Chapter 21
A glass shattered somewhere behind the curtain wall. A woman screamed. Not in pain—in fury. Catherine exited her rooms and descended the grand staircase. The music had ceased. The hush was as heavy as fog. Sweat, gin, and cheap jasmine clung to the damask walls like old perfume.
She stepped into the main parlour.
A pair of men crowded the far corner—ragged, loud, and pressing tight around a smaller figure. Their jeers filled the space. One grabbed the little man by the collar and slammed him against the wainscot, hard enough to rattle teeth.
Another kicked over a standing lamp.
Catherine nodded at Cragg.
Their feet slipped on broken glass as her brutes dragged them below stairs into a back room. The largest—broad-shouldered, with a nose broken before—spat blood after Cragg’s fist caught him and they shoved him against the wall.
“You’ll regret this, jade.”
Catherine stepped forward. When he bared his teeth in a grin, she cut him across the mouth with her glove’s backhand—sharp, precise. Cragg followed with his fists, and Jonas and Derek joined. By the end, the man was coughing up blood and teeth.
“Put him out,” she said, wiping a speck of crimson from her glove with distaste.
They threw his broken form into the street.
His friend begged. “Please, for pity’s sake—”
Cragg’s fist cut his plea short. Moments later, he lay on the carpet, bleeding. Insensate.
She turned then towards the tiny man, still flattened, against the panelling.
He stared at her. Eyes as wide as dinner plates.
She looked him over, head to foot. “You are the smallest man I have ever seen.”
He bowed slightly at the waist, voice light and high-pitched. “I can be of use to you, madame.”
“Can you fight?”
“No.”
“Sing?”
He winced. “Pray, anything but that.”
His misery was so forlorn, she smiled despite herself.
“Then why shouldn’t I have Cragg fold you in half and sweep you into the gutter?”
His hands shook so badly, his hat fanned the air.
She relieved him of his headwear. “Did someone send you here?”
He nodded.
“Do you fear saying his name?”
He nodded so quickly his face vibrated.
Catherine realised that only one person of her acquaintance instilled that level of fear in a person. She leant down and put her lips next to his tiny ear. “Did Mr Roark send you?” she whispered.
The man swooned. Her steward caught him before he hit the floor.
“Help him to my suite.”
Once they were comfortably situated, she gestured for him to speak.
“I knows it all.” He touched his temple. “Every debt. Every date. Every man who matters in Seven Dials. I remember it all.”
She raised a brow. “Entertain me, Mr...”
“Quinn, milady. Silas Quinn.”
She gestured to the unconscious brute bleeding on her carpet. “If I am bored, you may join him.”
He cleared his throat. “March third—Colonel Harwood paid off a Bow Street runner to remove his name from the roll of debtors at White’s.
“October fourteenth—Lady Vane’s footman pawned her husband's mourning ring to settle losses from hazard at Crockford’s.
“Three nights past—Sir Edwin stumbled out of Madame Boucher’s house without paying a penny. Swore the doorman to silence with promises, as he has elsewhere. Never here.”
Catherine folded her arms. “And how, precisely, would that information help me?”
Silas Quinn smiled faintly. “Because the Colonel’s daughter is of marriageable age. Lady Vane’s husband is dying. And Sir Edwin—well, he praises your house in daylight and robs it by night. That is leverage, milady.
“London is not a city. It is a web. I see the strings.”
She did not ask how he came by such details. Men like Quinn were not made; they were shaped by hunger, debt, and the habit of listening when no one thought them there.
And this one had been placed.
Roark had not sent a threat this time, but a gift. A gift with ears that never tired and a mind that never forgot.
Her fingers drummed lightly against the arm of her chair.
She could turn him out.
She could slit his throat.
Or she could use him.
“You’ll work for me,” she said at last.
Quinn’s shoulders sagged with something that looked almost like relief.
“But,” she continued, “you will not sleep under my roof. You will eat before you come, drink nothing here, and speak only when I require it. If I suspect you’ve spoken to another about my business—” She let the pause hang, long enough for him to picture it.
“—you’ll wish you’d stayed in that corner tonight. ”
Quinn nodded, quick and sharp. “Understood, milady.”
“Good,” she said, rising. “Roark may have his reasons. I’ll have mine.”