Chapter Twenty-One
V iv stormed into the hall past an astonished Haxton still wielding the poker, and a trembling Jenny, wringing her hands.
“Miss!” cried Jenny. “Are you unharmed?”
Viv flung her gloves and the soiled velvet purse onto the demi-lune table, and tore off her bonnet, moving toward the stairs.
“Perfectly unharmed, Jenny, thank you. But oh he’s a liar and a thief and I shall—” She railed at his perfidy. She did not know what dreadful fate could possibly satisfy her wrath. Really, the whole barbaric idea of four horses pulling his disemboweled body apart seemed reasonable at the moment except for the distress to the horses.
Behind her Haxton closed the door. “Shall we call for the constables to apprehend the ruffian, Miss Bradish?”
“Yes! He will have gone in the direction of Weymouth Street.” A burly constable taking him up would be a good first step. A cell in some low, dank corner of Newgate would be a start. Leg irons would be a nice touch.
“Weymouth Street? Very good, miss.”
Viv reached the foot of the stairs and turned back, her thoughts racing. “No. He’ll go to Wenlocke.” He would go to his grand friend the duke who would protect him from the law, and from Viv, too.
“The duke, miss, that ruffian?” Haxton plainly thought she had taken leave of her senses, and perhaps she had. Somewhere deep in her was a place where a monstrous hurt lay coiled and waiting, and if she stopped being angry even for an instant, it would spring and eat her alive.
“No. The ruffian is a man named Rook. He is Mr. Larkin’s partner.” Only he wasn’t a mister Larkin. He had told her he was Lark . My friends call me Lark. He meant his pickpocket friends and his titled friends. It made no sense that he’d told her such an intimate thing. Her knees threatened to give. She grabbed the newel post and pulled herself together to speak plainly, to name the betrayal. “Mr. Larkin is the thief. First, he stole my purse. Now he’s taken our book proofs.”
Haxton and Jenny stared at her with complete incomprehension.
“Oh, truly, believe me, he is a thief, a common pickpocket. I can’t explain right now.”
A rustle of skirts on the landing above made Viv look up. There stood Mrs. Stryde, the little black curls on the side of her face as tight as ever, her lips compressed into a thin red downward bow.
“Who has taken the book proofs, Miss Bradish? They were your responsibility, were they not?”
“Good morning, Mrs. Stryde.”
“You’d best come up, Miss Bradish. We’ve been waiting for you.”
“Directly.” She turned to Haxton and Jenny, still standing confused and distraught. “Thank you for coming to my aid. There’s no need to send for a constable. Lady Melforth will decide how she wishes to deal with the thief.”
Viv gathered her dignity, clutched her dirtied skirts in one hand, and began to climb. The corrected proofs had been her last tie to her ladyship. In the night at her desk, Viv had restored the copy as closely as she could to the original, the one that had emerged from their work together, from hours of exchanging ideas and playing with words and laughing. Viv had worn out her pencil making those changes. In the end it was as if she had recovered those lost good times. But Dodsley had refused to look at Viv’s corrections. He had his orders, he said, direct from Lady Melforth. The Traveling Viscountess was the name that sold books, and he was going to publish the guide as she wrote it. Only she hadn’t written it. That was the rub.
Viv had wandered for some time, hugging the corrected proofs to her chest, thinking about her mother’s house, about the room she shared with her sisters, about the daily round of errands and chores that kept their meager household going, about scrimping and saving for paper and pencils, about her mother’s weariness and her stepfather’s demands. She did not want to go home, but she could see no way forward in London. She could take the guide to a rival publisher or to the law, but any claim she made of her role in the writing of it would expose Lady Melforth as a liar. Or, more likely, given her ladyship’s established position, would land Viv herself in jail as a fraud.
The garnet ring on her finger had mocked her as she wandered. If Viv’s betrothal had been a real one, if Lark had truly been open with her about his situation, if he had once said that he loved her… But those were not the facts. She hardly knew how she found her way back to the house.
