Chapter Twelve
L ark found the offices of Dodsley Rook had picked pockets.
Rook refused to accept Lark’s withdrawal from the partnership, and Lark’s efforts to persuade Rook to leave the game had led to Rook’s snatching Viv’s purse and Viv shooting Lark. The encounter off Oxford Street proved that Rook was growing bolder, more reckless. Rook, acting on his own, could easily be taken up and hauled off to gaol.
As he had the thought, Rook came through the Temple Bar carrying a grease-marked paper parcel, almost certainly fish from his favorite shop. In an instant, Lark lost sight of him in the shifting crowd. Lark pulled his hat lower on his brow and concentrated on picking out Rook’s wool cap bobbing in the sea of hats coming his way.
He was trying to gauge how far Rook had come toward him when Viv erupted from the shop in a violent swirl of silk. She brushed past him and charged off toward Charing Cross. Lark sprinted in pursuit. “What happened? What’s made you so angry?”
“Dodsley wants to change our title.”
“And?”
“He wants to call the book Rambles with a Lady in London or Vignettes of London by a Lady .”
“You object to the term lady ?” Lark needed to figure out the source of her anger.
“I object to trivializing our work, making it out to be mere amusement.” She stepped off the pavement to pass a man carrying a sack, and Lark grabbed her elbow, pulling her back to safety as a dray rumbled toward her.
“What is the title you want?”
“ A City of Their Own, A Women’s Guide to London. ”
“Ah.”
“That’s it? That’s all you can say? Ah. ”
“Hasn’t Dodsley published all Lady Melforth’s books? He must have some understanding of how to sell them.”
She stopped, and the stream of pedestrians parted, flowing around them. She fixed Lark with a glare. “That’s what he said. He told me to look at his best sellers— A Spinster’s Tour in Genoa , Sketches of London Life , Notes of a Lady Traveler .”
“So how did you leave it?” Lark turned her toward Charing Cross. Rook was somewhere close, and it wouldn’t do to meet him in Viv’s company. Lark doubted that Viv would recognize Rook, but Rook certainly knew her.
Viv started walking again with brisk, angry strides. “I couldn’t make Dodsley understand what we are trying to do, how our book is a call to action, how we are encouraging women to make the city their own.”
Lark suspected that Dodsley understood all too well and had no intention of promoting the free movement of women in London. “Does the title matter so much?”
“It does,” she snapped.
“But, isn’t the book going to call women to action whatever the title is?”
“What do you mean?” She stopped and turned to him.
For a brief moment he forgot what he meant to say under the influence of those lively brown eyes. Then it came back to him. “Some things you don’t control, right? Dodsley decides the paper and binding and cover and print, right? He arranges for the book to reach booksellers, right?”
She let out a gusty sigh. “I don’t like it. ”
He laughed. She wouldn’t. “You control the writing, the words on the page.”
She began to walk again at a quick impatient pace. Something else about the encounter was bothering her. Lark waited. The first drops of rain, cold and heavy, hit the cobbles and released their stony scent.
“Dodsley told me that he wanted to save me from the ill effects of any ignorant blunders I might make, being new to the publishing trade. He said the title didn’t matter because Lady Melforth’s name would sell books.”
Viv charged on, oblivious to the increasing rain. People scurried for the edges of the pavement under awnings and overhangs. Lark wasn’t sure she understood what Dodsley had revealed about her one-sided partnership with Lady Melforth. “What did you say to that?” he asked.
“I said he must deal with me. I must protect her, you know. She’s always been so active, so intrepid, and now because she’s confined to her couch, people want to take advantage.”
Lark doubted that anyone took advantage of Lady Melforth, but Viv’s admiration for her ladyship seemed to blind her to the woman’s self-absorption.
She gave Lark a rueful glance. “At least I didn’t shoot him.”
“Then I’d say you won.”
“I don’t feel as if I’ve won.”
They’d come to Charing Cross. The rain came down cold and thick, and Lark hailed a hackney cab. “Come on. I know a place that will cheer you up.”
“Where? ”
“Marie-Louise Christophe’s house.”
“Who?”
A cab pulled round to them, and Lark helped Viv scramble in. He swept his gaze over the area, but umbrellas had sprouted everywhere above the heads of the crowd, and there was no sign of Rook. He gave the driver the address and climbed in beside Viv. “The queen of Haiti, Marie Christophe. She lives abroad now, but she lived in London for a time, and there’s a woman who remembers her every day.”
“How do you know all this?” she asked as the cab jolted into motion.
“Stick with me. I know a great deal about London.”
*
The cab stopped in a neighborhood a little south of Regent’s Park near the entrance that led to the Zoological Gardens, and Mr. Larkin pointed to a square house with no pretentions to architectural grandeur. It stood on the corner of a modest street with a ground floor of white-painted stone, a shiny black door, and three upper stories of ordinary red brick. In front, a single plane tree shook its leafless branches in the April rain. All that distinguished the house from its neighbors was a bundle of dripping purple blooms hanging from the iron railing in front.
Viv turned to him. “This is it?”
“Wait,” he said.
