Introduction This is a rewrite of the first Victorian novel I wrote.  I didn't keep a single line of the original prose, and the plot changed substantially, too!  I think this version is far more successful — the first one was, frankly, too cute.  It's easy to become too sweet when you write about poor orphans, even though there's nothing in the world sweet about their situations.  Ditto with the Pygmalion plot! Prologue This is a tribute and allusion to Dickens' Bleak House.  The Oliver Twist element of this book is difficult to miss, but I wanted to stay with the grotesque of Dickens and avoid the cuteness. Chapter One The situation for the bet took quite a lot of time to iron out.  I wanted it to be important but not too important.  The premise for the original version wouldn't work here! Chapter Two The rigging is for Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, which premiered at the Royal Opera House around this time.  Maggie sings from Verdi's Attila, which isn't one of his more famous works but is perfect for Maggie.  At this time, character singing was all the rage, much more so that pretty singing.  Dramatic voices were called for by Verdi's style and tastes, and Verdi and Wagner between them dominated opera during this period. Opera and the theater are one of those many areas that I know just enough about to fake it! Chapter Three The scene in Maggie's tenement was one of my favorites.  The arrangement of the staircase beside the shop and accessible to the front and the shop was standard.  You can still see examples of this in almost any 19th-century downtown in any small town in the US.  The floor plan was common to tenements on both sides of the Atlantic.  Take a look at the tenement museum in NYC.  It's pretty awesome.  The decorations are also par for the course — they are, of course, Sally's (Sarah Connolly's), who shall be the heroine of MUSIC OF THE NIGHT.  The tenement consists of a windowless kitchen (where the entrance is) with a dry sink (no running water!) and a stove, a windowless bedroom, and a parlor with the flat's only window.  Keeping the doors open was the only way to get light into the back reaches of the room.  Moll and Jo sleep in the kitchen in the cot (crib); Nan, Sally, and Maggie sleep in the bedroom; and Harry, Frankie, and Giles sleep in the parlor.  Crowded, yes, but sometimes twelve or more people would live in the same space!  The Gumpertz Apartment's bedroom is a good representation of Maggie's bedroom — in fact, most of it's a pretty decent representation of the entire flat. Chapter Four I adore Giles.  He's so much fun to write.  He shall grow up to become quite the adventurer and explorer — I have a book set in Egypt in mind for him! Chapter Five I wanted to keep Miss West in the background as much as I could.  I didn't want it to become too My Fair Lady-ish. Chapter Six Danny's court was adapted from a more general description of costermonger courts by an eyewitness that I read years ago. Chapter Seven The greatest difficulty with erotic Victorian-set stories is dealing with all the clothes.  When a heroine leaves off hoops for some reason, it makes things so much easier. Chapter Nine Frankie, dear Frankie — he is so much fun, and he gets his own story in the book after Wicked Intentions. Chapter Ten Birth control!  Yes, this is period.  There would be a string tied to the sponge for retrieval.  It is pretty effective but not perfect.  When you write a book that's a gritty as mine, not dealing with the possibility of pregnancy is more than a little ridiculous.  This is probably the first erotic prophylactic sponge scene in romance.  :-P  (And my five-year-old is reading this over my shoulder as I type it, so it's a good thing I'm using words he can't understand....) Chapter Twelve This chapter hints at Fern's involvement with Colin and also sets up Flora as a wallflower.  She'll have her own book at some point.  I don't know when!      Chapter Fourteen The open seam is the usual way of making access to a pocket, which was a tied-on pouch that went under the skirts. p. 256  PHILTER TASSO ALL DAN - I don't remember what this is an anagram for, but it works. The Irish accent is so over-the-top because it is fake, of course. Chapter Sixteen Originally, Maggie was really still a phenomenal pickpocket, but I wanted to remove that too-convenient element.  Pickpocketing is a skill, and if she's been on the straight-and-narrow for years now, why would she still be so good? Epilogue Eh.  I don't like this.  I really should have made the ending longer so the epilogue would not be so rushed and crammed. Buy It Now top

   

  
  

