“Then why did you have it on your person in the first place?”
The true answer to that question was mortifying, but in the circumstances, how could he offer her anything but complete honesty?
“I keep it with me…” He took a deep breath, then released it slowly. “I keep it with me because I like it.”
Chapter Five
Once the words were spoken, everything changed.
I keep it with me because I like it, Harcastle had said, as if confessing a deep, dark secret. And perhaps that was exactly how he felt.
She couldn’t think about what his words might mean. She needed to focus on the photograph and what its continued existence meant. She looked at the image, at the stranger gazing back at her; a foolish girl, with a willful, sulky expression, straddling a chair in nothing but her undergarments.
The photographer had been an old crony of Captain’s, a portraitist with a sideline in dirty pictures. The money he’d offered her to pose had been more than she’d ever earned before from a single afternoon’s work, and she’d been tempted by the prospect of earnings of her own. Every other penny she’d ever made had been quite rightly shared with Captain.
How naive she’d been when she’d told herself that Captain wouldn’t care.
Even now, she felt sick when she remembered his anger as he stormed into the studio a moment after the image was taken. Anger wasn’t even the word—he’d been incandescent with rage. He’d halted in the doorway for a moment, his eyes sweeping the scene, then he’d yanked her from the chair and backhanded her, the first and only time he’d ever hit her.
“You stupid girl! You’ll ruin everything!” he’d snarled, and while she watched in frozen horror, he’d smashed every plate.
Or so they’d thought.
A few weeks later, his former friend had tried to extort money from him in exchange for the finished photograph. She didn’t know what transpired after that, but Captain must have done something because the photographer packed his bags and fled in the middle of the night.
“I’ve sorted it out,” was all he would say when she’d asked him about it. He’d had a great deal more to say about her stupidity and he’d made certain she understood the true terms of their partnership. Despite his avuncular manner, she was an investment and she’d better pay out or he’d throw her back into the gutter where he found her.
That was the last time they’d discussed the matter.
She clutched the photograph. What were the chances that this was the last surviving copy? Perhaps there were dozens of them waiting to be discovered in print shops all over London. Captain was going to kill her. It wouldn’t matter that he was partly to blame.
“I’ll take you home,” Harcastle said, and rapped on the ceiling.
A moment later, they began to move.
Harcastle stared out the window, and she knew somehow that he wouldn’t speak again unless she spoke first. She sensed no displeasure in his silence. If anything, he seemed embarrassed, an emotion of which she hadn’t believed him capable an hour ago.
“Do you have other copies?” she asked.
“No.” He regarded her with those empty eyes. “The print seller in Holywell Street told me it was one of a kind.”
Her relief was short-lived. He might be lying or the print seller might have lied to make the sale. But God, she wanted to believe him.
“Holywell Street?” The narrow street off the Strand, full of bookshops, printmakers, and pamphleteers all jumbled together, was a byword both for political radicalism and obscenity. In the mood for a socialist pamphlet? You’d find dozens in Holywell Street, and while you were there you could pick up some top-notch pornography, perhaps even from the same shop. She couldn’t imagine Harcastle there. “Do you frequent such places often?”
He shook his head. “I went there looking for your photograph. I’d had agents investigating your past and one of them found the printmaker.”
“Agents? How sinister.”
He gazed past her. He ought to be more than embarrassed—he ought to be ashamed. Prying into her past. Keeping that photograph. Carrying the thing around with him.
I had it because I liked it.
“What did you mean before?” she asked.
“What did I mean about what?”
“When you said you liked the photograph. What does that mean?”
He glanced away.
It was such a small thing, the way he averted his gaze, but it told her everything. He knew it too, she could tell. Her own shame and humiliation were still fresh. It was only fair that he share in them. The balance of power was shifting.
“Did you like the way I looked?”
“Yes,” he said, the word soft as silk.
“I would never have believed it of you.” He seemed too cold and untouchable to fall prey to idle lust. There had been that moment in her room when she’d sensed his interest but compared to this, that seemed a perfunctory thing, the desire of any man who’d been without a woman for a day or two. But to keep the photograph in his pocket, to take it out into the world like an infatuated boy with his sweetheart’s picture in a locket…
“Did you look at it often?”
Jaw clenched, he looked away again.
“Did you?” she pressed.
“Yes, damn you.” Ah, he was recovering, channeling his shame into anger.
“Did you…” He didn’t like this line of questioning. She really ought to stop, but a devil had her in its grip. Part of her wanted to humiliate him further, but other desires rose within her. Illogical though it might be, she liked the idea of him alone with her photograph. “Did you touch yourself while you looked?”
He froze. What a hackneyed phrase. Evie had used it before to describe someone’s shocked reaction, but until now she’d never actually witnessed true motionlessness in another person. He ceased even to breathe.
“Yes.” He hissed the word through gritted teeth.
Stop now, a small voice said. You’ve pushed far enough.
“And you imagined…doing things to me.” Her clumsiness of expression frustrated her. Lord knows she’d spent enough time around the prostitutes at Miss Rose’s to acquire the requisite vocabulary. Why couldn’t she use the words? “What did you imagine doing, Harcastle?”
The air crackled around them, and her body woke heavy and aching.
“Tell me.” She sounded nothing like Evangeline Jones.
He shook his head and turned away toward the window. In that moment, she would have done anything to have his gaze scorch her again. Her hand reached out as if of its own volition.