The act of climbing the stairs steadied her. She had been in a fog, and now the fog had cleared. By the time she entered the upstairs drawing room her mind was made up. They were all there, the Strydes, Lady Melforth, and Dr. Newberry. Lady Melforth stretched out on her favorite couch supported by pillows. Her jutting nose gave a cold, unbending expression to the pale, sunken face. Plump, bewhiskered Mr. Stryde sat in a chair by her feet, while Mrs. Stryde in another of her endless striped gowns hovered over a tray of medicines on the side table. From the hearth Newberry shot Viv a scornful glance that took in her dragging skirts. She knew she would receive no support from him.
“You look a right mess, miss. Where have you been this morning?” Lady Melforth’s frown deepened.
Viv waited. They all looked at her, expecting her to wilt or crumble under their censure, but she had nothing to lose. She met Lady Melforth’s gaze. “I took the proofs that arrived yesterday back to Dodsley for correction. He, of course, refused to make any changes.”
Lady Melforth’s eyes flashed with a quick gleam of recognition and alarm. Her hand shook and she glanced aside. Her ladyship understood what it meant that Viv had read those proofs. “But Mrs. Stryde has just said they were stolen.” Her voice quavered.
“From your very doorstep, by Mr. Larkin, working with a partner to create a diversion. It’s a method pickpockets commonly use.”
Mrs. Stryde gasped. Her glance flew to her husband. “I told you my necklace was stolen.”
Newberry shoved away from the mantel, moving to stand beside Mrs. Stryde. “You were sharper than the rest of us apparently, Eustacia. You recognized the man as a fraud from the beginning.”
“Your necklace was not stolen, however. You still have it,” said Viv, insisting on the truth. She would not have Lark condemned for something he didn’t do.
“But my proofs are gone,” said Lady Melforth, her brow furrowed in perplexity.
Viv lifted her chin and stared her ladyship down. “You may pursue the thief, of course, but I’m sure you can have no use for the corrected proofs he took. Dodsley should be able to supply you with another proof copy, a copy more to your liking.”
“Insolent girl,” hissed Mrs. Stryde. “How dare you speak to your employer in such a manner.”
“I do dare. I resign my position. I thank you, Lady Melforth, for your many past kindnesses. I will stay only as long as it takes for you to engage someone to take over my duties.”
A brief stricken look passed over Lady Melforth’s face. It might have been a plea for understanding, and Viv waited for her to say that it was all a mistake, but her ladyship’s hands closed on the silk coverlet over her legs, and she looked away.
Viv went cold. She understood the choice to lie in the moment when there seemed no other way, when everything, one’s position and reputation, could be lost forever, but to enshrine the deception, to carry on deliberately in the lie, was something else. The woman she thought her dearest friend, now knowingly denied the work they’d done together. Her mind flashed to Lark. How odd that the pickpocket in such a desperate moment had simply admitted the truth and lost everything.
It was Mrs. Stryde who spoke next. “Foolish girl. Where will you go? Your thief of a fiancé can’t help you.”
“Where I go can be no concern of yours, Mrs. Stryde. I am not without resources.” With a quick curtsy she turned and left.
*
Within minutes of leaving Henrietta Street, Lark altered his course twice. As long as he didn’t stop, the loss of Viv would not catch up with him. Part of his mind went on working, guided by the instinct to avoid pursuit. She would quickly discover the theft of the proofs, and she would be furious. She would think that he and Rook had been in on it together, and Lark could not plead his case. He could not argue that he had ended his partnership with Rook months earlier. He could not change what he had done that first day, stepping into Viv’s line of fire to save Rook. He owed Rook that. He would do it again. And he’d made sure that Viv would send the constables after him, not Rook. Angry and wounded, Rook would plunge ahead, do some reckless click, follow it up with an evening of drink, and stagger back to their old lair.
Viv would have Haxton summon a constable. She knew enough to find Adele St. Clair to ask where Lark lived. He could not go to his digs, nor could he go to Wenlocke, as Viv could as easily send constables to the duke’s house. He did not want to embarrass Wenlocke. Maybe it had been folly to steal the proofs. Lark wouldn’t know until he had a chance to look at them and discover why they pained Viv. As he moved, a plan formed. He knew a place where no one would think to look for him and where he could take all the time he needed to examine the proofs. He turned his steps toward Isaacson Brothers Fashion Emporium.
