She answered with a fairly well-executed version of a proper British accent. “A regular pleasure stroll it’ll be.”
They stepped out of their flat and onto the pavement.
“We need to make our way to Maida Hill by week’s end,” Móirín said as they walked on. “I’ve heard whispers of difficulty up that way.”
“The usual sort?” Brogan asked.
Móirín gave a quick, single nod without slowing her step. “Poverty turning people desperate, tearing families apart, pulling people into crime.”
London’s underbelly was as putrid as a corpse on a hot day. Those who ran it and manipulated it were powerful and dangerous. Brogan and Móirín hadn’t come from a particularly peaceful area of Dublin, so they knew all too well the poverty that kept people tied to places like Maida Hill and Somers Town.
They made regular jaunts to those seedier corners, bringing what they could afford to give to those in greater need than they. The poor of this city needed so much more than food and medicines and the meager bits of coin they managed to bring them.
“Think you’ll have time with this new position of yours to keep helping with the deliveries?” Móirín asked.
Helping. He was far more comfortable helping. And, yet, here he was on his way to doing.
Móirín motioned to a street sweeper, leaning on his broom with a penny dreadful in his hand. “Mr. King’s latest,” she said. “That green cover can’t be mistaken.”
Brogan shook his head. “Wish I had the bloke’s knack for writing a top seller. We’d be in fine fettle, Móirín. Fine fettle, indeed.”
“Fine enough that you might not be taking on a second job.” Móirín knew their situation as well as he did. They’d not had near enough since coming to London. They pooled what little they had, barely enough for sharing a flat. “You said you sold a good many copies of your latest tale just yesterday.”
He nodded. “And got m’self a needed job at the same time.”
Unmistakable mischief entered Móirín’s eyes. “Hired on by a woman who has you thinking on her a full day later.”
He knew that teasing tone. “Don’t you go adding more meaning than’s there.”
“You’ve not mentioned any lass to me more than once in years. Yet Miss Vera Sorokina’s name has slipped from your lips more times than I can count in the last day alone. I’ll be adding all the meaning to that I want, and just you try stopping me.”
With his separation from the Dreadfuls, Brogan had no one else to talk with but Móirín. He couldn’t tell her the real reason he’d visited the print shop nor his true motivation in jumping at the work offered there.
He’d spent more than a year telling the Dreadfuls how much he hated lying to his sister. He’d left the Society, more or less, and there he was, still lying. And lying to more than just Móirín.
“She was intriguing, I’ll grant you. Seemed to enjoy her customers, yet she gives the impression of keeping something tucked away from them all. Haven’t the first idea what that might be.” He’d learn more the longer he worked there. That was his current plan. “Intriguing. That’s all that needs saying on that matter.”
“For now,” Móirín said.
They turned a corner, drawing closer to their destination, when, from the shadows of a narrow alley, a man jumped out and grabbed the handle of Móirín’s basket.
Quick as thought, she pulled a dagger from the basket with her free hand and pointed it at him without hesitation, without the slightest tremor. “Let go the basket or I’ll cut you a third nostril.”
“Best do as she says, lad,” Brogan said. “She ain’t foolin’.”
The would-be thief hesitated.
“I’m in earnest,” Brogan said. “She’ll carve you like a block of wood and enjoy the doing of it.”
He must’ve been convincing. The thief took flight, leaving them with both their baskets firmly in their possession.
“‘She’ll enjoy the doing of it’?” Móirín clicked her tongue. “You make me out to be a cold-blooded murderer.”
“You’re an Irishwoman with a temper. ’Tisn’t a large gap between the two.”
Móirín didn’t always allow teasing about her potential for criminal behavior. She did this time, merely shaking her head and smiling at him. He loved his sister, of course. But he also deeply liked her. She was good and fierce and caring.
“Why is it you gave a false name at the Sorokin shop?” Móirín asked. “Seems an odd way to start a new position.”
Heavens, that was a mass of muck he wasn’t at liberty to explain to her. He offered, instead, a reason he could safely admit to. “They sell m’stories there. ’Twould be as uncomfortable as wearing sackcloth underclothes to be lugging and delivering as my own self in a place where I’m meant to have some small bit of prestige.”
“A Donnelly having importance?” Móirín clicked her tongue. “Seems you’ve forgotten we were running from the law only five years ago on account of our being low-down, no-good sorts of people. Tucking ourselves in London didn’t change what we are.”
“Didn’t change us because it ain’t that simple,” Brogan tossed back. “No matter what the Peelers think, you and I know who we are. Let the Dublin police sully our names all they want.”
“And sully them from a distance,” Móirín said with the tone of one offering both a prayer and a curse.
He tucked his hands in his coat pockets, gaze lowered. “I wish I could’ve done more to—”
“Stop it, now,” she said. “You strike that exact posture—hands in the pockets and eyes on the ground—when you’re fretting and feeling lower than the weeds. You’ve done so since we were tiny.”
“You can read me like a book, can you?”
Her self-assured expression was not the least feigned.
They’d reached Great Windmill Street, where he needed to turn off and head toward Soho. Móirín’s job took her farther on.
“Best of luck to you today, Ganor,” Móirín said with a smirk. “I hope Miss Vera proves as intriguing on second acquaintance as she did on the first.”
He needed all the luck he could get. Brogan readily acknowledged he made a fabulous second, but he’d never been one for filling the role of principle. Yet, he’d agreed to do just that. He very much worried the scheme would fall to bits sooner rather than later. Rogue elephants, after all, rarely survived long.