Chapter 9
For all that they made him uncomfortable, Ambrose enjoyed visiting the Nightingale household.
It was a place of warmth and happiness, and those who lived here had become his friends.
Not that his household was not full of happiness.
His sisters were there—well, two of them were—and they always made him laugh or smile, even when they were lecturing him, which was often.
His mother was awkward and humorless most of the time, but his father was a good man, and Ambrose enjoyed his company.
Was he stuffy? The thought had been plaguing Ambrose lately. Was he sticking to rules that needed changing? Mungo and Ram certainly thought so, if the conversation they’d just had was any indication.
Ambrose had never had cause to question what he was and had always been. Lately that was happening constantly.
“You’re frowning, Rosie. Care to tell me why?”
“Hello, Pixie,” he said when his youngest sister walked up to him into the large parlor they were about to hold their monthly meeting in.
Violet had married Charles and was now under the wing of the Nightingale family, for which he was eternally grateful. She was also the sister who had suffered the deepest loss.
Engaged at a young age, her fiancé had died and left her broken-hearted, until Charles Thomas stepped into her life. She was now happy, and he’d always be grateful to his brother-in-law for that.
Small, with soft brown eyes and hair, his little sister wasn’t his favorite, because that would be wrong, but he had spent a lot of time with her when she was grieving, which had drawn them closer.
“I’m not allowed to frown now?”
“Of course you are, but I’d like to know why,” she said with a cheeky smile.
“God’s blood, I have a hunger,” the next man to enter the room declared.
Behind him came another. The pair were Leo and Alex, the eldest Nightingale siblings. Leo was a viscount, and Alex, from what Ambrose could gather, was put on this earth to annoy people—namely his siblings.
It had been Alex who had made the declaration about food, which was also something he did often.
“It’s coming. You’ll mind your bloody manners and wait for it,” Mungo said, stomping into the room with a laden tray of food. “I’ve a mind to make you fetch the rest, you ungrateful fool.”
“Now, Mungo, you know you love me.” After making that pronouncement, Alex then pounced on the tray.
“Right, then,” Bramstone said, entering with a large ledger, pen, and ink. “We shall give it a few more minutes before we begin to see if the others arrive. Of course, not everyone will be here all the time, as we’ve already established.”
Ambrose had tried to return the money he’d been given from the Pavlov fortune, but it had been handed right back. He’d then told Bram he didn’t need to be involved in the workings of what was done with it. Again, that was ignored and his presence demanded.
Every person in this room had been there the day they found it.
A piercing shriek made him wince, and then Olivia ran in.
She was the daughter of Gray, a detective at Scotland Yard, and the eldest Nightingale daughter, to whom he was married.
He was from a wealthy noble family but had chosen not to live his life as they did, which had ensured he fit into this family with ease.
“Primrose, slow down!”
“Primrose?” Ambrose looked at Gray, who was beside him. “I thought your daughter’s name was Olivia.”
“She likes to change her name every day. As you can imagine, it’s not easy to keep up, but we try.”
“You could just say no.”
Gray gave him a pitying look, which Ambrose did not like one bit and had been on the receiving end of many times already today. “You poor, ignorant fool. One day you will have a daughter, and we’ll talk more then.”
The thought of a child—his child—made him feel a little odd inside.
“Tilly!”
His eyes shot to the door, and there she was. The bane of his existence dressed in pale lemon. In her hair was a rose-colored ribbon. Seemingly simple, and yet it was anything but on her.
Tilly had a lush body he had no right to lust after—but he did. Especially after that kiss. She was smiling as she entered, but that fell away as she saw him.
He knew that, like him, she would have been watching the secret entrances in their clubs. A thought that made him go cold, but as he had little control over the actions of Miss Matilda Wilson, there was nothing he could do about that.
“Tilly, how wonderful!” Alexander Nightingale greeted her with a kiss on her cheek.
He was the second eldest behind Leopold, who was the only one in the family with a title.
“I have a few questions for you, dear. Especially as someone is making their presence felt.”
To anyone else, those words would be odd, but he was used to their peculiar ways now. Alex, for instance, talked to the dead.
“But first, allow me to applaud you on your handling of the Crisp situation.”
“What Crisp situation?” Ambrose asked his little sister.
“They wanted to join The Iris Club, but Tilly asked them why, and Lady Crisp didn’t like it. She was quite rude to her,” his sister said.