When he reached the East End square dominated by the Emporium, he could see that business was good. Old Mr. Isaacson and his brother had built a retail palace, with an elaborate portico at the entrance and floor-to-ceiling windows along the front that showed a crowded interior. Lark made his way around to the back alley where goods were delivered and asked the porter at the door for his friend Ezra, Isaacson’s son.
Within minutes Ezra showed up, dressed for the shop floor in a fashionable gray coat, pin-dotted white cotton waistcoat, drab trousers, and a lavender floral tie that managed to merge the colors into a single scheme. Lark guessed that Isaacson’s would sell dozens of those silk ties based on Ezra’s appearance alone.
“You are unfair to your customers, Ezra,” Lark told his friend.
Ezra let him in. “How so?”
“You make them think they will look as dashing as yourself.”
Ezra grinned. “What brings you back to us? Twice in a fortnight! You’ve not been shot again? ”
“Worse. I must avoid the constabulary for a few days. Can you put me up?”
“That bad, is it?” Ezra gave Lark’s face a closer scrutiny. “You look done in, as if we ought to fit you up with black bands for your hat and sleeves.”
“It’s nothing. A minor wound.” Lark did his best to hold Ezra’s gaze.
“You know the room upstairs behind the cutting floor? Will that suit you?”
Lark nodded, and Ezra led the way up the back stairs they’d often used since they first met. That day they had been vying to buy the same coat from a slops seller in Monmouth Street. Lark actually wanted to wear the fine custom-made coat formerly belonging to a bankrupt tea dealer. Ezra wanted to take it apart to understand its construction. They’d compromised, and Lark had followed Ezra to the Fashion Emporium.
“Here we are.” Ezra opened the door to a spacious plain room with a small window to the north, no carpet, no curtains. “What have you nicked this time?”
“A book.” Lark noted a daybed covered in a red-and-blue Kilim rug, a plain deal table and chair under the window, and a tall blue-painted wardrobe. The place was ideal for his plan.
“Books aren’t your usual style.” One of Ezra’s dark brows went up. Another of the reasons customers bought whatever Ezra chose to wear was that he was a handsome fellow with a head of dark curls and an easy, unaffected manner. “Is it a rare manuscript?”
“It’s the key to a mystery. I need time to read it.” Now that Lark had stopped moving, the hollow in his chest had begun to ache.
“Oh, you’ll have time. In case you’ve forgotten, we close for Shabbat in a couple of hours. The place will be a tomb until Saturday night.”
“More like a grand mausoleum. I’ll be ghost then.”
Ezra sobered. “I can’t keep you company. A good son has to be at his mother’s table, but I’ll leave you some food and beer.”
“What about paper and pencils? And candles? And have you got a boy who can take a message for me?”
“Now you expect me to be a hotel. I’ll send a boy to you. Stay out of sight. I don’t want Father to think I’m breaking Shabbat for the likes of you.”
“You do eat and light candles, don’t you? No one will know I’m here.”
“Fine. But don’t leave until we talk. I want your opinion on some cloth Father bought to use for a new line of trousers.”
“He’s not going to make Cossack trousers, is he?”
Ezra shrugged. “Customers want them, but they offend my father’s sense of what an English gentleman ought to wear.”
“That’s because they are a high crime against fashion.”
Ezra laughed. “An abomination, Father calls them. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
Lark set the paper package with Viv’s manuscript on the table. There was enough light for him to begin, but he would wait until he had his supplies and sent his message. He looked about the room again. The plainness suited him. From the window the view north across rooftops reminded him of London as he’d known it with Wenlocke and the others. He recognized St. Botolph’s narrow cone of a steeple rising upward from the irregular pattern of slate and chimney pots stretching out to the horizon.
