Chapter Thirty
By the time we arrived back at Foxcourt House, the sun had finally begun to set on the terrible day. The sullen violet tones
of the sky felt oddly condemning, or at least like a personal slight, as the five of us trudged through the back garden.
The footmen’s faces brightened a touch as their noses finally picked up on the enticing dinner that awaited us. Mrs. Silver
had been at work for hours: spiced stewed mutton and a variety of warm vegetable pies were on the menu. Despite the horrors
of the day, my empty stomach refused to be denied, cramping with longing as Hugh opened the door.
The warmth of the candlelit kitchen wrapped around us like a shawl. Mrs. Silver, Fleming, and Mrs. Keyes sat at the table,
well into their meal and conversation.
At our arrival, they looked up and took in the sight of us: My missing bonnet and gloves and thoroughly rumpled dress. Hugh’s
bloodstained attire. Willie, Tommy, and Felicity’s strained expressions.
Fleming’s face went the color of chalk. Carefully, he set his plate of stewed mutton aside and brought his head to rest against
the table, as if anticipating a swoon. Mrs. Silver’s brows rose ever higher as her gaze shifted between us.
Mrs. Keyes, however, dabbed at her lips with her napkin and stood from the table. Brigadier, who’d been hiding beneath her
chair, trotted after her, sniffing at us.
“Went that well, did it?” she asked Hugh.
“I’ll be in the study,” he said in a hoarse voice.
And then he was striding away, cutting a harsh path through the house. The silence was punctured by the sound of its slamming
door. Even Brigadier jumped.
“I’m sure you’ll all wish to change and tidy yourselves,” Mrs. Keyes said. “My lady, I would be glad to assist you—”
I held up a hand. “I can sort myself out.”
“Then I’ll bring you up a tray in a few minutes,” she said.
Something about the thought of sitting near Mama’s portrait, alone with only my bleak thoughts for company, stirred an aching desperation in me. “Actually . . . I would prefer to join you all. If that’s all right?”
Fleming was revived in an instant, sitting up with a sharp breath. His face pinched with censure, as if the mere thought was
a mortal offense to propriety. But just as he was about to protest, he jerked as if someone had kicked him beneath the table.
“How splendid!” Mrs. Silver declared. “We would be delighted.”
And that was how, no more than twenty minutes later, I found myself standing awkwardly in the doorway, finally realizing I
might be intruding. Fleming shot to his feet at my appearance and moved to pull out a chair for me, helping me shift it forward
again.
“There we are, my lady,” he murmured. “How glad we are that you’re home.”
My heart constricted painfully in my chest as I nodded, the surge of feeling stealing my words from me. Within moments, I
found myself with a heaping plate of food and comfortable conversation.
“Have I mentioned,” Fleming began, as if this all were very normal, “that I saw four fox kits in the garden today?”
That was met with a chorus of excitement. The mood of the table lifted as surely as if someone had scooped us all out of a
puddle.
“Four!” Willie exclaimed, punching his brother’s shoulder. “I told you it’d be a lucky year!”
As I ate my mutton and sipped at my wine, the others discussed what the names ought to be, gently ribbing one another’s choices
and suggesting more and more ridiculous ones to Fleming’s chagrin.
I marveled at it—the ease among them, the obvious pleasure they took in one another’s company, the way they saw to filling
each other’s plates as if it was the most natural thing in the world. The longing that filled me was sweeter than any fairy
wine. This—this is what love, what a feeling of safety, could do for the soul.
As the words and laughter flowed, notes arranged themselves in my mind, layering lovingly: an accord of freshly baked bread,
warm candle wax, rosemary, and a hint of wild rose.
The Fox Den, I would call it.
“Daisy if there’s a girl,” Tommy argued. “Or Dahlia.”
“Ombeline,” Mrs. Silver insisted, spelling it out with her fingers for Tommy, who promptly made a horrified face. “It is a
good, strong name—”
The sound of footsteps on the garden path brought the conversation to a swift halt.
“That must be the evening papers,” Willie said, rising to get the door.
But as it opened, I knew at once it was not.
My chair screeched as I pushed away from the table, my pulse leaping up with me. An older woman stood in the doorway, clutching
a parcel. Her face was scrubbed clean, and her graying hair had been scraped back into a neat twist, revealing a rather lovely
bone structure. The chocolate-brown dress she wore was simple but well made. If it hadn’t been for her essence, I might not
have recognized her at all.
Her eyes fell on me and widened.
“My li’l ruby!” Arabella gasped out, the box falling from her hands. She looked as though she’d seen a ghost. “My sweetling!”
“I’ll just . . . set this aside, shall I?” Willie looked between us, bending to pick up the box. There was a new wariness
there, one shared by Tommy, who also came to my side.
