Chapter 13
Hannah was kicking herself for putting this off for so long.
An hour into dinner at the Murphy house and she had already secured a new friend, a new mentor, and a new world of funding for the clinic project. They hadn’t even yet reached the main course!
“You mean to say you’ve never even looked into a telescope?” Abigail Murphy asked her, tilting her head to the side curiously. “Not in school? Not in synagogue?”
“Mother,” Abe Murphy said in a tired voice, rubbing the spot between his eyes with his thumb. “Please.”
“I haven’t,” said Hannah, a little breathlessly. “I have seen artistic renderings of the big ones in Florence, though. I wouldn’t think the little portable types would allow you to see anything worthwhile in any manner of detail.”
“Oh, no,” said Rosalind Murphy in her charming Aberdeen brogue, shaking her sandy blonde curls. “You can see colors and everything. Jupiter has a big red spot on it like a blemish. You just want to reach right up and powder its nose!”
Abe sighed loudly.
“Abraham, do you have one set up here?” his mother asked, turning to examine her son with an expression that clearly expected he did not. “Or shall I have to drag Miss Lazarus to Gresham later this week?”
“I would love to attend one of your talks,” Hannah said immediately, getting a grateful flick of the eyes from Mr. Murphy. “I’ve never met a woman of science before. Not one who gets invited to universities. My spinster auntie is a bit of a botanist, if that counts.”
“Of course it counts, darling,” said Mrs. Murphy.
Rosalind reached out to touch Hannah’s pelisse, which she’d discarded on the back of the chair after the soup course, marveling at the corded silver thread that looped around several little forget-me-nots preserved beneath rounded cabochons stitched into the velvet.
When she caught Hannah looking, she blushed and shrugged.
“I must look so provincial to you,” she said with a little shake of her curls. “All the girls in London dress so differently! I’m desperate to go shopping.”
“You’re always desperate to go shopping,” Abe said, winning an elbow in the ribs from his wife.
“Miss Lazarus and I can take you to Covent Garden soon,” Millie said, frowning at Abe in that mild and utterly damning way of hers. “Modistes have largely closed up shop for the off Season, however.”
“Not all of them,” said Hannah. “I’ve two in Clerkenwell that work year-round, if you’d like to go.”
“Oh, Mama, may I?” Rosalind asked, her eyes gleaming in a beautiful melange of green and gold. “Please please?”
“Oh, Rosalind, I’d hate to think you’re taking Miss Lazarus away from her good works to look at ribbons and bonnets,” Mrs. Murphy said with a frown. “How about this? If you agree to help the good lady with her clinic efforts, you may also go on a quest for some new frocks. Does that sound fair?”
“It sounds very, very fair,” Rosalind squealed, clapping her hands together.
“Oh, I will be your most devoted assistant, Miss Lazarus, you will see! You claim to have never met a woman of science, but I have never met a woman of charitable monument! Millie has regaled us with all you have achieved.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t …” Hannah said, coloring a bit. “It is still a work in progress.”
“I am optimistic that we can raise funds through my academic connections,” Mrs. Murphy said as the capon was brought out, steaming and fragrant. “They are not as flush as the aristocrats, but many are relations.”
“Yes, second sons are often sent off to university, aren’t they?” Millie said thoughtfully. “Or to the church.”
“Have you tried recruiting from your kirk, Abe?” Rosalind asked, blinking at her brother.
“His kirk?” Millie repeated, making her husband begin to cough violently, taking up a napkin and excusing himself. “What is a kirk?”
“Abraham!” Rosalind said with a scandalized gasp, while their mother just chuckled to herself at his rapid retreat into the kitchen.
“Is that a church?” Hannah asked to nods. “Ah. We are working with my rabbinical congregation, of course, and with the Society of Friends, but we have not reached out past that religiously. Perhaps we should have.”
“Oh, Hannah, not even to the local Anglican parish?” Millie said with a raise of her brows. “That seems like an obvious place to go.”
“It does,” Hannah admitted with a wince. “Doesn’t it? I have been very focused on writing to individuals of means rather than institutions, but you are right.”