Ezra returned with a basket of food, three bottles of porter, and one of the firm’s messenger boys. He also gave Lark a box of candles, paper, and pencils, taken from the designer’s workshop. Lark wrote a note to Wenlocke, giving the boy strict instructions for its delivery and a coin. Then Ezra was off for his family’s weekly observances.
*
Lark put aside his gentlemanly trappings, his hat and gloves, his coat and tie, and settled himself at the table. He had dressed himself in the borrowed robes of a fiction for too long. It was time to face the truth. Edward Larkin did not exist. He, Lark, was a thief with a stolen treasure, a thief who could help the woman he loved. He unwrapped the package and found a dark-green cloth-bound book with a sepia drawing of a London street affixed to the cover. He opened the book to the title page and saw at once what had left Viv slumped and bereft on Lady Melforth’s doorstep. Inserted into the blank space between the printed title and Lady Melforth’s name was Viv’s name in pencil. The contrast between the words from the printer in ink and Viv’s neat handwritten pencil correction made everything clear. Her authorship had been denied. Her work, not her purse, had been stolen .
Not by Dodsley. Dodsley would not have omitted Viv’s name from the title page in error, and Lark remembered Viv’s words— Dodsley is not the problem. Only by Lady Melforth’s order could the manuscript have been so altered. Lark turned the pages. The structure and elements of the guide remained what Viv had described, but when he came to the writing, the stories of women woven into the brief walking tours, he saw what Lady Melforth had done. Viv’s penciled notes marked those places where Lady Melforth had removed any sign of Viv’s liveliness and wit and turned Viv’s stories into bland accounts of how to get about London and what to pay for various services. No page remained untouched.
He turned to the story of their meeting. Most of the original story had been omitted and reinstated in Viv’s own hand on a page attached to the proofs with a pin. He traced her pencil marks with his fingertips and began to read aloud, hearing Viv as he did so, seeing her eyes flash, catching her joy at the adventure of it all.
Women are frequently advised to avoid certain streets in our great metropolis. We are told that danger lurks around unsavory corners, which our sex is ill-prepared to meet. These perilous haunts are not the lonely heaths of highwaymen and footpads nor the dark by-ways of lawless and predatory cosh-carriers, but streets of commerce and enterprise, politics and publishing.
To test the truth of such advice, dear reader, this author took it upon herself to risk a solo perambulation down Babylon Street, notorious for its politics and the prints in its shop windows. The danger, it is presumed, is that a woman is likely to fall into a reverie, her gaze caught and bewitched by the spectacle in the windows, so that she becomes the unsuspecting prey of a pickpocket or purse snatcher. I had a great desire to meet just such a type, a master of subtlety.
For the adventure, I took certain precautions. I came by cab and ordered the driver to follow at a distance as I walked the length of the street. I wore a decoy velvet purse on my arm and kept my actual funds secure in a pocket. I carried under my short cape, a serviceable Toby, with the firing of which I am well-acquainted.
For all Babylon Street’s evil reputation, I saw little to alarm me. At one end of the street, a kidney-pie man with his portable oven was doing a brisk business with men splashed in the marks of the plasterer’s trade. A man in the robes and wig of a barrister, his brief under his arm, hurrying past, indifferent to his surroundings, seemed to me a likelier target for a thief, for the fob of a gold watch stretched across his substantial girth. I took heart from a waif carrying flowers, a shawl around her thin shoulders, showing no fear of her surroundings. A barefoot boy teased a dog. These were my fellow Londoners going about their business undisturbed by the reputation of the street.
There was an air of decay about the shops with their overhanging upper stories above the cobbles. The narrowness of the street admitted little light. But these were merely the signs of great age, of the street’s past. I walked on, looking for a likely window to study. One bow window had already attracted a modest crowd while my gaze lighted on a shop advertising schoolbooks. The shop’s wares spilled out into the street on trestles and hanging shelves as if the place were bursting with books.
There I paused to study the shop’s wares, picking a likely volume from the hanging shelf. In no time I became aware of a ruffian who passed me, close enough to brush the hem of my skirts, and easily identified by the noxious smell that trailed in his wake. I kept my arm at an angle, my little velvet bag, while visible, secured by strings deep in the crook of my arm. I confess I did not expect what happened next.