Arabella burst into tears as she threw her arms around my shoulders, petting my hair, clucking over me as she’d done countless
times despite all my resistance.
“Ye look so fine in yer pretty dress,” Arabella wept. “I almost didna recognize ye. I fretted myself to death over ye, worried
ye might’ve been for the ’Gate, but then there were the police who came around Riverside asking questions about ye and where
ye live.” She looked suddenly fretful. “I told ’em ye were for Caledonia, hoping to throw the hounds off ye scent. Did I do
wrong?”
“No, of course not,” I said. It was only a shame it hadn’t helped. “Thank you.”
“Madam,” Fleming began, rising. “Do you realize who—”
Mrs. Silver gripped his arm, forcing him back down into the chair. “Won’t you introduce us to your delightful friend, ma chère?”
“Everyone,” I said, “this is Arabella—she and I used to share a table at the Midnight Market.” At their murmured greeting
I turned back to her. “I’ve been worried about you—what are you doing here?”
“I’ve new work now, assisting Mrs. Turner at ’er”—she paused, concentrating on the pronunciation—“haberdashery. She has me
make deliveries to the clients. No more Midnights for me.”
“That’s wonderful,” I said. “But how in the name of God did you come by the work?”
“Oh, ’twas the most peculiar thing,” Arabella said in a hushed tone.
“A few nights after the raid, I went to the streets to see if any of the girls there ’ad ’eard tidings of ye.
I was out with the others, and a man approached us with one of the vagrants we all know well and trust—Bobby Smith? I think I’d told ye of ’im.”
I had no memory of it, but I nodded, resisting the urge to hurry her on. Arabella loved nothing more than telling a story
of a dozen words in a few thousand.
“Anyway, this gent—thought a fight might break out ’mongst the girls, there was such a clamor to ’ook ’im, ’andsome and tall
as ’e was. Rare to see one of that sort, most nights you haveta open yer legs and get on with it—”
“Madam,” Fleming cut in, aghast. Willie hid his laugh in his fist as he and Tommy finally returned to their seats.
“But ’e said there was other work for me, if I wanted it. Then the girls asked if the same could be said for them, and he
got real quiet like, did the ’oly wheel, and said yes. Some of the girls, they were afraid, see—yer just as likely to get
a poke from a knife as a poke from a co—”
Fleming’s already shrill voice leapt a full octave. “Madam!”
“Ah, well, ye needn’t know.” She kissed my hand tenderly. “Others like the work, and that’s all fine to be sure. But I’m not
the daisy I was, and the streets, they’ll freeze yer tits off in the winter.”
Mrs. Keyes nodded with understanding and sympathy. “That they will.”
Fleming let out a strained noise, resting his face in his hands.
“So me and Francesca and some of the others, we followed the gent, and one by one ’e dropped us off and ’ad a word with the
owner—at a boarding’ouse and taverns and those shops where the fancy bits get their ’ats—”
“Milliners?” I asked. A suspicion was dawning over me, filling my chest with a soft glow.
“Yes. We got to choose, see,” Arabella said. “I picked the haberdashery, I did. Ye know ’ow I like me bits ’n’ bobs ’n’ trinkets.”
I did, indeed, know. “And Mrs. Turner treats you well?”
“Oh, yes, a fair, kind woman she is,” Arabella marveled. “Sometimes makes me listen to ’er read the ’oly book, but I don’t
mind overmuch when I’ve a roof and proper bed. God blessed me with that man, after all.”
“You said he intentionally sought you out?” I asked quietly. “Who was he?”
“Oh, but that’s the strangest bit of all,” Arabella said. “For there was no reason for ’im to want to do it.”
For the rest of my life, I would remember that very moment—the way the seconds slowed to a crawl—and I knew, as that glow
became a golden, dawning certainty, that he had done this for no other reason but me.
“’E introduced ’imself as Mr. Anders,” Arabella said, her face bright with wonder, “and said ’e was a locksmith.”
Foxcourt House seemed to settle itself, as if relieved to have all of us home at last. The shutters no longer rattled with
the wind. The old bones of the house had ceased their shifting and groaning.
But the newfound quiet had the opposite effects on my thoughts. With everyone else asleep, and no more stories to distract
from them, the frenzied mess of them burst forth again. The memory of being taken, my ears ringing with phantom gunshots.
And with the next breath, I’d be back in the shade of the oak tree, Hugh’s hands, his lips trailing over mine . . .
Even if my mind had been willing to forget, my body remembered, and my heart would speed again. The pounding blood brought
with it a tingling in my lips and a delicious throbbing between my legs.
I sighed, pressing my face against the cool pillow. I turned my heart over and over again in my chest, trying to understand