She narrowed her eyes at him. “Did you bring this up on purpose? To convince me of the wisdom of your financial strategy?”
“Youmentioned Wiltshire first, not I. Speaking of the pie shop—”
“Ohbollocks!” She leapt to her feet, and the spindled wood chair wobbled on its two back legs before she steadied it. “The pie shop!” She pictured the teetering mountain of root vegetables that awaited her with a wince as she dashed for the door.
Yorke’s voice floated after her. “Consider Laventille!”
“I’ll let you know about Renwick House!” she called back.
And as she left the office, her gaze flicked helplessly to the desk where Jem would sit, if he were at the office.
Empty. Still empty.
She pushed her way out the front door and into the cold November sun. Fretfulness was a tangle in her belly—Jem, her books, Georgiana Cleeve, Renwick House. The pie shop.
Objectively, Cat knew that she could quit the pie shop. They had enough money now. More than enough. She knew they did, even as she knew she could buy a new cloak to replace her old one instead of picking out the hem. But it was hard to believe it down in her bones. Down in her belly, which recalled the ache of hunger as she’d pushed food around on her tin plate to make it look like more.
She had not wanted Jem to notice the disparities in their portions. But he’d noticed anyway.
She wanted more for him. She wanted so much more, and it was so hard to know what she could let go of, and what she must cling to with both hands, lest it slip away.
She chewed her lower lip so hard it was almost raw by the time she made it to the pie shop. She hung her cloak on a peg and attacked the turnips, Mrs. Quincy’s voice a muffled bellow in her ears.
And all day—between the scent of blistered pastry crust and the slide of coin in her palm—she remembered twisted spires, dark against a blue sky.
Chapter 6
Please find attached the new contractual terms proposed by Mr. Laventille, which may obviate your recent objections. Vast sums of money have that effect, I find.
—from Martin Yorke, solicitor, to Catriona Lacey
By evening, Cat had come no closer to making a decision about Jean Laventille, the pie shop, or Renwick House.
She had, unfortunately, sliced a deep cut across the base of her thumb when her mind had strayed—ever so briefly—to the recollection of Georgiana Cleeve’s disdainful face. She resolved to put Her Ladyship out of her mind for the rest of the day, a resolution made promptly impossible by the fact that every time her thumb smarted, she was drawn back into the memory: Georgiana’s angular cheekbones, her moon-pale lashes, the spray of freckles all around her mouth.
It wasinfuriating.
As Cat settled herself into a threadbare armchair across from her brother, Jem glanced up from his book. His red hair wasalmost metallic, a glittering copper in the firelight. His lips pursed into a frown.
“What?” she said.
“I don’t know.” He frowned harder at her. “You look suspicious.”
She blinked. “How can I look suspicious? I am sitting down, empty-handed, by the fire.”
“I don’t know. Something about your wrists, perhaps. Why aren’t you covered in ink?”
“I am not generally covered in ink,” she protested.
Their cousin, Pauline Tuttle, who shared the small suite of rooms with them, came around the corner with something hot and brothy in a pair of mugs. “That,” she said, “is a flat-out lie. I say that with the experience of the woman who does your washing and mending.”
“I do the washing too!” Cat protested. “We take turns!”
“You do the washing poorly,” Jem said. “Do you not see the ink everywhere? Or do you simply not mind it?”
She glowered at her brother and Pauline both. Pauline laughed and passed her a mug, then settled her hip on the arm of the chair where Jem sat with his book.
Pauline—clever as the devil, whip-thin with a spray of dark curls—had come into their lives after Cat, Jem, and their father, Walter, had moved to London from Wiltshire. When Walter Lacey had died, Pauline had dragged the grief-stricken Cat and Jem bodily toward subsistence. She had forced meals upon them and—when Cat had needed more and more time to work—she had taken charge of Jem’s education herself.