This is the first chapter from the original version of this book — not a thing like the new one! Chapter 1 London May, 1864 26 Days Until the Ball "You really must hear this," Vincent St. George declared, fixing his monocle more firmly under his bushy white brow. Charles Dearborn, Lord Edgington, gave him a tolerant smile. "So you've been telling me for the past week." "So I've known for the past week! As an aesthete — " "A dilettante merely, I assure you." "As a dilettante of refined taste, then, if you insist, you will marvel at this specimen. We simply must study it." Charles pulled back the curtain of the coach's window. They were driving by the shops of the Strand toward the Waterloo Bridge. He wondered what could have originally lured St. George into this part of town during the day. Had he wanted to pick out his own dinner ham? The idea amused Charles; St. George was a man of comfort, rarely roused from his chair before the fire at the Bellona Club. Not that Charles could claim to be much more sociable; only at St. George's insistence had he abandoned the package of new books and pile of unanswered correspondence awaiting him in his study. Charles' sister, Millicent, shook her head at them from across the coach-and-four, her brunette curls bobbing. "I wish you would tell! Really, Georgie, you've intrigued me, and I'm not easily intrigued." Charles was as intrigued as Millicent, but trying to ferret a secret out of St. George would only encourage the old rascal to grow more enigmatic. So Charles leaned back against the velvet seat, feigning indifference, as St. George hummed tunelessly under his breath and tapped his duck-headed cane against the carriage floor. The instant the coach came to a stop, St. George sprang to his feet and burst through the door without waiting for the footman to open it or even lower the steps, no mean feat for the portly man. Charles emerged more cautiously, stepping gingerly into the filthy street. They had stopped in Covent Garden, crowded with a hundred booths overflowing with baskets of vegetables and produce. Servants and housewives with great wicker baskets pushed through the swirling bustle of the market, haggling over the din of shouting vendors, crowing cocks, and quarreling costermongers. Occasionally, a better dressed gentlemen hurried through or a lady descended from her carriage at the steps of St. Paul, but mostly, the square teemed with representatives of the great mass of people between the well off and the desperately impoverished. Charles offered his arm to his sister. Holding her sweeping skirts above the muck, Millicent stepped onto the pavement, her pert nose wrinkling at the reek of rotting produce and stale sweat as she clung to Charles’ side. "What an extraordinary phenomenon, eh, Edgington?” St. George demanded, jabbing his cane toward a pair of beggar girls. The smaller of the two was singing a sweet, sad ballad, her thin hands clasped beneath her chin and her soulful hazel eyes rolled to heaven. Her voice was pretty, but nothing remarkable. Charles gave his friend a puzzled look. "What should we be seeing?" Millicent asked, a touch of petulance entering her voice as a little scowl marred her face. St. George frowned and shook his head impatiently. "Just wait until the other begins." "The other" stood silently beside the singing girl, scanning the crowd. Her gaze lighted on Charles, and he had the sudden impression of sharp bones and a dirty, thin face with huge blue eyes. At first glance, she seemed hardly older than the singing child, but Charles thought he detected a hint of curves hidden by emaciation and her tattered dress. She watched the passing crowds, turning the full force of her pleading gaze until her partner’s song came to an end. Then there was a scattering of applause among the small crowd that had stopped to listen and a muffled clink as a few farthings were thrown into a bonnet at their feet. The smaller girl scrambled to gather the money, secreting it about herself as the blue-eyed one stepped forward. The older girl opened her mouth, drew in a breath, and began to sing: "O wär ich schon mit dir verein und dürfte Mann dich nennen!" "Good God!" Charles gasped. "I told you that you wanted to hear it," St. George said smugly. Charles just shook his head mutely. The girl was superb. Her phrasing was not perfect, her breath control needed refinement, and she slurred over the pronunciation in a way that made it clear she was repeating sounds rather than singing words, but Charles had never heard such tonal clarity and precision. She caressed the notes lovingly with her voice, not sliding or rushing over any but touching each as if the smallest encapsulated the entire song. But even as the ethereal sounds emerged from her mouth, the girl rolled her