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with a flea in her ear. She never told Mrs Venner or Mrs Boyd about it. No harm had been done and as Susan had already put in her notice and was leaving at the end of the week to get wed it wasn’t worth making a fuss.’

      ‘Susan confided all this in you, did she?’ Lucy asked waspishly.

      Rory grinned. ‘Nah ... her fiancé, Gus Miller, did. He’s a friend of mine. Don’t suppose I’ll see much of old Dusty now he’s leg-shackled and gone off to Essex.’

      ‘That’s where I’ve just come from,’ Lucy offered up automatically. ‘Big manor house with a farm and acres and acres of land, close to the coast.’

      ‘Yeah? Whereabouts?’

      ‘Southend way.’

      ‘Know Southend.’ Rory nodded in emphasis. ‘No good for you there?’

      Lucy shrugged. ‘It were a lot better a while back before Mr Lockley’s first wife died and he got remarried to a right dragon.’ Lucy snapped her lips together. She barely knew Rory and regretted being indiscreet. You never could tell who might know who. ‘Found it a bit dull there so I’ve come back to London to be closer to me mum,’ she added briskly. ‘She’s not been at all well.’ Lucy changed the subject as she sensed Rory to be on the point of questioning her about her family. ‘So, Audrey Stubbs is gonna be one for me to watch, by all accounts.’

      Rory twisted about to lean back against the corridor wall so they were face to face and he could study her properly.

      ‘She’ll hold a grudge against me.’ Lucy grimaced. ‘Not bothered, though. If I find her fiddling about with her ladyship’s belongings I’ll wring her neck.’

      ‘I reckon you would too.’

      He was smiling and Lucy noticed he had nice even white teeth and grey eyes with long lashes. ‘Perhaps you should tell her and put her out of her misery,’ Lucy said abruptly.

      ‘Tell her?’ he echoed, mystified.

      ‘You said you don’t fancy her ... perhaps you should tell her and no doubt she’ll turn her attention back to Jack in the garden.’

      ‘Pity him if she does,’ Rory said, his eyes warm and humorous.

      ‘Pity her if she does, ’cos from what you’ve said, Millie won’t take kindly to it and might lay her out next time.’

      Rory chuckled appreciatively, his gaze becoming intimate, making Lucy’s cheeks sting with heat. ‘Just getting something for me tea,’ she blurted. ‘Ain’t sitting in there with ’em all staring at me, thinking I’ve done wrong when I’ve not. I’ll end up telling somebody their fortune then I’ll lose another of me afternoons off ... or it might even be me job next time.’

      ‘Lost yer afternoon off?’

      ‘Made arrangements to take me mum out, too.’

      ‘Where does your mum live? Far is it?’

      Lucy stabbed a look at him and nibbled her lower lip. From the age of about eight years old, when she’d first done a bit of doorstep scrubbing for coppers at weekends, she’d had it drummed into her by her mum and older sisters that you never disclosed to an employer – or for that matter any stranger – that you were out of the Bunk. Campbell Road had a notorious reputation as being the worst street in north London and those who lived there were discriminated against as being the dregs of society. She certainly didn’t know Rory Jackson well enough to confide in him anything as important as where she’d been reared, and where, despite it all, she still considered her real home to be.

      ‘She lives in north London; not that far.’ It was a brusque reply and Lucy made to open the kitchen door to go to find her tea.

      ‘Big place, north London. Hampstead way, is she?’ Rory stabbed a guess.

      Lucy snorted a laugh. ‘Bit too rich for us.’ She could see he was keen to know so she said airily, ‘Finsbury Park way, if you must know.’ Before he could probe further she’d pushed open the door.

      ‘You don’t want to hide yourself away.’ Rory put a hand out to bar her way into the kitchen. ‘If you chicken out teatime there’ll be some who’ll think you’re feeling guilty. Turn up, sit down and eat your grub.’ He grinned down at her. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll talk to you if nobody else will.’

      ‘Yeah, thanks a lot.’ It was drily said but Lucy couldn’t prevent a small smile curving her mouth. ‘That’s how I got in trouble in the first place, Rory Jackson, you talking to me, and making Audrey jealous.’

      ‘Told you,I ain’t taken no notice of her, and I’ve given her no reason to think I ever will.’ He tilted his face to watch Lucy’s evasive expression. ‘I don’t tell lies.’

      ‘That right? Why you being so nice to me then? Anybody’d think you fancied me. Yet you’ve just said you don’t.’

      A look of mock thoughtfulness put a furrow in his brow but he appeared unabashed by her accusation. ‘All right, I’ll own up. Once in a while I tell a little fib.’ He sauntered off towards the butler’s office. ‘Got to see Mr Collins about some pay I’m due. See you in the dining hall later. Keep your chin up.’

       Chapter Five

      ‘I’ve had enough, I tell you! I won’t never have a chance to get near her ladyship’s jewels now this new girl’s got taken on. Fucking Lucy Keiver is watching me like an ’awk.’ Ada Stone flung herself back against brickwork and took a long drag on a cigarette while staring sulkily into the night. ‘Shame Susan quit. She were a pushover, that one. But it ain’t easy now slipping in and out of the bedrooms.’

      Ada was stationed in an alleyway beneath the weak flicker of a gas lamp. A few feet away a tall, muscular man was silhouetted against the same wall. A fashionable homburg was pushed back on his head and he was dressed in a loose-fitting check suit. The dusk hid the fact that the cloth was garish, if of fine quality. Next to him, Ada appeared like a small dark drab in her voluminous servant’s cape.

      It was close to one o’clock in the morning and Ada had slipped out of Mortimer House just over an hour ago to meet Bill Black on the sly. It wasn’t the first time she’d done it. She knew that there were only so many times she could use a pretence of having raging bellyache and desperately needing the outside privy, rather than settling for the little po under the bed, before her bunk mates started getting suspicious. She wouldn’t put it past Keiver to follow her, the inquisitive bitch.

      But Ada Stone – or Audrey Stubbs, as her colleagues and employers at Mortimer House knew her – no longer cared about getting sacked. In fact she’d been tempted to be purposely insolent just so the prissy housekeeper might finally lose patience with her. The only reason she hadn’t was because she feared the full force of this man’s wrath if she got booted out of Mortimer House before she’d got him what he wanted. She longed to be away from the drudgery of working in service and back to excitement and easy pickings: hoisting expensive clothes around the West End with her light-fingered friends.

      Ada was twenty and had been sent to work in service in Kent at the age of fourteen. But she’d got bored and left after a year, travelling here and there taking on jobs in shops or laundries. On returning to south London, she had been introduced to Bill by her brother, who ran a market stall. She’d jumped at the chance of working for him, and had been recruited to his gang despite her age. That suited Bill Black. He could always find a use for a fresh face unknown to store detectives and the local coppers and magistrates. And Ada had proved her worth from the off.

      Bill was prepared to turn his hand to any form of criminal activity. He came from the same area of Elephant and Castle as Ada Stone and her family and was five years older than she was. Her brother Derek was a seasoned member of his team and was presently doing six months’ hard labour following a heist that had gone sour.

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