Secret Admirer by Michele Jaffe

Author:Michele Jaffe
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FICTION/Romance/General
Publisher: Diversion Books
Published: 2013-12-05T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 22

“ ‘E calls hisself the Lion,” Joey began, and it flowed from there. The Lion dressed expensively, showed up often at the Dancing Fawn, limped, and liked to eat walnuts. He gave himself his nickname because of a mark on his forearm shaped like a Lion’s head. Apart from this, all their information was a long list of nevers: the Lion never ordered but one ale a night, never touched the women who came in—not to say he didn’t look hard enough at the merchandise—never chitchatted, never met anyone there, never ate the mutton stew—pretty good, tis, if ye haven’t eaten in a month—never told anyone where he lived, or what he lived on. From time to time he had received written messages at the bar, which made them think he lived nearby, but neither he nor Can Can Kyle, who came along with him to make the report, could read so they didn’t know what they said. Once they had speculated that he was an apprentice in one of the printer’s places around the corner in Saint Paul’s churchyard because he was always going around with them little books, unbound, but Kyle had observed that he never had ink on his hands.

Lawrence sent home the men who had been out all night and ordered a fresh set to blanket the neighborhood around the Dancing Fawn, despite the duo’s admission that they had not seen the Lion in over a week.

Reports came flowing in fast then. A fruit vendor up the street thought a man who looked like the Lion had been loitering around recently, but hadn’t seen where he went. Two of the girls from Helen’s Harem swore he had stood on the street opposite the place for three nights running but had never entered.

As witnesses and reports filtered in, the large table was cleared off to make way for a map of London. By half past two in the morning, the map was speckled with red marks indicating places the Lion had been seen. Although they were scattered around the city, they definitely clustered in a circle around the Dancing Fawn. Unfortunately, that zone was also densely populated, and finding anything in it would take either days or luck or both.

Lawrence and Tuesday were individually mulling over this fact when the skylight squeaked open. Three guards instantly had their pistols out and aimed at it, so that when Lucy Burns, the eldest of the Burns children, poked her head through, her eyes got huge. “I saw the light on,” she explained awkwardly.

“It is all right. Come in,” Tuesday assured her. Lawrence motioned for the guards to stand down and Lucy dropped to the ground. She stood shifting from one foot to the other. “Do you want to sit down, Lu?” Tuesday asked finally. “Is there something I can do for you?”

Lucy thoughtfully gnawed on the end of a braid. “Not really.”

“Oh.”

“How did your poem go?” Lawrence asked.

Lucy blushed and the braid fell out of her mouth.

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