Viv kept watch through the slanting lines of rain. Then the woman appeared, tall and purposeful in her stride, wearing a day dress of printed lilac foulard and a fitted jacket of a deep aubergine shade. A straw bonnet tied with a chocolate ribbon framed her ebony face. She managed a black umbrella and a basket over her arm with a spray of fresh white blossoms. She stopped at the iron railing and reached to remove the wilted flowers.
Viv glanced at Mr. Larkin. “She came in the rain.”
“She comes every day.”
“Have you spoken with her? Do you know her reasons?”
“She honors her queen.”
The woman held the new spray of flowers against the railing, deftly tying a bow to keep them in place. Then she stepped back and bowed her head in an attitude of prayer, speaking, though Viv could not hear the words.
“I didn’t know Haiti had a queen. It was a French island, was it not, with enslaved people?”
“It was. The people freed themselves. They tried having a king and queen, but chose to be a republic.”
“You have spoken with her. Will she speak with me?” Viv’s mind ranged over all the women she’d been writing about, women, who, with their lives, had marked the landscape of London, but they were dead. To write about this bold living woman who moved freely about, to make her part of the story would change everything.
“She may not speak back,” he warned.
“She spoke to you.” Viv scrambled out of the cab. The rain was heavy, and she had no umbrella, but she dashed across the street and approached so that she might be seen and not startle the woman.
“I beg your pardon, ma’am, may I ask why you leave flowers here? ”
The woman turned a proud eye to Viv and gave her a thorough scrutiny. Viv knew that look. It was the sort of gaze Lady Melforth gave to encroaching admirers. “Do I know you?”
Viv steadied herself, all her story-hunting instincts alert. Rain dripped from her bonnet. A cold drop ran down her neck. “My name is Vivian Bradish, ma’am. I write about London.”
“I don’t know you.” The woman turned away toward the park.
“Wait,” Viv cried. She hurried to catch up with the woman’s long, elegant stride. “I don’t mean to offend. You knew the queen, Marie Christophe?”
The woman glanced sharply at Viv. “What is it you want from me?”
“You must have cared about her.”
“And what is that to you, Miss…”
“Bradish, ma’am, but it doesn’t matter who I am. I write about the women of London, their stories.”
“Women’s stories?” The woman stopped, and her gaze turned amused. “If you want stories, stories I have.”
“May I hear yours and hers, Marie Christophe’s, if you know it?”
“And what will you do with our stories, Miss Bradish?”
“Tell them to other women.”
The woman nodded. “And how will you do that?”
“In a book I am writing with Lady Melforth, the Traveling Viscountess.”
“A viscountess?” The woman’s brows lifted. “Are you sure your viscountess wants a story from the likes of me? ”
Viv smelled of wet wool. The cold drops collecting on the back of her neck made her shiver. Later she would figure out how to persuade Lady Melforth to include the woman’s story. “I think she must. Please, will you tell me your name?”
“My dear young woman, you are soaked to the skin. If you truly care to talk, come another day when the weather is not so…English. Good day.”
“But I don’t know how to find you.”
“Your friend knows me.”
Viv turned, and there was Mr. Larkin. He had removed his coat. He wrapped it around her as the rain molded his clothes to his body. “Let’s get you home and dry,” he said.
*
Lady Melforth’s door opened, and Jenny dashed out under a serviceable black umbrella. “The Strydes are ’ere, miss,” she warned. “Best to go in through the kitchen.”
Viv whirled and led Lark around the iron railing down to the basement entrance. She hurried them into the long, dim hall with its half a dozen doors on either side, on past the narrow servants’ stairs and into the herb-scented stillroom lit by its one high window. “They mustn’t see you. Wait here.”
Lark surveyed the dangerous little room. It smelled harmless enough like lavender and plants he couldn’t name. Jars lined the open shelves, and bunches of dried herbs hung against the walls. But since yesterday, the room had figured in his imagination as a place of intimacy. He removed his hat and gloves, and set them on the plain deal table in the center of the room .
“I must get upstairs to Lady Melforth.” Viv tugged at her bonnet ribbons, pulling them into an unyielding knot.
“You won’t be able to help her in those clothes.” He stepped forward and took the ribbons from her cold, stiff hands. “Let me.”
She lifted her face. In her eyes, the excitement of their afternoon’s discovery was gone, distress in its place. One damp curl stuck to the side of her flushed cheek. “It’s only that they weary her so.”
He teased the tiny loop of knotted ribbon with his fingers, but it wouldn’t give. “Hold still and lift your chin. I’m going to use my teeth.”
Her eyes flashed awareness, but she gave a nod and did as he asked. He leaned in, taking hold of the end of the ribbons, momentarily dizzied by the warm scent of her. She went perfectly still unlike her usual self. He took the loop between his teeth and tugged until the knot yielded. He pulled away, and finished untying the ribbon, lifting the wet bonnet from her head.
“Thank you.” She studied him, unmoving.
“Don’t mention it.” He waited for her to come back to herself. Then, because he could not help himself, he thumbed the stuck curl back from her cheek.
