“You can't come dressed like that.” He looked her up and down with open appreciation. She was delightful to the eye, a perfect blend of spirit and good taste, enough beauty displayed to hold any man's attention, and yet sufficiently modest and with that measure of dignity and self-possession to make it plain she was her own person and there was immeasurably more concealed than any man could learn unless he gave a great deal of himself in return. He found he most definitely wanted her to come, whether she was of the slightest use or not. Her company would be delightful.

“I shall borrow my maid's clothing,” she promised. “When may we begin?”

“Tomorrow morning,” he answered with no more than a hint of a smile, his eyebrows raised. “Is eight o'clock too early for you?”

“Not in the slightest,” she rejoined, her chin high. “I shall be here at eight o'clock, on the dot.”

He grinned. “Excellent!”

Mrs. Mundy knocked on the door and brought in the hot chocolate. Monk accepted it as if it were champagne.

Chapter 5

Chapter 5

In Bloomsbury where they set off the next morning, it was a still, cold morning, but as they went east, and drew nearer to the river, they came into fog. It grew thick in the throat and sour with the smell of smoke from house and factory chimneys. Eventually, short of the Isle of Dogs they could go at no greater pace than a careful walk. The hansom stopped in Three Colt Street. Monk paid the cabby and held out his hand to help Drusilla down. As she had promised, she was dressed in her maid's clothes: a darkcolored skirt and pale undistinguished blouse under a jacket top and a cloak which could have been either brown or gray. In the thin half-light of the fog it was impossible to tell. She had put a shawl over her bright hair and even one or two smuts and smears on her cheeks, but nothing could mask her natural beauty, or the white evenness of her teeth when she smiled.

The cab moved off into the gloom, and with a little shiver she linked her arm in his and they began the long task. At first she stood well back as Monk spoke to peddlers, a running patterer and a rag-and-bone man, and learned nothing of use. He was not surprised that she found them alien and frightening. Their accents must have been hard for her to follow, and their faces, matted under the grime, were haunted by a permanent wariness, a mixture of anger and fear.

Within a hundred yards a troop of children now joined them, thin-faced, wide-eyed, several of them barefoot, even in the bitter cold of the wet cobbles. They were inquisitive, and eager for any odd halfpenny or farthing that might be given. Dirty little hands plucked at Monk's sleeves and at Drusilla's skirts, which were less than half the size of her usual crinoline.