Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
Laura had exchanged letters with the Senhora only yesterday.
While the rest of the team slept for a scant two or three hours after their ordeal, she and Sol had spoken at length.
Then she sent Aya to Saffron House with a note explaining the need for trusted servants to be sent to remote locations to protect Lord and Lady Stoude and Mrs. Coulton-Jones.
She had expected to be summoned to meet with the Senhora, so she was surprised when Aya returned with a written reply.
My dear Madam,
I am aware of the urgency of the situation and therefore write to bid you make these arrangements as quickly as possible. I require you to pen five letters of recommendation for the five servants whose names are listed on the second sheet in this letter.
Laura turned to the sheet and saw the names, two men and three women.
She continued reading.
Two of these servants shall be sent to protect Lord and Lady Stoude. While the property where you intended to send them is fairly remote, I believe that I have a finer solution that will ensure their safety.
Over the past several years, Laura had purchased two properties in the country anonymously through her attorney, Mr. Cossman.
Both had been used as havens for women whom the Senhora wished to send from London for their safety.
The women remained for only a few weeks before the Senhora arranged for other employment for them.
Laura had sent her servants to the more shabby of the two houses. While the finer house was clean and tidy, it was hardly that to which a member of noble society was accustomed.
However, it seemed the Senhora had another location to which the Stoudes could travel.
It shall be arranged that a certain property in Shropshire shall be sold anonymously to Lord and Lady Stoude through Mr. Cossman.
It is a grand enough estate that his lordship will not be uncomfortable there, and it has also been renovated to enable the two servants that I send to competently protect the young couple.
As for Mrs. Coulton-Jones, from the information I have gathered about her disposition, while she can be utterly charming in society, she is often quite stubborn in regards to her children. You may be required to consider the need to kidnap her.
If the residence Mr. Drydale intends to provide for Mrs. Coulton-Jones is the place in Northamptonshire, then it is likely as adequate a home for the lady as any other accommodations I might suggest. Lord and Lady Stoude are more obliging in their requirements, and so the home they will buy through Mr. Cossman will be more suited to them than to Mrs. Coulton-Jones.
I await your reply.
Yours, etc.
There was no signature.
It alarmed Laura that the Senhora would act with such alacrity when, in general, she had the patience of a spider, weaving complex webs and waiting for the perfect time to strike. The danger must be very great or the urgency more dire than Laura had expected.
She sent the letters of recommendation immediately and also wrote a letter to Lady Stoude, explaining about the Shropshire house and the servants.
While Laura had scoffed at the Senhora’s mention of kidnapping, Mr. Coulton-Jones had returned a few hours later, declaring his failure at convincing his mother. Keriah had argued for a full ten minutes that kidnapping was really the only solution.
However, Mr. Coulton-Jones also expressed confidence that once his sister arrived in town, she would be able to convince their parent to leave without arousing alarm as to a more nefarious reason as to why they wished for her to depart.
The entire team was rather exhausted this morning. Phoebe, Sol, and Mr. Coulton-Jones had watched over Mrs. Coulton-Jones all evening, while Keriah had worked late into the night—or rather, the early morning—utilizing Mr. Thompson’s tiny kitchen to create sedative paste and powder.
An hour or two after dawn, Mr. Coulton-Jones had returned to change his clothes and again depart, determined to speak to his mother. Sol stumbled into the tanner’s house not long after, and he fell into an immediate sleep.
Keriah and Phoebe had been making more sedative in the tiny kitchen once again. Mr. Thompson had grumbled about his food tasting strangely, and so Aya had gone to a nearby tavern to procure victuals for her father and everyone else.
Sol awoke around midday, swallowed a few morsels, then dressed with extra care. When he told Laura he was leaving on an errand, something about the set of his shoulders made her stop herself from questioning him.
Laura was expecting nothing more dangerous than a tantrum from Keriah due to lack of sleep, but she was startled by a knock at the front door in the late afternoon.
She remained hidden in the shadows of the hallway while Aya answered the door. But the visitor was no more than a small urchin boy who delivered a note. However, before Aya closed the door, Laura saw the face of the boy more clearly and recognized him as one of the servants at Saffron House.
