A Wicked Conceit by Anna Huber (best young adult book series txt) 📗

of many of the country’s poor except to throw them into the workhouse for vagrancy—or accepted bribes from the padrones to look the other way. They had no one to champion them, particularly as they were foreigners, and so they were left to fend for themselves the best they could.

The world was filled with far too many people like Bree and Anderley, tumbled into terrible circumstances not of their own making. But by another twist of fate, Bree might have ended up dismissed from her job as a cripple, left to beg on the street, and Anderley could have found himself scraping an existence from whatever meager employment he could find, or worse, turned into a hard-hearted padrone himself.

It was a fact I had found myself wrestling with more and more often of late, especially after the stark injustice of the class divide illustrated by our last case. And because I was about to bring a child into this unfair world. Gage and I spent so much of our time and effort in the pursuit of truth and justice, and yet, at times, all it seemed to do was reveal how dubious and unjust the world truly was.

We had all fallen silent, lost in our own quiet contemplation until Gage spoke. “Anything else?” At some point his gaze had dipped to my rounded belly, perhaps also considering the world our child was being born into. His eyes lifted to meet mine, and his lips curled faintly upward at the corners, offering me a brief but bolstering smile.

“The vaults,” Anderley replied. “Where Bonnie Brock supposedly stores his contraband whisky.”

“Yes? What about them?” Gage asked.

“They look nothing like the author describes them in the book.”

“Aye,” Bree agreed. “I hadna’ thought o’ it before, but the way the author speaks aboot them in the book doesna make much sense, does it? ’Specially no’ after I’ve seen more o’ what they actually look like onstage.”

“I wondered about that when I was reading it,” I admitted. “The vaults are mostly enclosed underground, aren’t they? A dark, dank, rat-infested labyrinth of chambers.”

“Aye. No’ the place you’d choose to hang aboot longer than necessary.”

And yet, in the book, Bonnie Brock and his men had often plotted and caroused in the vaults when Brock owned multiple buildings throughout Edinburgh, each far more suitable to such activities.

The vaults had been created when the South Bridge had been built over the gorge of Cowgate to connect High Street with the University of Edinburgh in the 1780s. All of the arches of the bridge except for the one under which the street of Cowgate traveled had gradually been enclosed when tenements had been allowed to be built abutting the viaduct. The shops along the length of the bridge above and the buildings adjacent had then built extra floors within the arches, further dividing the space into storage rooms for their buildings.

However, the construction of the bridge had been rushed, and the surface never sealed, leading to flooding in the vaults. Soon after, legitimate businesses had abandoned its use, and it was taken over by less savory enterprises, as well as the most desperate residents of Cowgate. One could only imagine how appalling conditions must be in that damp, sunless world and what desperation those forced to dwell there must feel.

“It’s clear the author has never actually been down there,” Anderley surmised.

“No, he hasn’t.”

I turned to look at Gage, alerted by something in the tone of his voice. The almost derisiveness of its certainty. I glanced at Anderley, realizing he hadn’t compared the author’s words to the scene in the play. Bree had been the one to do that. Anderley had stated it as if he had firsthand knowledge. Which more than likely meant Gage also did.

A sharp lance of horrified fear streaked through me. “When have you been down in the vaults?”

He blinked rapidly, and I could tell he was considering lying to me. I narrowed my eyes letting him know I was not going to be fobbed off.

“Last year,” he admitted. “Actually, that’s one of the places Sergeant Maclean took us to search for Kincaid.”

On that fateful night of my first encounter with Bonnie Brock, when he had appropriated Philip’s carriage outside the Theatre Royal with me inside. I frowned in remembrance of that event, and the fact it had been missing from both the book and the Theatre Royal play. I couldn’t help but wonder what that meant, if anything.

However, Gage evidently thought my glower indicated anger. “Darling, we never went deeper than a few rooms. Which was more than enough, I assure you.” He took hold of my hand. “We were purely there to ascertain Kincaid’s whereabouts.”

I nodded distractedly. “Of course.”

“We should tell them aboot his father,” Bree murmured to Anderley.

I had been on the verge of excusing myself to retire, but her words made me sit taller. “Did they speculate on his identity?”

“No’ explicitly,” she replied. “But he had a cane wi’ a gold lion head at the top, and Bonnie Brock’s mother called him Leon.”

But was that truly his name, or purely an inference on their part? After all, Bonnie Brock’s unruly, tawny hair was often compared to a lion’s mane. Had he inherited that trait from his father in fact, or did it merely make a pleasant fiction?

I remembered then that Maggie had told me once that her brother looked nothing like his father. But once again, had that been the truth or merely misdirection?

Chapter 4

I lay on my side, staring into the shadows gathered at the edges of the room, when the door to the dressing chamber clicked open behind me. Closing my eyes, I feigned sleep as I heard Gage cross the room and then remove his dressing gown, tossing it across the bottom of the bed. It seemed wrong not to wish him a good night, but I didn’t want to face his questions.