Chapter Nineteen
Morning came quick and clean. Leticia woke with the shape of a raven still sharp behind her eyes and the weight of a brooch she had already put away. She dressed with steady hands, tied her bonnet, and checked herself in the glass as if checking a stitch. Plain enough to pass in a crowd. Ready.
In the hall, Lady Eastbury paused with a basket of notes and a smile that knew more than it asked. “You will not keep the town waiting, I see.”
“Only the important parts,” Leticia said.
“Take my carriage. Cotton squabs are better than aching feet.” Her aunt kissed her cheek and pressed a small paper packet into her hand. “Lemon pastilles. Do not offer them to Colonel Barrington. He cannot be trusted with sweets.”
Leticia laughed and tucked the packet away. The sound eased the tightness under her ribs.
Gabriel arrived within the hour. His hat was in his hand, and there was that careful look he wore when he meant to be both thorough and kind. They exchanged good mornings and the kind of glance that said the rest could wait until they were moving.
He hesitated on the steps. “I have word from Barrington.”
“Now?”
He held it so she could read along with him. The hand was brisk. The message was not long.
A plain brown gown and a brown wig were found in a cabinet in the retiring room. Left in haste. The porter swears the door was locked earlier. I will expect you both.
The ground settled beneath her. “So, she planned for the disguise and planned to shed it.”
“She also planned a key,” Gabriel said. “Or had a helper.”
They did not say Denholm. They did not say anyone. They climbed in and let the morning take them down High Street while the town opened its doors around them.
Barrington received them in his study with a cheerful complaint about the lack of decent coffee and the abundance of decent muffins in his house. Mrs. Bainbridge had sent the latter. He made a show of offering one and ate it himself, which Leticia suspected was the result he wanted from the start.
Felix Townsend stood at the mantel with a small stack of papers and the look of a man who had run since dawn and meant to keep running. He bowed. “Lady Salisbury. Lord Ashcombe.”
“Felix,” Gabriel said. “Your note.”
Felix handed over a folded sheet and the key to a cabinet tagged on a string.
“The porter swears he locked the door after the supper set. When he unlocked it to help a lady whose hem had caught on a splinter, he found these. Brown wig. Brown gown. No name. No maker stitched in the lining. The combs are common. The seam at the hem is new.”
Leticia glanced at Barrington. “She changed in that room, stole in that room, and left the costume there.”
“Neat work,” Barrington said. “She could have walked past the front door with a glass of lemonade, and no one would have looked twice.”
“Mrs. Penstone’s necklace,” Gabriel said. “You are certain we can tie it to the retiring room and not the floor.”
“We can now,” Felix said. “Her maid confirms she adjusted her mask behind a screen and noticed the clasp was a bit loose. When they returned to fetch her shawl, the screen had been shifted. She assumed a draft. I do not.”
Leticia stepped closer to the table where Felix had set a small drawing of a clasp. “A diamond set inside a larger diamond. If the light holds still, a raven inside the stone.” She did not touch the paper. She did not need to.
Barrington watched her with that open, soldier’s gaze that took stock and kept counsel. “You have a theory.”
“I have a path,” Leticia said. “We keep chasing ghosts and chance encounters. I would like ledgers instead. Mrs. Penstone’s cousin bought her necklace through a friend.
That friend had a seller. Sellers leave trails when they want money.
Auctions. Private rooms. Subscriptions. Society notices that pretend not to name names. ”
Felix’s mouth tipped, quick with approval. “The papers.”
“And the jeweler,” Gabriel said. “Even if the piece did not pass through his hands, he will have seen similar work. Someone cut that tiny raven. It is a boast disguised as secrecy.”
“Good,” Barrington said. “Felix, take Lady Salisbury’s lead. Assemble the notices tied to private sales of diamonds this past season, and any report of a necklace of severe style with a charm at the clasp. The Morton estate pieces make a useful comparison. We have those sketches.”
“I know the archivist at the Gazette office,” Felix said. “He owes me a favor and a lunch.”
Gabriel set the found cabinet tag beside the drawing. “We also want a list of who had a key to that retiring room and when it was issued. There is planning here. Planning leaves hands.”