As soon as the door had been closed and latched, Laura stepped from the shadow of the hallway. She held out her hand, and Aya placed the message in her palm.
She had suspected the letter writer as soon as she saw the pageboy, and her suspicions were realized when she saw the elegant script on the outside of the letter, addressed to “B. M.”
Laura opened the note immediately, not bothering to move back into the drawing room. She frowned as she read the hastily scrawled lines:
I require your presence immediately. The boy will have brought a hackney cab and ordered it to wait for you. If you have it, give him the livery normally used by the treacle bun. He shall accompany you.
Placing a hand to her throat, she felt the pulse racing there. She forced herself to take a deep breath, and then she told Aya, “I must go to Saffron House immediately.”
Her maid frowned. “The gall of her, to order you about as if you are a servant.”
“No,” Laura said thoughtfully. “She is not normally so forceful. I fear something is wrong.”
Aya’s irritation softened, but she still gave a disgruntled sniff. “It will take me a moment to find your blue gown.”
“Please hurry.”
But as her maid bustled away, Laura’s unease burgeoned and swelled like the ocean tide coming in—not because of the urgent summons, but because of the last line on the page:
Bring with you your golden girl.
After following Mrs. Coulton-Jones to and from Mrs. Weller’s soirée, Phoebe had been sent back to the Thompsons’ home by Uncle Sol. She had insisted she could help him and Mr. Coulton-Jones to watch over the townhouse, but he had gently ordered her to return and get some sleep.
Alas, it was not to be.
When she arrived at the tanner’s house, Keriah had been awake and had completed making a batch of sedative. While the two of them had fallen asleep soon after, she was startled awake barely four hours later when Keriah suddenly shot straight up in bed.
Phoebe had reached for a dagger hidden under her pillow and had rolled off the bed and onto her feet before she realized there was no one in the room with them. “Keriah, whatever is the matter?”
Her friend blinked in confusion down at the faded quilt comforter, then up at Phoebe. “Wha?—?”
Phoebe huffed in exasperation, glaring at her. “What has awoken you?”
Keriah blinked several times before gasping.
“Oh! Now I remember. I was half asleep, and I suddenly thought of a substitute for the fly agaric mushroom in the sedative paste. I am in need of black nightshade.” She tossed aside the coverlet and moved with more alacrity than she usually did in the mornings, and especially on so little sleep.
Phoebe was unable to return to bed after that, and so she went with Aya in search of black nightshade. She found some of the plants growing in an old lot that held the ruins of a church and a tiny, neglected graveyard.
For the rest of the day, she helped Keriah in the kitchen—until a knock at the front door made her stop her work to listen. When she heard her aunt mention Saffron House, she set down the mortar she had been using and cleaned her hands.
Aunt Laura met her as she exited the kitchen. “I apologize for taking you from your work, my dear.” Her aunt smiled in amusement and reached out to brush a wayward curl from out of Phoebe’s eyes. “However, I am afraid I must ask that you dress quickly and come with me to see the Senhora.”
“Of course, Aunt Laura.” Phoebe convinced Keriah to wash her hands to help her don a different set of stays—these with a knife sheath sewn onto it.
Keriah slipped in a dagger freshly coated in sedative paste.
Another knife, this one coated with a less potent recipe of the sedative, formed a heavy lump in Phoebe’s reticule.
Within minutes, she was sitting alongside Aunt Laura in a rattling hackney making its way back toward the Long Glades.
But the Long Glades was not quite their destination. The area of London called Orario lay in a wealthy, fashionable district just outside of the Long Glades, although some of Orario’s streets were as dark and dangerous as Seven Dials.
The section of Rachey Street that was their destination was a little more brightly lit, but still dim to allow for the illusion of privacy for the gentlemen who traversed the way, entering and exiting houses along that decadent stretch.
Similarly to the last time, the hackney stopped several houses away from their destination. They alighted, and her aunt marched swiftly past the houses, followed by a young boy who was dressed in the shabby livery that Calvin had donned the last time Phoebe had visited this area.
She walked two steps behind Aunt Laura and slightly to the side, keeping her eyes and ears attuned to everything around them.
When an inebriated gentleman just exiting one of the houses seemed to be heading in their direction, Phoebe was about to move to confront him, but then the boy stepped in front of the man.