Maggie went to the child, put her hands on his shoulders. They quivered, warm and slight, beneath her palms. “There was an accident,” she lied gently. The story she’d tell the police, of course, would be quite different.

Jeremy slipped out from under her hands and approached the discarded gown, still lying in a garish blue and crimson heap on the floor. “Did you get hurt in the accident too?”

Maggie sighed and sat down on the edge of her fancy bed, folding her hands in her lap in an effort to still their trembling, and Jeremy sat beside her. “No,” she answered. “I wasn’t hurt.”

The moment the words were out of her mouth, Maggie was conscious of the bruises and scratches that covered her body, but of course she said nothing about those injuries. They were minor, and any mention of them would only confuse Jeremy.

The boy glanced at the reticule sitting on a table, its top open. “You’re leaving?” he asked in a small voice.

Maggie was searching for a way to explain, when her bedroom door sprang open again, this time without a knock to forewarn her. Bridget was standing in the doorway, hugging herself, her wild auburn hair still tumbling loose around her waist. Her wrapper was bloody and her eyes were shooting fire. “Duncan is calling for you,” she said to Maggie in tight, razor-sharp tones.

Maggie was about to say that she wouldn’t go to Duncan no matter how loudly he called when she felt Jeremy’s gaze and turned her head to search his face. If she refused to go to his father now, he would never understand.

With a sigh she stood up. “All right,” she said, and she followed Bridget along the hallway and down the rear stairs into the kitchen. Bridget O’Malley’s room was just beyond.

Duncan lay in the middle of a broad bed, his shoulder neatly bandaged, pillows propped behind his back. The blood had been washed away, probably by Bridget, and his hair had been combed. On the bedside stand was an open bottle of laudanum, which explained the glassy expression in Duncan’s eyes and the idiotic smile on his lips.

“Leave us alone, Bridget,” he said, and his words were only slightly slurred.

Bridget glared at Maggie for a moment, then stomped out of the room, slamming the door eloquently behind her. Duncan flinched slightly, and his grin broadened.

Now that Kirk appeared to be past the worst, Maggie hadn’t a shred of sympathy for him. All her compassion was for Jamie, possibly lying dead on the floor of an ugly little room over a dockside saloon. The moment she left this house, she would go to the police and to Reeve, in that order. Stubbornly, she kept silent.

“My driver tells me that your friend got away,” Duncan said. “Pity.”