Free Three Nights of Sin by Anne Mallory

confusion.
    “I’m someone your sister hired to help you.”
    “Hired?” He looked at her. “Marietta?”
    “Worry not, Kenny.” She smiled brightly. “It’s all been taken care of.”
    She could see the cogs turning. Her brother’s face went from stark white to angry red. His fists clenched the bars of his cell. Then he gave Noble a once-over and his indignation turned again to confusion. She wasn’t in the same physical class as Noble. It was obvious to anyone with eyes.
    “How?”
    “Not in the way you are thinking, I assure you,” she said, somewhat more tartly than she’d intended. She didn’t know if she was more upset with her brother thinking she had sold herself or that he thought there was no way Noble would have purchased her.
    She chanced a glance at Noble. His face was arrogant and remote. No change there.
    “Well, then how—”
    “Your sister answered your question.”
    Kenny’s jaw closed with an audible snap.
    Noble watched him through narrowing eyes. “Now, what have you left out of your tale?”
    Marietta looked at Kenny, who looked at his shoes. “Kenny?”
    He continued to shuffle his feet, buckles clicking against the bars and upending straw.
    Noble turned to her. “Marietta, perhaps you should wait around the corner?”
    The body. He wanted to ask about the body. She swallowed. “I’ll stay. I want to hear everything. I daresay I’ve seen more blood in the kitchens than Kenny has in his life.”
    Noble’s gaze was narrow and piercing. Probing. “Fine.” He turned to her brother. “What did the girl look like?”
    “I don’t know,” he whispered, not looking up.
    “What do you mean?”
    He shuddered. “She was covered in blood. I couldn’t make out her features. She seemed older, though. I don’t know what it was that made me think that. Dress? Hair? I don’t know.”
    “There was nothing identifiable about her?”
    “No.” He took a couple of quick breaths in succession. “She was…mangled.”
    Kitchens or not, Marietta didn’t want to imagine the scene. The accounts of the previous victims had assuredly been sanitized in the papers, and even then they had sounded horrific.
    She grasped her brother’s hands. “I will get you out of here.”
    “Mark?”
    She clutched his hands more tightly. “Just hold steady. And don’t antagonize the guards.”
    She could see Noble looking at his pocket watch out of the corner of her eye, but couldn’t bring herself to look away from her brother.
    “We need to go. It is half past.”
    Her hands were held in a death grip.
    “Marietta?” Kenny said. She didn’t know what he was asking.
    “We must leave,” Noble’s smooth, deep voice said.
    “Marietta,” Kenny whispered, his voice anxious and scared.
    “Come.” A hand touched her back, and she looked down at her brother’s hands joined with hers. She let hers drop and felt the weight of a thousand ships. The hand against her back urged her to move.
    She allowed the hand to guide her toward the door, but her eyes were locked with Kenny’s.
    “Kenny,” she whispered.
    The look on her brother’s face as they rounded the corner etched itself in her mind. Forlorn. Hopeful. Miserable. Innocent.
    She followed Noble blindly until they came upon the locked door. Noble knocked and the lock disengaged. Oscar’s grumpy visage came into view.
    “’Bout time.”
    They followed him out of the cell area and Noble gave her an unreadable glance. She returned it woodenly, shock and despair coating her emotions.
    “We’ll head for Coroner’s Court,” Noble said to her. “See if we can’t discover more than your brother couldrecall.” His voice was the tiniest bit warmer than he’d ever used with her before.
    Oscar shook his head in front of them. “Won’t do you much good. They burned the body,” he said over his shoulder.
    Noble stopped in the middle of the hall. “They what?”
    Oscar turned and nodded grouchily. “They did the examination and then got rid of