eyes heavenward and melodramatically placed her arm across her forehead. She sidled up to one of the watching men, mincing delicately as she fluttered her eyelashes up at him. The crowd laughed at her antics, and she winked, breaking into a heavy Irish brogue for several lines — Charles vaguely recognized a drinking song — before clapping her hands over her mouth, her eyes wide as if she had just realized what she had done, and returning to the German. "A natural!" Charles breathed. "Like none I have ever heard." St. George puffed up proudly, as if he were personally responsible for her. "And completely untrained." Charles nodded. She lacked some of the rudiments voice teachers instilled in even the most tone-deaf students, but what she had — what she had could never be taught. "We must get her!" Millicent declared. Charles cast her a sideways glance. Her eyes were shining, a sure sign she was devising a plan. "You think so, too." St. George cleared his throat ponderously. "What shall we do with her, though? The opera? Musicales? Soirées?" Millicent beamed. "Oh, nothing so banal! If the girl's half as good as she seems, Mamma will have her surprise for this year's ball. She shall go wild about this — positively wild. She shan't want to let the child go. Oh! Here's our chance.” The girl had stopped singing, and now the crowd laughed and cheered, coins clinking in the hat as they dispersed. "Come along." Millicent tugged at Charles' arm. The beggar girl looked up quickly as they approached. Her gaze was sharpened by the contrast between her luminous eyes and her dirt-smudged face, haloed by a ragged calico bonnet. Closer to, Charles judged she was even older than even his revised estimate — certainly old enough to have come out if she'd been a society belle instead of a street beggar. He tried to imagine the scrawny thing before him as a debutante and failed. There was something graceful in the delicate bones of her face, something compelling in her enormous blue eyes, but her emaciation and filth arrested his speculations before they could take a definite form. He snorted silently at his own imaginings. How the fellows at the Bellona Club would laugh to think that such a creature, born in the basest circumstances and from the crudest stock, could ever be set next to the refined flowers of London’s best families! He cleared his throat and stared down at the wary thing before him. "What is your name, girl?" "Maggie," the girl replied, her eyes narrowing suspiciously, "and dis is me mate Mol." She angled her head at the younger girl. Charles winced at her broad accent as Mol looked them up and down. "Right flash nobs, eh, mum? Bene marks?" the little brown-eyed waif asked. "Quit your puckering," Maggie returned. "By the look of 'em, dey're jemmy coves. Go to your ken, luv, and leave dis lurk to me." Mol scooped the coins from the hat on the sidewalk and scampered off. "Pardon?" Charles asked, frowning as he tried to decipher the exchange. "Forgive us, gentlemen — miss." Maggie smiled up at him winsomely. "We ain’t accustomed to such fine fellows on our corner, asking for our names." Charles blinked. Though her diction was still rough, her accent had suddenly become impeccable. He should not have been surprised; if she could mimic a language she did not know, it only made sense that she could assume different accents in her own. A clever trick, like the vocal talents of a talking parrot, but how produced? How learned? "No apology necessary, child," he said. "We only wished to speak with you." She folded her arms across her thin chest. "There's no charge for speaking, but I'm a working girl." The discrepancy between her blunt words and her refined pronunciation made her statement even more pointed. A talking parrot, yes, but a parrot still. Charles fished in his pocket for a shilling, and the beggar girl’s eyes lit up. "Happy to talk with you," she assured him. "We have a proposition to make you," he continued. She backed away, eyes wide and face dark with distrust. "I ain't nobody's blooming judy." Charles shot a look of incomprehension at St. George. "No man's whore?" the old man guessed, scrutinizing the girl through his monocle. Millicent gasped softly. "Your pardon, Miss Dearborn," he added hastily. Maggie nodded mutely, still edging away. Charles shook his head. "I didn't mean that," he said impatiently. "You have a remarkable voice — surely someone's told you that before." She only nodded again, but she stopped backing up. Charles continued expansively. "Well, St. George here and I believe your voice is more than remarkable, and we think it's a pity to waste it on a beggar's life." Her chin lifted and her eyes flared. "I feed meself," she