He Chose the Girl Who Tried to Kill Him novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: Rules for the Back Room

Tobias Haldane lived over a bookbinder's shop, up two flights of stairs that smelled of glue.

He had two rooms.

One held a bed, a washstand and a chair, and the other held a long table covered in pages.

The pages were all in the same neat hand, with a lamp over them and a bottle of ink at each corner.

"I copy documents for law offices," he said, setting the lamp down. "Wills, mostly. I know a great many people's secrets and none of them know my face."

"That is a sad sentence," Nan said.

"It is also rent."

He gave the bed to us.

He set a kettle on the stove, cut a loaf of bread into three thick slices and put a dish of cold ham beside it.

Nan sat on the floor with her back against the wall and ate it all.

She ate like someone who had not been fed in three days, which I learned later was true.

I stood by the window with my cloak still on.

"I have terms," Tobias said.

He said it to both of us, and he did not look at either.

"Nobody leaves these rooms without telling me. Nobody tells anyone where the two of you are, not a friend, not a priest, not your cook."

"I have no friends to tell," Nan said.

"I have a cook," I said, "and she cried when my father put me out."

"Then she does not learn this address." His eyes came to me at last. "And nobody touches anybody. I have a brother who will send men up these stairs, and I do not intend to spend my nights fending off a pair of women who have decided to kill each other."

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