A Matter of Magic by Patricia Wrede Read Free Book Online

buildingand rapped at the weathered oak door. She had to repeat her knock before a stocky, grizzled man opened the door and peered out at her. “ ’Oo’s that?”
    “Kim. I got somethin’ for Tom.”
    “Ah. Inside, then.” The man stepped back and Kim lifted her bundle and followed him in.
    The back room of Tom’s secondhand shop was a mess, as usual. Clothes were piled carelessly in every corner and stacked on top of the single chair. Kim saw everything from a laborer’s homespun smock to a tattered but undeniably silk cravat.
    Four men were seated on crates around the rickety table in the center of the room. The tin cups and the reek of gin made it clear what they had been doing before Kim’s arrival; just at the moment they were staring at her. Two of them were as unknown to Kim as the doorkeeper. The third was Tom’s brother-in-law Jack Stower, a dirty dish if Kim had ever seen one. He’d never had much use for her, either.
    The last person at the table was a grey-haired man with squinty eyes, wearing a dark grey coat and a linen cravat. Kim stiffened. “Dan Laverham!” she blurted. What was that flash cull doing in Tom’s back room? For all he carried himself like Quality, he could call up half the canting crew from Covent Garden to the Tower of London if he had a need for them.
    “Kim, dear boy, how good to see you,” the grey-haired man replied. His eyes raked her apparel, and she was suddenly very, very glad she had hidden her money so carefully before setting out. Dan would think nothing of ordering his men to strip her of her hard-won gains, if he knew of them.
    “Been a long time,” Kim offered, keeping her tone noncommittal. Dan was a bad one to offend. He was smart and smooth, and he’d hold on to a grudge until the moon turned blue. She suspected that he was the one who’d turned stag and peached on Mother Tibb to the constables, though he was too clever to have acted openly.
    “That it has,” Dan said, leaning back on his crate as though he sat in a tall, straight-backed chair. “And to what do I owe the good fortune of your arrival?”
    “Says ’e’s got sommat for Tom,” the doorkeeper said.
    “Then, my dear, go and fetch him,” Dan replied. The doorkeeper grunted and clumped up the stairs. Dan looked at Kim. “Do join us,” he said, and waved at the table.
    Kim shook her head. “I ain’t got time,” she lied.
    Jack Stower shifted so that his crate creaked alarmingly. “Think you’re too good to have a drop of Blue Ruin with your friends, eh?” he mumbled.
    It was on the tip of Kim’s tongue to retort that he, at least, was no friend of hers, but caution restrained her. Gin made Jack’s uncertain temper positively explosive, and she doubted that the other men would intervene if Jack started something. She tried to make her voice placating as she said, “It ain’t that. I got to meet a man down by the docks in less’n an hour, and I ain’t going to finish with Tom in time as it is.”
    Jack started to reply angrily, but Dan put a hand on his arm and he subsided at once. “An appointment on the docks?” Dan said. “That’s a bit out of your usual way, isn’t it?”
    Kim shrugged, wishing the doorkeeper would come back with Tom. “I go where the pay is.”
    “Not always, my dear, or you would have accepted my generous offer,” Dan said, watching her with bright, penetrating eyes.
    “I like bein’ on my own,” Kim said shortly. And she strongly disliked the idea of falling into Dan’s clutches. He’d have her forking purses off the market crowds during the day without regard for her scruples, and once he discovered her sex she’d spend her nights in the stews. Kim had no illusions about that sort of life. Let alone she had no taste for it, she’d be lucky not to end swinging from the nubbing cheat as Mother Tibb had.
    “Well, let it pass,” Dan said, waving a hand. “But tell me, what has lured you to Tom Correy’s establishment tonight?”
    “Bilking