snapped. Charles was rendered speechless by the ragged thing’s display of pride, but Millicent rescued the conversation. "I'm sure you do," she agreed soothingly. "But imagine what more you could do! With your voice, you could become a famous singer. If you come with us, we shall have an expert judge your merit. Why, if she says you're as good as we think you are, you shall never have to work in the streets again." The girl snorted indelicately. "No nob'd harken to the chaunting of a griddling chit." Charles thought he was beginning to understand. "A gentleman would listen to any woman with a voice as good as yours.” He continued on a sudden inspiration. “Anyhow, if you learn to speak like a lady, who's ever to know?" "Like this, you mean?" She slipped back into an aristocratic accent. "I know how to make all the sounds, but I don't know how to say the right words. I'd be nabbed in a blooming minute." "Then we shall have you taught," Millicent said. "Come with us. We'll give the best instructors. You shall learn to speak like a lady in no time at all." "How do I know you ain’t gammoning me?" the beggar girl demanded, her eyes narrowing again. "How would it benefit us?" Charles returned. "If I wanted a — a judy, I could buy one for less money than I'm holding now." The girl's eyes flicked to the shilling in his hand before returning to his face. Millicent added, "If you refuse, you could be giving up your only chance to escape all this." Her graceful, gloved wave encompassed the dirty street and the beggar's tattered clothes and mud-marked face. "What do you nobs get out of it?" the ragamuffin returned. "You wouldn't be offering if you wasn't hoping to get something." Millicent looked taken aback. "Why, we were hoping you'd perform at Mamma's costume ball. You see, she arranges a surprise every year. Last year, she had a real leopard brought in. The year before that, it was exotic South American fruits. Before that, a wild Indian who dressed up in his savage costume and waltzed with all the ladies." "And so my singing would be the wild Indian this year?" Millicent gave a little nod. "Yes, rather." The beggar girl looked at them silently for a long moment, her bony arms hugging herself, her big eyes searching their faces. Finally, she spoke. "How much is it worth to you?" "Pardon?" Charles frowned. The girl shook her head, making a face. "How much is it worth to you? How long do you want to keep me, and how much will you pay?" Charles blinked. "The ball is in less than a month. After that, we shall see. As for pay, we'll be taking you in, feeding you, clothing you, housing you. Shall you still require pay?" "Nothing's on without chink." She jutted out her chin stubbornly. "You're a flash toff." The words sounded strange pronounced with such precision. "You could afford a couple of couter — a couple of pounds a week." St. George sputtered. "My dear girl, your offer is unreasonable. Working men raise families on a fifth of that." "No," the girl retorted. "Working men's families starve on a fifth that." "Five shillings a week, for incidental expenses," Charles countered. The girl shook her head. "I could earn as much on the chaunting lay." "Ten?" She shook her head again. "Fifteen?" Charles offered. "Really, this is quite ridiculous." The girl turned her back and began to walk away. "You must do something!" St. George hissed. "A pound!" Charles called. She turned back again, smiling broadly. "Now you're talking," she said. Charles had the sudden suspicion she had gotten what she wanted all along. "The first week's wages in advance, and I'll meet you in front of Lincoln's Inn tomorrow at this time with my things." "I'll give you nothing until the end of the first week, and you'll leave now," Charles replied, determined not to be taken in a second time. "You'll give me the shilling in your hand now and a pound at the end of the week, and we'll meet tomorrow." "I'll hunt you down if you aren't there," Charles threatened. The ragamuffin grinned. "You couldn't find me in the rookery unless I wished it, but I'll let that pass. Agreed?" "Agreed." The girl spat on her hand and extended it. Charles stared at it for a moment before removing his glove and shaking it gingerly. He gave her the shilling. "Tomorrow?" he asked. "Aye, guv, tomorrow!" She grinned, scooped up the bonnet from the ground, and scampered away. Charles was left with a damp hand and the feeling he had been taken. "It's worth it," St. George assured him. "It had better be." # # # Maggie's heart sang as she ducked down James Street to stand against a wall until little Giles caught up with her. He returned her grin broadly. "Easy gull, eh?" he said. "Fools and deir money..." she agreed, but she bit her