Chapter 22
Chapter
Twenty-Two
Smoke and Fury
Dawson brought the morning papers into the morning room with my coffee. There was a certain stiffness in the way he crossed the breakfast room that suggested he had read enough of the headlines to wish he had not.
I didn’t bother to pick up the cup. “What is it?”
“There has been a fire in Bloomsbury, my lord.”
Every thought in my head went still. “Where?”
He placed the topmost newspaper beside my plate and turned it so I could read the column. FIRE IN HARTWELL LANE. PRINTING OFFICES DESTROYED.
For one moment I did not move. Then I snatched up the paper.
The account was brief. A fire had broken out sometime before dawn in the offices of The Quill and Crown, a small literary journal with premises in Hartwell Lane. No lives had been lost. Several adjacent buildings had suffered smoke and water damage. The cause of the fire was unknown.
Unknown. The word struck me as obscene. I read the paragraph again. Then a third time. The Quill and Crown. Hartwell Lane. Lydia’s poem.
Lark.
By the time I reached the end of the article, I was already on my feet.
“Have the carriage brought round.”
Dawson looked as if he had expected no less. “At once, my lord.”
“Quickly.” The coat Dawson pressed on me I took only to stop him trailing after me with it.
The next ten minutes passed in a state of cold, controlled impatience. Or so I told myself. The truth was uglier.
I was afraid.
Not in the manner of battle, where fear arrived with noise and blood and smoke and the certainty that a man might die where he stood.
This was worse, because there was nothing to strike, no order to give, no line to hold.
There were only a newspaper report and the image of Lark walking straight toward danger because she believed truth had a right to be unearthed even when men wished it buried.
The carriage seemed to take an hour to arrive at Bloomsbury.
I looked out the window and saw none of London properly.
Only flashes. A flower seller setting out her baskets.
A boy sweeping a crossing. Omnibuses lumbering through the traffic, women with parcels, men reading their newspapers as they walked—the whole ordinary machinery of a city that had no notion anything was wrong and would not have cared if it were.
None of it had any business being so calm, and yet, all of it was.
Then Bloomsbury began to declare itself.
The air changed first—a low, bitter taint of wet ash.
The streets I knew went wrong by degrees.
A scorch of soot along a wall. A knot of idlers at a corner with their faces turned the same way, come to look at someone else’s ruin.
And under all of it the single thought I could not silence: that a fire a few streets from her door told me nothing of whether she was behind it, safe, or not behind it at all.
I pressed my stick to the floor of the carriage as though I might drive it faster by will alone.
When the carriage finally reached her townhouse, curtains shifted in at least three neighboring windows. The Everthorne crest gleamed plainly on the door. Damnation—too late to do anything about it now.
The door opened almost as soon as I knocked. A wide-eyed maid took one look at my expression and stepped back.
I walked into the hall—and stopped.
Lark stood near the staircase fastening the buttons of her gloves as though this were an ordinary morning and not one that had begun with smoke and fire.
She looked up in surprise. “Thorne?”
Relief struck first. Sharp enough to make me briefly unsteady. “Thank God, you’re safe,” I muttered.
A younger version of Lark stood halfway down the staircase.
For one disorienting moment, I thought fear had unsettled my senses. The resemblance was unmistakable. The same dark hair. The same eyes. The same fine-boned face. But where Lark appeared startled by my arrival, the young woman on the stairs looked merely curious.
“Linnet,” Lark said, her fingers moving as she spoke in some quick, deliberate pattern. “This is Lord Everthorne.”
Ah. The sister.
“Lady Linnet.” I inclined my head, though I had not fully turned from Lark.
“You must face her when you speak,” Lark said, “so she can read your lips.”
I turned properly to the girl and bowed. “Lady Linnet. It is a pleasure to meet you.”
Linnet bit back a smile and curtsied.
Mrs. Selwyn stood near the drawing room door wearing the expression of a woman who had lost one argument that morning.
My gaze returned to Lark. “What are you doing?”
“Going out.”
“Where?”
“To find the editor of The Quill and Crown.”
For one second, I simply stared at her. “The editor,” I repeated carefully, “of the offices that burned down last night.”
“The very one.”
A pulse began to beat behind my eyes.
“Lark,” I said slowly, “tell me you are not seriously intending to go searching for that man by yourself.”
Her brows lifted.
Miriam folded her arms with immediate satisfaction. “For once, I find myself entirely in agreement with His Lordship.”
Linnet smiled—not politely, but with unmistakable amusement.
Lark ignored them both. “Good morning to you as well, Lord Everthorne.”
“There is nothing remotely good about this morning.”
She turned to fully face me. “I disagree. We now know Lydia delivered the poem.”
“We also know someone burned down that building to stop it from being published.”
