My hands shook as I tried to sip calmly. The men had frightened me badly, demonstrating how far I was out of my depth. I’d always been proud that, because I’d grown up in Cockney London, I could hold my own. Tonight had reminded me that a young woman with too much confidence could not prevail alone against three hardened men.

As I drank the tea and tried to restore my equilibrium, one point tapped through my fears—why had they not wanted me to continue down that street?

When Mr. Fielding had come to look for the address, had they driven him off too? He’d not mentioned any such thing, but I now realized Mr. Fielding only imparted information he wished to.

A half hour passed as I drank bad tea and speculated, the hot water replenished once by the barmaid. My assailants did not appear, but I knew I could not remain much longer. I had a job to return to, and the later I lingered in Seven Dials, the more dangerous the area would become.

I handed a coin to the barmaid when I rose to leave. “Will you take a peek outside the front door for me?” I asked her. “Tell me whether a very tall gentleman, quite large, with a black beard and thick side whiskers is anywhere about? He has two friends with him, one of them with pale hair.”

The barmaid’s face screwed up in concern. “Is that who you’re hiding from? Sounds like you mean Luke Mahoney, you do.” She shook her head. “He’s a bad, bad man, is Luke.”

“So I gather. Will you tell me whether he is about? I do need to go home.”

She did not look happy, but she nodded. “Right you are.”

The barmaid nipped away, the unkempt hem of her skirt brushing her worn boots. She returned not long later.

“Looks like he’s gone,” she said. “But I’ll slide ya out the back way, in case he’s hiding himself and watching. You his new woman?”

I blenched. “Indeed, no.”

“I thought ya looked too sensible, but a sensible woman can be a fool about a man, can’t she? Don’t have nothing to do with the likes of ’im, is my advice. This way.”

She took me down a squalid back hall to an even more squalid cubby of a kitchen. Had I seen the kitchen first, I certainly would not have drunk the tea.

From here we went into a noisome passageway that exited to a tiny lane. The barmaid pointed through the inky blackness to a light at the end.

“That’s Queen Street. You take it to King Street, which will lead you up toward St. Giles’s Church. But go carefully. There’s bad people about.”