lip. "Looky 'ere, mum, you ain't thinking about doing it, is you? It's a dub lay. I can feel it in me bones." "It's a chance, me boy. It may be the only one we get. Think on it! A couter a week, and not a bit o' it to dat scurf Danny." Giles was quiet for a long moment. "If you go, you won't be forgetting us none?" "Don't be a glock. Course not. I'll send all the chink to you and the chavies." "Bene!" Giles smiled again. He was a wild one, and he and Frankie worried her more than the other five chavies combined. She never knew what the little pickpocket was thinking behind his smiling, freckled face. She didn't even know where he'd come from. He'd just knocked on the door to their garret one morning a little more than two years ago, striding in like a skinny, tattered little lord as soon as Sally opened it. Now it was hard to imagine life without the scamp. Maggie shook her head, bringing her mind back to the present. “Let’s get back to the ken and tell the others.” She set off, and Giles scampered up the street ahead of her as they moved away from the working-class respectability of Covent Garden and into the squalor of the St. Giles rookery. Maggie imagined the neighborhood as it must have looked when it was new, streets lined with grand white houses full of nobs and their servants. But that was so long ago no one remembered it; St. Giles was already a slum when toothless, ancient Deb Brewer was born, and she was the oldest person Maggie knew. Now the houses were divided into tenements, brown with soot and dirt until it was impossible to determine the color of the paint, if any was left. Battered shutters flanked broken windows, and the little sunlight that pierced the rank fog was filtered by laundry hung on lines strung between the buildings. The way was so familiar she traveled by habit while her thoughts scurried down paths full of opera houses and snug little flats. Oh, the promise of a singing career! If the nobs meant what they said… Maggie didn't trust the old man, but the lady had seemed very kind, if slightly ingenuous, and the young gentleman — Despite his arrogance, it was almost impossible to believe that he wasn't sincere, what with his earnest expression and his honest horror at the idea that he was asking for her body. No, he was not one of those predators who lured young girls into his power and them made them disappear forever. She conjured up the image of his face, his amber eyes serious under a shock of light brown hair and a broad forehead that gave him an intelligent air. He was handsome but not dapper like most young gentlemen, and he had carried himself with solemnity that made him seem older than she'd wager he really was. Yes, she thought she might just be able to trust him. A singing career! Her mind reeled with the idea. Maggie and Giles wove through the warren of overcrowded streets, the shouts of men and women mingling with the squeals of children, the wails of babes, and the yapping of stray dogs. Piles of refuse half-blocked the lanes, making it impossible for a carriage to squeeze past, but it didn't hinder traffic because no one in the rookery could afford a carriage and no one else dared venture in. Maggie led Giles across the street, stepping over the open sewer running down the center. "Oi, me Maggie!" a man called from the stoop of a tenement, grinning through broken teeth. "Still on the chaunting lay?" "Aye, Sean," she shouted back. "Well, if you ever tire of it, come to me. I've got an itch for you, me girl!" "More like the French itch," she countered, grinning, "and I carn't help you dere!" She waved a farewell as they passed. They reached their tenement on Church Lane, deep in the heart of the Irish rookery. They climbed the steps of the stoop and slipped through the gap left by the door that hung by one hinge from its frame. In the dim light filtering through the dirty windowpanes, Maggie could make out huddled forms in the front hall — night boarders, who got a patch of floor in exchange for a penny. She ignored their gaunt stares as she led Giles up the creaking staircase. The air was damp and foul, and there was so little light that she climbed more by habit than sight. At the second floor, the main staircase ended. A section of the wall on the final landing stood open to reveal the servant's stair continuing up. They emerged at the top and passed down a short hallway to their small garret room. Nan stood in front of the pot-bellied stove, stirring a pot of soup as Sally sewed in the corner. Mol held little Joe on the bed, but Harry and Frankie were nowhere in sight. "Where you been, mum?" Nan asked. "Mol's 'ad us worried 'arf out of our minds for you." She pressed her thin lips more tightly together