“Which means we were right. And I intend to speak with The Quill and Crown editor before he disappears.”
“He may have already disappeared, if he had any sense.”
She paused for a moment as she considered my words. “You may be right. He wasn’t there this morning.”
I stared at her in disbelief. “There? As in the offices of The Quill and Crown?”
“Yes.”
“You went to the fire in the middle of the night?”
“Miriam and I did. We were hardly alone. Half the square was there.”
“And you considered it sensible to involve yourself as well?”
“I considered it sensible to determine whether my neighborhood was burning down.” Her calm was making the situation markedly worse.
I took one step toward her. “You’re not going out to look for him.”
“Yes, I am.”
“No. You’re not.”
Lark drew herself up and glared at me. “And how precisely do you intend to stop me? By brute force?”
“Of course not.” The very idea offended me. I would never lay hands on her. On any woman.
A smug smile touched her mouth. She knew she had won that round.
But I possessed weapons of my own. “Have you forgotten what happened to Lydia Gray? Do you wish to end up the same way?”
The smile vanished. “No. I do not.” Her gaze flicked toward the drawing room door. “Let us discuss this in private.”
“Gladly.”
She swept toward that room. I followed and shut the door behind us.
“Would you like some coffee or tea?” she asked. “Or something stronger?”
“Coffee would do, thank you.” It would give us both a moment for our tempers to cool.
I remained standing until the tray arrived, then took the chair opposite hers.
“How do you like it?”
“A splash of milk, no sugar.”
As I took a sip, she said, “Clearly, the poem reached the periodical. Otherwise, why burn down the building?”
“I agree.”
“The editor may still possess a copy. Or correspondence. Or proofs. Or he may simply remember something Lydia said to him. Every hour matters. That is why we need to find him.”
She was absolutely determined. Very well. Another approach, then.
“Mrs. Selwyn was not dressed to go out,” I said. “You intended to go alone. Someone murdered Lydia Gray. Someone set fire to that building. You could be next.”
“We do not know that.”
“I know enough.”
She opened her mouth to argue, but I cut across her. “If something happened to you, what would become of your sister? Have you considered that? Your brother Edgar would gain custody, and we both know precisely what sort of life he would make for her.”
A shadow crossed her face. “That is not fair,” she said quietly.
“No. It is not. But neither is this.” I leaned forward. “Lark, you are gambling with Linnet’s future every time you throw yourself into danger.”
Her gaze lowered to the cup in her hands.
“What do you suggest?”
I dragged a hand across my brow. “I would tell you to leave the matter to me, but you would never agree. Which leaves only one option. We do this together.”
She looked up immediately. “Someone will still know I’m involved.”
“They will know I am involved as well. And I assure you, I shall prove considerably harder to kill than Lydia Gray.” God knew the Crimea had tried.
“I need to find the editor today.”
“And how did you intend to accomplish that?”
“Lord Peregrine. You met him at the museum. He and the editor are friends. He’ll know where to find him. I was on my way to his residence.”
I rose to my feet. “Very well. My carriage is outside.”
“Your carriage?” She stared at me in dismay. “The one bearing the Everthorne crest?”
“Yes.”
“The entire neighborhood will know.”
“Unfortunately. In my defense, I was somewhat distracted by visions of finding you beneath a collapsed roof.”
Color rose swiftly into her cheeks. “Very well,” she muttered.
Relief moved through me again. Quieter this time, but no less complete.
“You are rather forceful when you seek to get your way,” she said.
“One does what one must.”
She pinned me with a hard stare. “Once we find the editor, you are not to bully him. If you do, I shall leave you standing in the street and make my own way home.”
“I make no promises.”
“Thorne,” she cautioned.
“Fine. I shall endeavor not to bully him.”
“That is not the same thing.”
“It is the best offer currently available.”
She sighed. “Let us go before the entire square decides we are conducting a torrid affair.”
Without another word, I opened the drawing room door.
Mrs. Selwyn and Linnet stood directly outside it. Neither attempted innocence.
“Well. That sounded productive,” Lark’s cousin said adjusting her cuffs.
Lark pointed accusingly at her. “You were listening.”
“Guilty as charged.”
“And interpreting for Linnet.”
“Only because the two of you made it impossible not to,” Mrs. Selwyn replied.
Linnet signed something rapidly while grinning like a loon.
Lark flushed scarlet.
“What did she say?” I asked.
“Never mind,” Lark said at once, sweeping down the hall.
“It was a pleasure to meet you, Lady Linnet,” I said, looking directly at her.
Linnet’s hands moved again.
Mrs. Selwyn interpreted her words. “She says you should visit again. Lark likes you.”
Lark snatched up her bonnet and jammed it onto her head. “We are leaving. Now.”