His touch set her in motion again. She stepped back with a little shiver and removed her cape and gloves. “Wait here,” she said. “I will bring…towels.” She tossed her cape onto the table and spun away.
As her light footsteps faded on the stairs, a cold drop trickled down under his collar. He removed his jacket and waistcoat, stripped off his ruined tie, and hung them over an empty drying rack in a corner of the fragrant room. His lawn shirt stuck to him. He pulled it away from his body and gritted his teeth against a sudden chill. His false betrothal to Vivian Bradish was hard on his wardrobe.
His clothes and hers were soaked and dripping because she had seen something admirable in Lark’s Haitian neighbor. Viv’s single-minded determination to pursue the woman’s story had meant she laughed at such slight inconveniences as rain. They had walked blocks in the downpour before finding a second hackney.
He circled the little room to warm himself. She had accused him of being an actor, and in truth, he needed to remember that he was playing the part of a lover. He’d almost lost his head for a moment, tempted to disappear into the role of Edward Larkin, as if Lark had never existed. She hadn’t said his name once today, and he thought the omission deliberate.
After all, the ruse worked because Edward Larkin wasn’t so different from Lark. Both knew London. Both had a head for figures and investments, and both had money in Hammersley’s Bank. The time he’d spent in coffeehouses overhearing men boast of their shrewd dealings, and the hours he’d poured over the bankruptcy notices in the papers, observing their patterns, had prepared him for this imposture. He could go on pretending to be the gentleman of independent means that Viv Bradish thought him to be. No one in London would miss that other man, Lark. He could forget his search for Lark’s past and add whatever he liked to Edward Larkin’s history.
It was true that Rook wanted to pull Lark back into their old life, but even Rook’s attachment to their partnership would fade in time. The duke was a different problem. There was a good chance that Lark’s masquerade would require contact with the duke at some point. He would devise a plan for meeting the duke later.
Lark shivered, his skin pebbled with the cold, a good antidote for folly. He came to a halt under the small window with its square of pale light. An unwelcome memory returned of the day he learned that Boy, their leader, was Kit Jones, a man with a family.
It had been a snowy day, Boy had led their gang of waifs across London to Bread Street, following a coach in which a woman lay captive and drugged. Ruffians carried her into the deserted public house at the foot of the street. For hours the boys played a desperate game in the deserted street, trying to wake the captive woman, feeling an unseen menace that hung over the scene. When she woke, they gave her an iron rod, with which to break out of her prison at Boy’s signal. When the moment came, a man named Xander Jones appeared, and Boy directed him to the woman while Lark led their gang to the rooftop opposite. Then from the top of the street broke a flood of beer from a brewery’s sabotaged tanks, and thousands of gallons of black, foaming brew roared down upon them.
From the roof opposite the pub, Lark and the others held their breath until the man named Xander and the woman emerged from an upper story window to clamber onto an adjacent roof. That had been the beginning of the end of their gang. Boy was not one of them after all. He had a family, a family that wanted to reclaim him from the streets. And his was no commonplace family, for his father had been Lord Daventry, and he became not Boy or Kit, but Dav, a duke’s grandson. No such transformation had waited for the rest of them.
Beyond the stillroom door, Lady Melforth’s people came and went, busy with their household tasks. More than ten years had passed since Lark and Rook had walked away from Daventry Hall. Kit was no longer a lost boy like them. He was the Duke of Wenlocke. And Lark was still an outsider in the duke’s world.
Viv returned with a lamp and a pair of towels draped over her arm. She set the lamp on the table and handed him a towel. He applied it to his head and stopped, finding her watching him. She still wore the damp gown.
“You’ll catch your death,” she said.
“No more than you. I thought you went to change.”
“Jenny’s bringing me a gown. Give me your shirt. Jenny will dry it for you.”
He undid his cuffs and collar and pulled the damp linen over his head. A quick intake of breath from Viv made him pause. When he emerged from the shirt, she stood with her back to him. He lay the shirt on the table, picked up the towel, and slung it around his neck. The ends hung down over his chest.
“How is your wound?” she asked. “You removed the wrapping I put on.”
He glanced at the plaster. It was wet and curling up at the edges. Even he knew it needed to be removed. He took hold of one ragged end and pulled. The wet bandage came away easily. He turned toward the lamp and glanced down at the wound, now a thin red line like a tightly closed pair of lips with the black silk threads crossing it at neat intervals, like careful tally marks. The doctor had done his work well. Only the faint yellows and purples of his bruises surrounded the area. Viv’s mark on him was fading. Nothing much to hold Viv to him now, but he wasn’t ready to let her go.
“It’s red and swollen and there’s something oozing from it.” He spoke to her back.
She spun toward him, her eyes big with alarm, and stopped when she saw his side. “You wretch. Infection is not a thing to jest about.”
He caught her hand and pressed it to the wound. Her fingers were cold as ice, the ring he’d given her loose on her finger, but he held her hand there, knowing with absolute clarity, that whatever happened if he were exposed and the masquerade ended without his kissing her, he was going to feel cheated.
“I’m going to kiss you,” he said.