as she took eight unmatched bowls from the kitchen dresser and filled them with soup. Maggie took a chair at the battered deal table and leaned back. "I'll tell you all togedder," she replied. "Where's 'Arry and Frankie?" Sally shrugged, setting the chipped bowls on the table. "'Arry's griddling, and Frankie's orf wherever Frankie goes dese days." Maggie winced. She hated to see Harry begging, especially when he exaggerated his leg deformity for pity. He was sensitive about his defect, and his gentle birth made him feel the degradation of begging more keenly. "'Asn't 'e any scribbling to do for dat solicitor cove?" The copy work didn't earn much, but it was something. Sally shook her head. "Not for two days. I told 'im 'e didn't need to go out, but you know 'Arry. Carn't stand to be a shirkster." The sound of the doorknob turning made them look up. Harry limped in, dressed in rags, with his face smeared with dirt and his hair mussed. "Good day," he said, smiling cheerfully. He crossed to the washstand and began scrubbing off the filth. "Four pence today. Not bad, if I do say so myself." Maggie sighed. "'Arry, I told you, you're too much a gen'leman to be griddling like us canters." "Starve a gentleman or live a canter." He made a face. "I'm tired of living off you, Maggie. I might be too old to learn to pick a pocket or crack a house, but I must do something." He dried his hands and face on a bit of rag that served as a towel. "I just don't know what." "I wish we 'ad enough chink to send you orf to school," Maggie fretted, "but even the cheapest places run fifteen couter the year." Fifteen pounds was nearly half what the eight of them took in during the year — an unimaginable sum to spend on just one. "Don't think on it, Maggie," he admonished. He had never acquired the habit of calling her "mum" the way the other chavies did. "You've done enough already. After all, I really should be providing for you. I'm older, you know." Maggie raised an eyebrow. "Well, I think I am, at least. It's not my fault you don't know your own age!" They began to eat, Nan taking little Joe onto her lap and spooning soup into his mouth between her own bites as she recounted the day’s rookery gossip. She was interrupted when the door swung open and Frankie swaggered in. He wore a fine top hat perched at a jaunty angle on his greasy hair, and the beginnings of a beard sprouted from his chin. Maggie had the momentary feeling that she didn't really know him, a feeling that was growing more and more frequent of late. "'Ullo, mum," he greeted Maggie as he flopped into the chair Sally quickly vacated for him. He pulled out two shillings and dropped them with a flourish onto the middle of the table. "La!" Nan gasped, her eyes wide, but Sally's face grew strained. "Did a lay for Danny, eh?" Maggie asked softly. Frankie's brow knitted dangerously. "I brings you two deaner and I 'spects to hear a li'l thanks. Instead, you quiz me about it." He shook his head. "Never will understand you morts, I won't." Maggie said shook her head. "'E's a scurf, Danny is. I'm scared for you every time I fink you're wif 'im." "I can take care of meself," Frankie insisted. "Course you can," Maggie said, but her heart was not in it. "Well," Nan interposed brightly, "mum's got some news for us, 'aven't you, mum?" Maggie reached into the hidden stash around her waist and produced the day's earnings, the two pence from the evening and the toff's shilling, and placed it on the table next to Frankie's money. Nan gave a cry of delight, plucking up the money with quick little fingers. "Wif what Mol, Sally, and me brung in, dat's five deaner in a day!" "And a chance to get a couter a week for the next monff." "What?" Now even Frankie was sitting at attention. Maggie told them about the nobs at Covent Garden. "Will you do it?" Sally asked, her eyes wide. "It's a dub lay," Giles insisted, folding his arms across his bony ribcage. Maggie studied their faces for a long moment before answering. The chavies were thin, worn, and dirty. They weren't even a real family by anyone's standards but their own — just a collection of beggars, thrown together by chance and necessity. They had survived as long as they had only because they had stuck together and because Danny made special allowance for them on account of Maggie's favor. If one of them fell ill or got injured, or if Danny suddenly stopped being so tolerant, only a few shillings separated them from starvation. "If it's a trap like Giles finks, I'll find a way out," she said finally. "If it ain't, the least we'll get is enough chink to keep us for monffs. The nobs might even be able to set me up as a flash chaunter somewhere like they said." Singing in front of a real audience for real money! The idea was still incredible. "Imagine if I 'ad a 'unnerd couter a year. We'd live like kings, we would!" They could rent a snug little flat with running water and gaslight, where they'd have separate rooms for eating in and sleeping in instead of a single crowded garret. Maggie shook her head, banishing her dream. Now, the promise of a pound a week was enough. She would only be disappointed if she let herself think about such grand things. "Do you believe them?" Harry asked, frowning. Maggie hesitated. She had distrusted the grizzled gentleman's cunning, wizened face instinctively. "The old toff, no. 