The flash of anger was what he would feel if Lady Crisp mistreated anyone he knew, Ambrose reminded himself.
“What did she say, Pixie?”
“That Tilly was plain and unworthy of her time and how she should be grateful that Lady Crisp wanted to join her little club. She was spitting mad.”
“Bitch,” Ambrose hissed.
“Agreed.”
“Has anyone lost a chatelaine?” Leo asked abruptly.
“Have you ever seen any of the people in this room wear one of those?” Ellen asked her brother.
“Mungo, maybe?” Alex said, smirking.
The Scotsman predictably growled.
“I felt the urge to find it a few days ago when I visited that club you made us all join, Ambrose,” Leo said.
“I did not make you join. I merely pointed out that I belonged and the membership was down—”
“Unlike our club,” Violet said with a smirk.
“Back to the chatelaine,” Leo said.
No one in the room had lost one, nor walked about with keys dangling from one, it seemed, much to Leo’s annoyance.
Tea was then drunk and food consumed as they chatted, and he could not stop his eyes from going to Tilly, who was still talking to Alex. Ambrose casually moved closer and hated himself for needing to. But whatever they were discussing had her frowning.
“So, you haven’t lost a woman in your life who was older? She seems insistent you know her.”
As he was watching her, he saw the color drain from Tilly’s face at Alex’s words.
“I—ah, no. Excuse me for a moment.” She made her way to the door and soon disappeared.
Alex watched her, eyes narrowed in thought.
Ambrose thought about following her, but it wasn’t his place to do so. He did, however, watch the door until she returned ten minutes later.
“How’s the club, Tilly?” Bram asked.
“It is going well, thank you.”
“I’m sure you hesitated when saying those words. What’s going on?” Bram pressed her.
Ambrose watched her sigh.
“Tell us. We might be able to help you,” Bram added.
“An official called to serve me papers in regard to the building not complying with the structural integrity, adequacy of egress in the event of fire, and related concerns of the London Building Acts.”
“What did he tell you was needed to bring it up to compliance?” Ambrose asked.
She shot him a look, her expression tight with worry now.
“There was nothing in the documentation I was handed, so I went to pay the Metropolitan Board of Works a call. No one would speak to me, as they were all too busy. I was deliberately fobbed off. I then employed builders to look at The Iris, but they could find nothing.”
Something was off, he knew it, as did others in the room by the looks on their faces. Ambrose felt his anger rise over whoever was behind it.
“If I don’t make the changes by the end of next month, I must appear before them, and they will decide the club’s fate.”
“Something doesn’t feel right about this,” Gray said.
“I agree,” Tilly added.
“Leave it with me. I’ll find out who is doing this.”
“Thank you, Gray. I would be grateful.”
Ambrose didn’t want to feel annoyed she hadn’t come to him about it—because why would she? But he did anyway.
“Right, then. There is little more we can do about that until Gray does some digging into what is going on, so I’ll call the meeting to order,” Bram said, his voice rising over the others in the room with practiced ease.
“Mungo is handing out some papers. Please read them, and then we will discuss the content.”
Tilly moved to where Ambrose stood and lowered the little bag she carried onto a narrow table. She opened it, pulled out her spectacles, and slipped them on.
As if aware of his scrutiny, she looked at Ambrose. “I told you I wore spectacles,” she snapped.
“So you did. I’m sorry about what is happening, Tilly.”
She shot him a surprised look and then nodded. “Thank you. It is vexing, but I’m sure whoever is behind it will tire soon.”
“I wonder if whoever had those papers served to The Iris Club is in any way connected to what we found below them?” he whispered so that only she could hear.
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Tilly whispered, frowning. “But I should have.”
“Have a care, Tilly, because if whoever was meeting below was using your club as the entrance, then it makes sense they’d want it empty once more,” Ambrose said. “Especially as we’ve locked the outside door.”
“Do you think we should open it again?”
“It’s definitely something we need to consider, but I don’t feel comfortable about whatever could be going on down there continuing,” Ambrose said. “We need to discuss this more and perhaps bring these people in on it.”
“Agreed,” Tilly said. “But not today, as we are discussing Pavlov business.”
Mungo thrust some paper at him. “You two read this.”
Ambrose took them. “Always so polite, Mungo.”
The Scotsman walked away without another word.
“Don’t you think it would be wonderful to be able to go about your day being constantly grumpy and rude?”