It was a welcome distraction, and something to look forward to in the coming days. She decided to invite Mae along as well, after hearing secondhand that the other woman was being run ragged by her work on the clinic side of things.
Besides, she was missing Mae, and perhaps she and Rosalind would get along.
It was true that the Scots girl was provincial, though of course Hannah would never say that, and she thought Mae might be charmed by the sheer volume of ruffles, ribbons, and curls, especially after months on end of nothing but misery and injury day to day.
She hadn’t seen Mr. Beck at all since that day they had kissed. She was not discouraged, however. He was still leaving her flowers. That meant something.
Besides, Mr. Reed had appeared like a ghost the other day to tell her not to lose hope.
“If he doesn’t show up soon,” Mr. Reed had said, hovering in the doorway of the office, “I’ll walk you to the Vixen myself and you can ambush the idiot.”
She wasn’t sure what she’d done to win such an ally, but she was grateful.
She had resolved then and there to attempt to return his friendship, though when she had asked with genuine concern how he had come by the injury that left his arm bandaged, he had leveled her with a flat stare and claimed that he had been set upon by a vampire.
When she’d given him a confused “oh,” he’d grinned at her and told her not to fret, for he’d hobbled the vampire in return.
“He’ll never walk again, little fox,” he’d said, “not without his foot!” And then he’d vanished, whistling to himself.
Hannah remained of the mind that Mr. Reed was a very strange man.
She had also stopped fearing the gambling hell floor during operating hours sometime recently. It had started from a simple, urgent need for a glass of water. A parched sensation that would not be ignored.
She’d walked out in shuffling, tiny steps and asked the barman in a squeaking voice for something gentle. Nothing had combusted. No one had tackled her and robbed her. No one had even much looked up from their games.
So now, she went out whenever she needed something.
Ember and Mr. Reed were always on the floor anyhow, if anything dangerous were to occur.
The barman was also a kindly sort and always gave her a little squeeze of lime and a spoon of sugar in her water, even when she insisted she didn’t require it.
Even her mother had no qualms about visiting, at least while the sun was still up. She had made it a habit of coming by while Hannah was working at her letters, often with a basket of sweets as an excuse for what was ostensibly naked curiosity.
Today it had been rugelach, in two flavors.
“They look the same, but they are not,” Martha had warned. “You stick to the apple, and let the others have the apricot. I won’t have you spitting out perfectly good pastry.”
Truth be told, if Ember hadn’t immediately bundled up half the basket to take home to her husband, Hannah very likely would have let her curiosity get the better of her and would indeed have spat it out after realizing that nothing on this earth would ever make her enjoy apricot.
Mr. O’Sullivan, however, enjoyed it very well.
There were always a few linkboys around these days, too.
She wasn’t sure who had made the decision to retain them as semi-permanent runners, but their link torches were stacked in her office and clearly hadn’t been touched in a long while.
Reed referred to the lads as his kits now, not as linkboys, so Hannah was endeavoring to remember to do the same.
They were not linkboys. They were kits.
And those torches were going to stay there until they rotted into the carpet, very likely.
When she heard his voice, at long last, she almost thought she’d summoned it from the sheer force of her reveries.
She’d been having a lot of reveries. Especially while sat at this desk.
Still, there was nothing to lose by getting up to go investigate.
As they edged toward the end of the year, especially now that the rain had started to freeze, the hell itself was slower and slower by the night, with only a few especially devoted regular patrons attending the tables, and even they kept shorter hours, according to Ember.
She hovered near the end of the hallway, listening first, to make sure she could emerge safely. And of course, just for the pleasure of listening.
He had such a beautiful voice.
“Because, Aster,” he was saying, presumably to a patron, “if you keep needling them like that, you’re going to get stabbed on your way home. Reed can’t protect you once you leave.”
“I can’t protect you now,” Mr. Reed put in. “I’m injured.”
“Oh, someone finally took a bite out of my cherub,” Ember tutted. “It was bound to happen. Shame it was in the good arm.”
The man that answered sounded very bored with the prospect of his imminent stabbing. “I haven’t done anything to merit such dramatics,” he said. “I don’t even keep their money.”
“Aster, everyone here has considered killing you for that at one point or another,” Ember answered sweetly.
