Free One Little Sin by Liz Carlyle

the sound echoing hollowly through the house.
    “Damn and blast,” she whispered.
    “Damin bass,” said Sorcha, mimicking Esmée’s glower.
    Oh, lud! Time to watch her language. “Aye, ’tis a very wicked door, is it not, wee Sorcha?” said Esmée, planting a loud, smacking kiss on the child’s cheek. “Why does it never open for us?”
    Just then a glossy red-and-black landau came rattling up the street, stopping at the house adjacent. A thin, dark man got out and barked at his driver to take the carriage round to the mews. The coach rolled away, and turned onto Charles Street. Intrigued, Esmée followed. A few yards down the hill, the coachman cut his horses to the right and turned into an alley. Esmée did the same.
    Cleaving between the high brick walls, the unmarked lane was shadowy and cool. Esmée kept walking, counting off the houses as she went. The landau had stopped just a few yards in, and the coachman had leapt down to speak with a woman who stood on the pavement with a market basket swinging from her arm. Casting caution to the wind, Esmée rushed toward them. They noticed her at the same time, and turned toward her.
    “I beg your pardon,” said Esmée breathlessly. “Do you live here?”
    “Aye, to be sure.” The woman looked her up and down, clearly wondering why Esmée was calling in the yard rather than in the square.
    Esmée shifted Sorcha to her other hip. “Can you tell me please if Lady Tatton still lives in the house next door?” she asked the woman breathlessly. “The knocker is down, you see, and—”
    “Oh, yes!” said the woman. “Gone off to Australia, she has.”
    A sense of relief flooded through Esmée. “Thank heavens,” she whispered. “I’d not heard from her in ever so long. Are there no servants in the house?”
    Clearly certain he had nothing helpful to add, the coachman climbed back up and clicked to his horses. “There be but the Finches, the couple that look after the house,” said the woman with the basket. “But Bess—that’s Mrs. Finch—her mother fell ill in Deptford, and they went down Tuesday last.”
    “Oh,” said Esmée, sagging with disappointment.
    The woman took in Esmée’s attire again. “Would you be wanting her ladyship, then?” she asked. “For so far as I know, she’s not expected anytime soon, or not as Bess has mentioned to me, which I daresay she would have done.”
    “I—yes, I was looking for her,” Esmée admitted. “But I have not seen her in some years.”
    “Aye, she went out with her daughter who was in a delicate way,” said the woman. “Then the babe was sickly. Then came a set o’ twins. And then, as Bess says, one thing led to another as such things will do, aye? But since she hasn’t given up the house, she must surely mean to return.”
    On her hip, Sorcha was starting to squirm. “Abble, Mae!” she shrieked. “Gee abble!”
    The woman took an apple from the basket, and held it out. “What a pretty little thing she is,” she said, breaking into a smile. “And such rare blue eyes! Is this what you want, child?”
    Sorcha squealed with glee, opening and closing her fingers as she had done earlier in the morning when she’d set her sights on Merrick MacLachlan’s watch.
    “Thank you, but you needn’t,” said Esmée. “She does not need it, truly.”
    “Oh, let her have it, do,” said the servant, surrendering the red fruit into Sorcha’s greedy little hands. “I just came up from Shepherd’s Market, so ’tis fresh.”
    Unwilling to risk Sorcha’s temper, Esmée thanked her. The woman smiled at Sorcha. “Such a pretty babe!” she went on. “Now, about Lady Tatton. I could pass on a word to Bess, if you’d wish?”
    Esmée widened her eyes. “A letter,” she said hastily. “I’ve a letter for Lady Tatton. Would you be so kind?”
    The woman looked sympathetic. “Aye, I’ll give it to Bess, ma’am, but so far as I know…”
    “Yes, yes, I understand,” said Esmée. “She is not