“Do you want to be grumpy and rude?”
The glasses looked cute on her and made her green eyes seem brighter. Delicate patterns engraved the arms, but he couldn’t make out exactly what they were without leaning closer.
“Constantly,” she said, taking the first of the sheets of paper he held. She began to read, so he did the same.
Ambrose squinted to bring the words before him into focus and felt the pressure start in his temples. He persisted.
“How is your headache?”
“Gone, thank you,” he lied.
She didn’t comment further, just started humming softly, which made it nigh on impossible for Ambrose to concentrate, as if he wasn’t already having enough trouble with her standing so close.
“If you could find your way to stopping that, I would be grateful.”
“What?” She frowned at him.
“Humming.”
“I most certainly was not humming.”
“Of course you were. You constantly hum when you are reading, thinking, or eating,” Violet called from across the room.
Ambrose wasn’t sure how she overheard their conversation but was glad she had, as she’d proved him right.
Tilly huffed out a breath but added nothing. They continued to read in silence.
“Excuse me.” Tilly suddenly removed her glasses, placed them on the narrow table, and walked over to where Violet stood.
He wondered if she was going to take his sister to task about the humming comment, but it didn’t worry him. Violet could more than handle herself.
Ambrose tried to focus on the page before him, but his eyes slid up to where the glasses sat.
Could she be right? He looked around him, but everyone was busy reading or asking questions.
Angling his body slightly so no one could see him, he picked them up and held them to his face.
Looking at the words through the lenses, he could see them clearly.
She was right, damn her. Not that he’d be telling her that. He returned them to the table.
“Why did you not find a way to tell me about the incidents happening at your club, Tilly?” he demanded when she returned.
“Why would I?”
Why indeed.
“Right, then. Let’s discuss what you’ve read,” Bram said before Ambrose could speak again, which was probably a good thing, as it did not take much for him and Tilly to start an argument.
“Captain Sinclair and his family run a mill, or more specifically, he purchased it, and it is now run by veterans,” Ellen said.
“Yes, and I believe that in order for people to prosper, they must be invested in what they do,” Bram said.
“These papers tell of other ventures that have been successful, and most are run by the Sinclair and Raven families,” Ram said.
“So many people simply exist. They work endless hours in harrowing conditions, and that is their life until they die,” Leo said. “We need initiatives that can improve on that, like what Captain Sinclair has done.”
“And us too. We have done this with the factory and the bakery,” Ellen said.
“Agreed, but I want to embark on bigger projects now we have the money to do so. I’m not entirely sure in which direction, but that is where you all come in,” Bram said.
“There is a large plot of land in the East End that currently has three rickety buildings on it. I think that would make an excellent location for a housing complex,” Leo said. “It is near one of the worst slums in London, and I think it could cause change for many living in hardship.”
“Well then, I think we must inspect this land and see if it is suitable before we decide if it is the right direction for us to take,” Bram said.
“I will get Larson onto that. He is an excellent architect,” Alex added.
“I have another proposition for you all,” Charles said. “The Bircher is about to be sold, and Cambridge Sinclair has no wish to purchase it, as he already owns three newspapers. I think we should purchase it, and then we could use it to promote the poor. Help our causes and rally people to donate.”
Charles was now part-owner and ran The Tuba, one of Cambridge’s newspapers. Ambrose found his interest piqued about the possibility of having a newspaper in their families.
“We’re not giving it a musical name, are we?” Ellen asked.
“Bircher is an odd name, though, don’t you think?” Violet said.
“Bring us the figures, Charles, and we will look at it,” Bram said.
“Just what the family needs, a newspaper to create more chaos,” Mungo muttered.
“The Flugelhorn,” Tilly said suddenly.
“Absolutely not,” Gray said. “It surely has to be The Trombone?” He winked at Tilly, and she smiled back.
“Personally, I think we should move on to string instruments and go with The Lute,” Ambrose said.
She shot him a look, smile still in place, and he felt the impact hard in his chest. Tilly rarely smiled at him. He returned the gesture, and when she turned away, it was like the room had suddenly gone dark.
Anna, the child who hadn’t been born into the Nightingale household, burst into the room with her elder sister Matilda.
“The games have been called!” she shrieked.
“Absolutely not,” Ambrose declared, heading for the door.
It was Tilly’s tsk that stopped him.