Chapter 20 #2
"That is quite the list," I muttered, making notes on the sheets of paper, my pencil struggling to keep pace with her. "Perhaps I should equip him with his own horse and carriage while I am at it."
She grinned. "Not for at least several years."
I found myself wanting to prolong the moment. The meal. The conversation. The simple fact of sitting opposite her while the world beyond the tavern walls ceased to exist.
Dangerous instinct. I noted it as such and did nothing whatsoever to curb it.
At one point, she warned me solemnly that I would need patience. "Will is bound to resent you," she said. "You represent everything denied to him."
"I am beginning to suspect you enjoy issuing military campaigns under the guise of domestic advice."
A spark of laughter entered her eyes, and I felt it land somewhere just beneath my ribs.
When she declined another glass of spiced ale, citing Miriam's disapproval should she return home tipsy, I reluctantly tucked away the papers, already regretting the practical turn the evening was about to take.
"So," I said, forcing my thoughts back toward the investigation, straightening in my chair as though the motion alone could reassemble my composure. "How do we proceed?"
Her expression sharpened, the softness of a moment ago replaced by something keener. "Lydia's poem. She was on her way to a publisher when she left my house."
"But which one?"
"The London Review and Athenaeum is possible. They occasionally print political commentary disguised as literary criticism. But Lydia may have chosen something smaller. More radical."
"I take it such publications exist."
"Oh yes." A gleam entered her eyes. "London is full of respectable people publicly denouncing dangerous ideas while privately reading them."
Despite everything, the corner of my mouth threatened to turn upward.
"I shall prepare a list tonight," she continued. "And begin visiting them tomorrow."
"Do you believe the poem named someone outright?"
Her expression grew thoughtful again, and I watched her turn the question over the way she turned over everything, patiently, from every angle before committing to an answer.
"No. Lydia was too intelligent for that.
But I think she wrote it in such a way that the right men would recognize themselves. "
A chill moved slowly down my spine.
"And if they recognized themselves," she finished quietly, "that alone may have been enough to kill her."
Silence settled heavily between us.
Then I said, "I'll need to locate Brookes as well."
"The man in Edinburgh."
I nodded. "Twelve years have passed since that night. The distance in time may loosen his tongue."
"We can only hope," she said. "Once his address is located, you will need to travel there."
"Shouldn't pose a problem. There are northbound trains from King's Cross each morning. I could be in Edinburgh by that evening." Then I looked directly at her. "What else needs exploring?"
"The institution in Kent," she said. "We need to know who funds it, who runs it, how women arrive there, and what becomes of them afterward."
"I can ask my solicitors to delve further into it."
"And I shall make enquiries amongst my acquaintances. Someone is bound to know something."
A cold heaviness settled in my chest, spreading outward until I felt it in my hands. I knew enough about that institution to fear for her. "Lark, I want you to leave Kent to me."
She frowned, the line of her jaw setting in a way I was coming to recognize as immovable. "Not entirely to you, surely."
"You would be exposed."
"I am not proposing to march through the front doors announcing myself, Thorne, though I appreciate your obvious horror at the possibility."
Amused despite the tightness still in my chest, I couldn't help but smile. Still, she had to use sense. "You will not go as yourself." It was neither a suggestion, nor a command. But something betwixt the two. I let it sit there between us, unwilling to soften it further.
She met my gaze without flinching. "Of course not. I shall arrive as a concerned gentlewoman making inquiries on behalf of an elderly relative. Surely you can find no fault with that."
"It's a sensible plan, as well as plausible.
" But it also made her vulnerable and put her in danger.
The thought of her walking willingly into a place like that settled badly inside me, a cold stone I could not dislodge.
"At least wait until I have more information before you act. It should not take long."
She did not look pleased, but after a moment she agreed, and I allowed myself the small, unworthy satisfaction of having won that much.
By the time our conversation ended, the light beyond the tavern windows had faded to gray, and river fog curled through the Wapping streets.
I offered to escort her home, but she refused. It would not do for us to be seen together in Bloomsbury.
After paying the tab, I accompanied her outside.
The damp evening air smelled of coal smoke, tar, and the low-tide reek of the river, and somewhere out on the water a ship's bell rang the hour.
A hansom appeared within minutes—Burch's doing, no doubt; few enough passed this deep into the docks unbidden.
As I helped her climb inside, the fog softened the edges of her figure beneath the streetlamps. I forbade my thoughts from straying into dangerous territory. We were involved in a murder investigation. It would not do to think of Lark as an attractive woman.
Still, I allowed myself the pleasure of holding her gloved hand longer than necessary, my thumb resting once, briefly, against the inside of her wrist before I released her. "You'll send word of any developments."
"Of course. I shall expect the same from you."
Reluctantly, I released her and stepped back before closing the carriage door.
A moment later the hansom rattled away into the gathering dusk. I remained where I was, watching until it disappeared into the fog, my hand still faintly warm where hers had rested in it.
Only then did movement across the street catch my attention.
A man lingered near the mouth of an alley. Thin face. Dark coat. Narrow shoulders. His attention remained fixed on Lark's departing carriage with far too much intensity to be casual.
Every soft thing in me hardened at once, the old readiness returning to my limbs before conscious thought caught up with it. As I stepped off the curb toward him, he stiffened. Then he turned sharply and hurried away.
I swore under my breath and went after him, but my damn leg betrayed me almost immediately. Pain shot upward with every uneven stride, and I gritted my teeth against it, refusing to slow.
By the time I reached the alley mouth, the man had vanished into the fog. I stood there a long moment, breathing hard, my hand braced against the wet brick, and felt the evening's fragile peace go out of me like a tide withdrawing.