare fingers roused her senses as she stepped onto the pebbled landing. She gripped his hand a breath longer than necessary before relinquishing it so she might raise the hem of her skirt above the mud as she walked. Though she still considered him a bit of a ruffian—she suspected the broken nose and scar were the result of brawling—she had forgiven him his outburst in the shop the day before, knowing what a state he’d been in after his ordeal. In truth, he was proving a perfect gentleman, and so she freely engaged in conversation with him.