“Excellent.”
We shook hands and parted, his energy a quiet counterpoint to my own resolve.
As I stepped into the corridor, I felt a flicker of grim satisfaction. Perhaps the future wasn’t entirely mired in the past—not while men like Redmayne were finding their voices.
Outside Westminster, the air carried the faint tang of the Thames—damp stone and something metallic beneath it. I drew it deep into my lungs, grateful for the clarity after the stale, smoky air inside.
I thought of the men and women working the looms this very moment, drawing in not fresh air but a fog of cotton fibers with each breath. Slowly, steadily, the fibers would fill their lungs until breath came short, then shallow, then not at all. Death by suffocation, doled out in patient daily increments.
The men in that room would not see it. But I had.
What I did not yet know was that the Thames carried more than fog and river silt that morning. It carried warnings—signs, shadows of the trouble stirring across London. Before long, the deaths I feared in the factories would pale beside the horrors waiting to be uncovered.
Chapter
Three
A Caller from the Mission
The next day, as the clock in the front hall chimed eleven, Honeycutt appeared at my morning room door. “Miss Martha Larkin to see you, my lady.”
As the mission worker stepped into the room, I rose to greet her. “Miss Larkin,” I said warmly, “how very pleasant to see you.”
She curtsied, not deeply, but with the awkwardness of someone unaccustomed to visiting houses where footmen opened doors. “Thank you for seeing me, my lady.”
She was a slight woman in her thirties, plainly dressed in a worn brown skirt and jacket that had been brushed to within an inch of its life. Her gloves were darned in three places, and her bonnet, though clean, bore the faded look of one that had seen too many seasons.
“Won’t you please take a seat?” I pointed to the cozy armchair I kept in my morning room for visitors.
She perched on the edge of it, hands clasped so tightly in her lap her knuckles whitened, as though she feared to mar the upholstery merely by resting upon it.
“Would you care for some tea?” I inquired, eager to put her at ease.
A flicker of alarm crossed her features. “Oh, no. Please don’t take any trouble on my account. Thank you kindly, but I couldn’t.”
Poor thing. She must think accepting refreshment would place her under some dreadful obligation, or that the cost of a single cup would be tallied against her. As I did not wish to add to her discomfort, I did not press her but simply asked. “How may I help you?”
Miss Larkin worried the strings of her reticule with trembling hands, then drew a breath as though steadying herself for a plunge. “I hope you will pardon me for seeking you out,” she began in a low, unsteady voice.
“There is nothing to pardon,” I said gently. “I am very glad you have come. Please tell me what weighs upon you.”
“It is not a common thing for me to trouble a lady of your position,” she murmured. “But after what happened to the girl Elsie — and the way you did not turn from it, even when others said it was no fit matter for a gentlewoman — I thought perhaps…” She trailed off, her fingers twisting in her gloves.
“Perhaps I might listen?” I finished gently. “You were right to come.”
Her eyes flickered up to mine, a flicker of relief in them. “It’s the girls, my lady. The ones who come to us from service, or from the street, or from places best left unspoken. We do our best to find them respectable situations—sewing work, laundries, domestic posts—but lately… lately, some have vanished.”
“Vanished?” That was the last thing I expected to hear.
She nodded. “Left the positions we’d arranged for them and were never heard from again. At first we thought they’d simply moved on. But then…” She hesitated, her throat working. “One of them — a sweet child named Anna Price — was found last month, pulled from the river down by the wharf. The police called it an accident. I knew her, my lady. She feared the water. Wouldn’t go anywhere near it if she could help it.”
The words settled between us, heavy as lead. I had seen enough of the Thames to know it was as much a grave as a river.
Miss Larkin glanced toward the door, lowering her voice further. “There have been others, I think. Girls with no family to claim them who’ve also gone missing. It’s easier to say they wandered off.” She swallowed. “But I can’t stop thinking—if someone could do for Anna what you did for Elsie…”
I leaned forward, my heart tightening. “You said nothing of this to the police?”
Her expression hardened, though her tone remained respectful. “I did, as well as some of their employers. The authorities thanked us for our trouble. Andthatwas the end of it. They don’t care about folks like us.”