'E's got a crafty look to 'im. But the mort's an easy mark." The memory of the lady's exaggerated delicacy and overly refined manners made Maggie grin. "I don't fink she could lie if she tried. The young cove, too — 'e seems as honest as the day is long." Again she tried to find something in her memory of him to justify her impulse toward trust. In Maggie's experience handsome men were deadly men. Why didn't she fear him? Perhaps it was something in his expression, something about the cool detachment with which he had studied her, as if she were a tricky hand of cards or a skillfully counterfeited pound note. "I fink I might be 'is... 'obby, or somefink," she finished lamely. "I know the type," Harry said. "You're safe enough if he's one of them." "You know, I fink I am," Maggie agreed. Frankie grinned, lightening the mood suddenly. "I never fought our li'l songbird'd go so far. Dis calls for celebrating! I'm taking meself down to the beggar-maker. Don't you wait up." He stood to leave for the pub. Maggie smiled up at him. "I got it." "You did not!" He pawed at the fob pocket on his waistcoat. "I did so." She pulled his green handkerchief from her sleeve. He shook his head. "You're the still one o' the best bloody divers in London," he said, taking it back. A knock on the door interrupted them, and Frankie opened it. "Danny's demander," he said darkly, standing aside. Maggie stood. Michael O'Neal grinned as he stepped inside. "'Ullo, Maggie.” "Michael, me boy, you can tell Danny we're paid up frough next week," Maggie said, arms akimbo. "Aye, but Danny 'eard you took in a bit extra today, and 'e wants 'is piece." "'Twas only a deaner," Nan protested. Michael nodded. "Aye, 'twas. Dat's free more pence you owes." "But — " Maggie cut her short. "Pay it." Pressing her lips in a thin, hard line, Nan dug out the money. "'Ere," she said sullenly, thrusting it at him. "Fank you kindly," Michael said as he pocketed it. He bowed mockingly and left. Maggie sighed, collapsing onto the chair as soon as he was gone. "If you become a real chaunter, we wouldn't 'ave to worry about Danny no more," Mol said softly from her seat on the bed. "Aye," Maggie said, "and dat's the clincher." Buy It Now top

   

  
  

Oliver Twist meets My Fair Lady in Joyce's irresistible, neatly crafted novel. She doesn't miss a beat with her strong writing, powerfully emotional plot, engaging characters and potent gothic bent.  — Kathe Robin of RT BOOKClub Wow! I read Lydia Joyce for the first time last year, and I knew she had to go on my must read author list! With VOICES OF THE NIGHT she definitely does not disappoint! Far, far from it, in fact. This story has so much depth of character and storyline, it could thrive on its own outside the romance genre. At first glance it may resemble many other stories of the poor girl rescued by the rich lord. But this is no fairy tale, and within its pages there is so much more. — Deana Monteleone for Romance Reader at Heart (Keeper Review) Lydia Joyce uses intelligent characters and insightful prose to make even a take on the familiar Pygmalion story feel new again. There is nothing charming about the gutter from which the heroine is plucked, but seeing how her depth of character rescues a cynical aristocrat makes for an unexpectedly touching story. The author's vision of Victorian London is by turns romantic and tragic. She summons up the dire poverty of the streets, as well as the privileges enjoyed by the wealthy. Brutish gangs and drawing room snobbery all find voice here and the multi-layered creation is breath-taking. Victorian England almost seems to come to life here and I found the mood of the book quite addictive. — Lynn Specter for All About Romance Joyce's quietly chilling sense of suspense, expertly crafted Victorian London setting, and two beautifully nuanced, wonderfully complicated characters provide the key ingredients for a deliciously dark, superbly written tale of love, honor, and redemption. — Booklist. RT Reviewer's Choice Award Nominee RT Top Pick Romance Reader at Heart Keeper Buy It Now top