The ruffian returned. He slammed his body against mine. I fell back against the trestles full of books, the purse slid down my arm and disappeared in his grasp. I righted myself in an instant, drew my Toby, and aimed at the fleeing villain. I called out, intent on stopping him, and seizing the opportunity to talk. Instead, to my surprise, a helpful gentleman addressed me, stepping unwittingly into the path of the bullet.
Mr. Witsworth, like most men, appeared to consider me helpless and unable to deal with the situation. His well-meant but thoughtless interference allowed the villain to escape and cost me an opportunity to understand the workings of the criminal mind. It was he, dear reader, who needed assistance.
She’d enjoyed that line, but it caused Lark a pang. She would no longer think of him as Witsworth . The plain room was dark. Lark rose and crossed to stand at the window looking out over London. He rolled his shoulders and shook off the stiffness of sitting so long. In his pocket were the things he and Viv had traded that first day, the spent ball from her Toby and the garnet ring with which he’d proposed. He had to accept that he’d lost her, or he couldn’t get his head clear to help her, to figure out what had happened to bring the manuscript to its present state. He closed the book and looked again at the package. Someone had written the street name and number, and then a second writer had scrawled Viv’s name in place as the person to receive the proofs. So, Viv had received the proofs, discovered the changes, which could only have been made at her ladyship’s orders, and had worked to restore the manuscript. He knew Viv had been to see Dodsley, and that Dodsley had been unwilling to accept her corrections.
He did not know whether Viv had confronted Lady Melforth directly, but Viv’s unhappiness meant that Dodsley was going to publish the version sanctioned by Lady Melforth. Dodsley was willing to participate in the theft. His motive would be profit. Viv was an unknown authoress with no following. Lady Melforth was the Traveling Viscountess, a known best seller. It was Lady Melforth whose motive made little sense to Lark.
Across the way a pair of gulls landed on the peak of a roof and did a bit of bird preening before folding their wings and tucking their heads down for the night. Below the birds, the roof sloped down into a hollow behind a low balustrade. The little nook was bordered by a projecting dormer on one side and on the other by the solid bulk of a brick chimney with its red clay pots feeding thin wisps of smoke into a hazy lavender sky. In such hollows, their gang of lost boys had slept until Wenlocke’s family found him and claimed him. Then the gang had moved, first into Wenlocke’s mother’s house, and later into Daventry Hall in the country. They had had beds with sheets, coverlets, and pillows. They had had clothes and shoes and plenty to eat. They had had lessons. But still they had been a gang until Wenlocke had fallen in love.
Lark remembered again with painful clarity the scene of Wenlocke’s betrayal, of his walking away from Lark without a backward look. Fragments of memory from that long ago scene and the morning’s scene on Henrietta Street tangled together in his mind. He gripped the edge of the window frame. He had walked away from Rook in just such a way. He had saved his old friend from being shot, and he had saved him from being pursued, but Lark could not blame Rook for his anger, or for telling Viv the truth of their partnership. Lark had left their shared life behind. His heart, which had belonged to no one but himself, now belonged to Viv.
Still, he could not see what justified Lady Melforth’s betrayal. The woman did not have Dodsley’s profit motive. Lark went back in his mind over what Viv had told him and what he had seen of her ladyship. Viv had believed them to be partners, friends. She had been protective of her ladyship in the face of the Strydes and eager to share her daily discoveries of London with her ladyship. All that seemed to have changed. An explanation that made sense was Lady Melforth’s illness. Perhaps, her ladyship’s immobility, her shaking hand, her falls, had made her more dependent on Viv than she wished to be. He tried to imagine how her ladyship felt seeing two names on a guide where always before there had only been one. He knew what it meant to be in the grip of strong resentment and what one could do in that state. But now that he had renewed his friendship with Wenlocke, he knew the folly of keeping an old injury alive in one’s heart for far too long.
Lark turned from the window, lit the candles in the darkened room, and opened a bottle of porter. He needed a strategy for seeing Lady Melforth and convincing her to approve of Viv’s corrections.