“I will have it,” Felix said. “Today.”
Barrington nodded, glanced at Leticia. “You understand this makes you part of the team, Lady Salisbury.”
“I am already part of it,” she said. “I would prefer to be useful.”
“Spoken like a woman I admire,” Mrs. Bainbridge said from the doorway, bright as the sun, a basket on her arm.
Leticia had not heard her enter. “I have brought more muffins because the colonel cannot be trusted with only one.” She set the basket down and greeted them all with a smile that took the edge off the morning.
“Shall I have tea sent in, or are you all determined to starve in the name of justice?”
“We will eat while plotting,” Barrington said. “It improves the temper of men and investigations.”
They took tea. They did not linger over it. When they rose, the plan was simple. Felix to the Gazette and the records office. Barrington to question the porter and anyone who managed keys. Gabriel and Leticia to the jeweler on Westgate Street, to ask polite questions and earn less polite answers.
Outside, the day had sharpened. A breeze off the water kept the sun from bullying the street. Leticia fell in beside Gabriel. “You did not say all of what you are thinking.”
“I rarely do,” he said, with a glance that held apology and something warmer.
“Say enough,” she said.
“The raven is a mark. Marks belong to men who believe the world should remember them,” he said. “Men like that do not trust many. They trust themselves and a few hands they think they own.”
“Tresham studies the Order,” Leticia said. “He would know the marks.”
“He would,” Gabriel said. “So would anyone who wants to raise the Order’s ghost with a cache of glittering proofs.”
They turned onto Westgate. The jeweler’s window was clean and full of soft things that would make a dull day kinder.
As they reached it, a figure stepped back from the glass and into the flow of foot traffic.
Erica. She saw them, offered a bright nod that held nothing to apologize for, and was gone in the next breath, as if the town had swallowed her like a coin.
Leticia held her place at the window and studied a watch chain as if she meant to buy it. “Do we follow?”
“No,” Gabriel said. “We ask our questions.”
He pushed open the door and stood back to let her pass first. The shop smelled faintly of oil and lavender.
It was quiet in the manner of a church. A man in a sober coat looked up from a tray of pins and smiled the way men smile when they are certain they will send you out lighter in the pocket and pleased with the exchange.
“Good morning,” Leticia said. “We have a question about custom work. Small work. Precise.”
“You have come to the right place,” the jeweler said.
Leticia met Gabriel’s eye. They did not speak the word raven. Not yet.
They would ask about cutters who could set a diamond within a diamond, the kind of work that demanded patience and pride.
They would ask to see the books that named those hands.
And if the books were tidy and dull, they would ask to see the drawer beneath the ledger, the one that held the orders a gentleman preferred not to advertise.
Outside, bells struck the quarter hour. Leticia thought of the brooch sitting enfolded in its cloth and felt the pull of two loyalties. She did not look away from it. She placed them side by side in her mind and found there was room.
“Shall we begin?” she said.
Gabriel nodded. “Please.”
The jeweler lifted a loupe and invited them closer. The glass caught the light. The morning moved on.
They were halfway through questions about cutters who could set a diamond within a diamond when the bell over the shop door chimed. Felix stepped in, hat still in his hand, a thin sheaf of papers tucked under his arm.
“I knew I’d find you here,” he said, low enough not to carry past the counter. He glanced once at the jeweler, back to Gabriel. “The Gazette archivist came through faster than I hoped.”
Gabriel straightened. “And?”
Felix laid one folded sheet on the glass between them, the print faint from age.
“A notice for a private sale held four years ago. Included a necklace of ‘uncommon restraint, clasped with a token stone in diamond form.’ The seller’s name is obscured, intentionally, I think. But the buyer of record…”
He tapped the line. Leticia leaned closer.
“I know that name,” she said.
“You should,” Felix replied. “They were at the masquerade.”
The jeweler returned with a tray, smiling as though nothing in the world could be urgent. Felix stepped back, letting the lead rest like a spark waiting for the right breath.
“Shall we wrap this up?” Gabriel said quietly.
Leticia nodded, her mind already reaching ahead to the next question.