At this point, Hannah thought it safe to emerge. After all, Ember only threatened to murder people when she was in a good mood.
She slipped through the rear door and got a nod and a wink from O’Sullivan behind the bar.
Everyone was gone, it seemed, except for Mr. Aster, the man that apparently invited murder. He was a tall, lanky gentleman with silver-blond hair, currently slouched on the bench at the rear of the room with a cloth to his face.
Hannah supposed someone had punched him.
“Well, if someone’s going to do it, I’d rather it be you, lovely,” Aster said to Ember. He reached down and flicked the buttons loose beneath his cravat and worked his shirt slightly open, revealing the smooth chest beneath. “Go on, then.”
“Grace to God, but I’ve never met a more killable man,” Ember replied, sounding impressed. “Put your teats away.”
“They are very nice teats,” Mr. Reed said, as though he were comforting someone who’d just lost a footrace.
“Did you really need me for this?” Mr. Beck asked with a heavy sigh, drawing one of those gorgeous, large hands over his face. “I was up to my throat in plaster and planks already tonight, and—”
He glanced up. He saw her.
She smiled at the way he froze, threading her fingers together in front of her as she beheld him. Yes, it was true, he was dusted with a bit of white powder at his shoulders and elbows.
“Good evening, Mr. Beck,” she said. “I am pleased you came, even if you were not necessarily needed.”
“Hear that, Tod?” Reed said with a grin. “She’s pleased you came.”
“Hello, there,” said the pale man on the chaise, leaning past the bodies between where he sat and where Hannah stood. “Where did you come from?”
“No,” Mr. Beck said, turning and jabbing a finger toward Mr. Aster’s face. “No.”
“All right, all right,” said the man, holding his hands up in surrender. “Just being polite.”
Mr. Beck then turned his ire onto Hannah herself. “Why are you here so late?” he demanded. “Why aren’t you at home, tucked into bed like a nice girl should be?”
Hannah quickly reached up to brush her fingers over her lips to hide the smile that threatened to emerge there. She was growing to enjoy it a little too much when he scolded her for not behaving like a proper lady ought to.
“I am working, of course,” she said with an innocent bat of her lashes. “I got a late start tonight after attending a dinner, and had much to do.”
“And you couldn’t do it tomorrow?” he pressed, glowering at her in a way that made her want to grab him by the collar and drag him into the office. “What is so pressing?”
“The church,” she answered, only because she knew it would baffle him. “The Anglican church. I realized we have been remiss in not asking them for aid. Tell me, Mr. Beck, do you have a personal parish?”
“I know the vicar general,” Ember said casually, having flopped onto the chaise next to Aster.
Everyone immediately turned to stare at her with open skepticism.
“What?” she said, frowning. “I do. I stayed at his house once.”
“Ember, please,” Beck said with a sigh, turning his back on her.
“I actually do, though?” she muttered to Aster, who nodded in sympathy.
“Aren’t you Catholic?” Mr. Reed asked her.
“Aren’t you Lucifer’s own love child?” she shot back. “What does it matter?”
“Enough!” Mr. Beck grumbled, shaking his head. “Christ.”
“Yes, him,” Hannah agreed, grinning. “So, do you have a parish we could contact?”
“No,” said Beck, turning back to her with a frown.
“Oh, well, Tod,” Reed put in with a click of his tongue and a shake of his head. “That’s not exactly true, now, is it?”
Beck turned very, very slowly to face his friend.
Hannah could not see his face, but she could see Mr. Reed’s, and the expression there was one of heightened delight.
He leaned back against the paneling on the wall, fingers in his pockets, and cocked his head to the side like he was taking a particular joy in whatever was silently passing between them just now.
“When was the last time you checked in on our friend Matthew?” Reed asked. “The dear parson? The good vicar? The upstanding man of the cloth?”
“Reed, I swear to God …” Beck said.
“Yes, good. Shall we all go together to see him, then?” Reed asked, grinning. “We just need Vix back from whatever finishing school hell you sent her to, and the gang will be fully reassembled.”
“Oh?” said Ember. “Are we going to church?”
“No,” said Mr. Beck.
They were, though.
They were going to church.