When he arrived at work the following morning, Simon was unsurprised to discover he was the first inspector at the office. Dawn had yet to rise over the soot-smeared horizon. Even the fruit vendors and washerwomen had yet to take to the streets.

What Simon did not expect, however, was the threadbare woman sobbing in the rear of the center cell.

He sat at his desk. Other officers’ prisoners did not concern him. Every investigator has his own assignments to attend to.

And yet.

Under a pretense of looking for some lost object, he made his way close enough to the prisoner to take her measure.

She was older than Simon. Perhaps late thirties or early forties. The gauntness to her frame indicated how long it had been since her last meal. The rouged lips, kohled eyes, and gaping bodice indicated her trade. The bruise on her left cheek indicated how badly things were going.

The Justice of the Peace must have sent about another missive commanding the officers to clear the unsavory element from the streets.

Prostitution wasn’t illegal, but being “lewd” or “disorderly” was. Unless they were causing trouble, most officers left the streetwalkers be. Some, however, preferred to make an example of them. Particularly when the magistrates decided they wished to sweep the prostitutes from the streets. After being whipped or jailed, the women went right back to the only lives they had ever known.

A quick glance assured Simon that this one had been given a blanket and a tin of clean water.

One night before the turn of the century, a score of beggars and streetwalkers had been locked up without or water in roundhouse at St. Martin in the Fields in the middle of July. When officers arrived the next morning, four of the women had perished from the heat. Two more died the next day.

Simon was determined to never a miscarriage of justice like that happen again.

“Do you need anything?” he asked.

What a ridiculous question. This woman obviously needed everything.

“No.” She wiped her face. “I have water, thank you.”

He should return to his office. She wasn’t his prisoner. She said she was fine. And yet logic said she wouldn’t be. Gaol was often deadlier than the streets. Her constitution was already not at its healthiest.

“Have you a husband at home?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “A daughter.”

No father. Just a child.

He ignored the twist in his gut. Their situation was completely unlike his. For all he knew, this was a widow, who turned to prostitution only after the man who had loved her for many years had died. Or who was inventing her story whole cloth.

Somehow he doubted it.

Simon made his way back to his desk and forced himself to sort through his papers. He should be focusing on catching the Thief of Mayfair, not wallowing in memories of his childhood.

His mother hadn’t been a common streetwalker. She had been a fashionable courtesan. Beautiful and charming enough to catch the eye—and the heart—of a marquess.

The marquess hadn’t destroyed Simon’s mother’s life by ruining her or impregnating her or refusing to marry her. He’d destroyed her life by loving her.

If he would have simply left her alone, at any point in their clandestine, tumultuous relationship, she would still be alive.

For that, Simon could never forgive him.

His mother had been easy to sweet-talk. She accepted him in her bed, time and again. Accepted his money into her accounts. Encouraged Simon to do the same. Didn’t he want a nice toy? Some new shoes?

He’d wanted a father.

A real father.

Not a savings account to buy trinkets from while his father was back home with the family that mattered. Simon was content to let that money rot in the vaults where it lay. He was his own man. And proud of the name he had made for himself.

It bloody well wasn’t his father’s name. It was his mother’s.

Not that he was ever allowed to speak his father’s name. Even when the marquess snuck them off to some countryside where he wouldn’t be recognized, Simon was still to refer to him as Mr. Smith or Mr. Baker. Never “Lord Hawkridge.” Never “Papa” or “Father.”

That appellation was reserved for the real son. The important one. The one the marquess talked about endlessly. Zachary is doing so well at Eton. Zachary rides better than any lad his age. Zachary will get top marks at Oxford. The son he was proud of.

Simon had cared, for a very long time. And then he had managed to forget for a while. To live his own life. A better life. One that didn’t include any Marquess of Hawkridge.

Until he’d glimpsed his half-brother at the Cloven Hoof and all those old hurts and jealousies bubbled back to the surface.

Perhaps it was a good thing Simon’s father hadn’t thought his mistress and by-blow were as valuable as more important people. It had achieved the result of Simon believing the exact opposite.

He withdrew a slender iron key from his pocket and made his way back to the metal bars.

No, his mother was nothing like the bedraggled streetwalker crying softly in the back of the cell. But they were both people with lives, with hopes, with children. If his mother would have ever found herself at the mercy of the constabulary…

Simon hoped they, too, would have had enough heart to let her go.