“Thank you.” I slid open the door and gathered my skirts. The cobbles were slick from an earlier shower, so I took care when I stepped down from the hackney. As I paid the fare, I added a coin. “I would like you to wait.”
He eyed the surroundings with suspicion, as though the very shadows might conceal a cutpurse. “Won’t be long, will you?”
I didn’t blame him for his nerves. Hatton Garden was the center of the diamond and jewelry trade. Where there was wealth, there were always thieves. I could almost hear Steele’s voice—calm, infuriatingly reasonable—asking why I had come alone.
“That will depend,” I said to the hackney driver. “There’ll be extra coin if you wait.” With that reassurance—if such it could be called—I turned toward the frosted door that led to Finch’s office. As part of my disguise, I had chosen a plain walking dress of slate-grey wool, dull enough to pass without a second glance. Even so, I felt conspicuous as I approached. Thankfully, I didn’t have to knock as Finch opened the door on my approach. Clearly, he’d been expecting me.
“Lady Rosalynd.”
“No names,” I urged.
He gave a brief nod, stepping aside to let me pass. His chestnut hair, brushed back with careless impatience, caught the light of day, such as it was. His sharp eyes regarded me with a glint of humor that never quite reached his lined face. “May I take your cloak and umbrella?”
“Thank you.” After I handed both to him, he hung them on a rack close to the small stove.
The room smelled of ink, pipe smoke, and wool soaked in rain. It was plain, tidy, efficient. Maps of London covered one wall, their edges dog-eared, districts pricked with blue and green pins that suggested more stories than any gossip column couldcarry. A small stove burned low in the corner, its heat clean and steady.
“Would you like some tea and biscuits?”
He was trying, I realized, in his awkward, rough-edged way. Hospitality didn’t come easily to Caleb Finch, but there was a decency in the attempt—a warmth flickering beneath the worn surface, like the small fire glowing in the stove.
“Yes, thank you.” While he proceeded with that task, I studied him. He was not a handsome man in any fashionable sense—his hair needed the attention of a better brush, and his coat had seen a season or two—but he possessed a steadiness I trusted more than polished charm.
Finally, after he placed the tea and biscuits in front of me, he spoke. “Lady Rosalynd. I do not mean to criticize, but you did not need to come to my office.” His voice carried that gravelly warmth I remembered from the day I met him. “I would have come to you.”
I drew back my veil so I could see him clearly and he could see me. “I did not wish to draw attention to your presence at Rosehaven. My family would have worried.” Never mind Steele, who, I believed, would have somehow found out.
“I understand.” His eyes flicked, just once, to the frosted window through which one could barely see the street beyond. “Still, you should have brought a footman. Hatton Garden is not kind to unescorted ladies.”
“Point taken. Now that you’ve said your piece, may I say mine?”
“Of course.”
“As I mentioned in my note, I’m in need of your services.”
“What can I do for you?”
I drew from my reticule the folded sheet Martha Larkin had given me. The paper was cheap and already worn soft at thecreases from my handling. I smoothed it upon the desk between us.
“These are the names and last known addresses of several young women who’ve gone missing,” I said. “Martha Larkin, who works with the Marylebone Women’s Aid Society, informed me these girls were placed in respectable positions as housemaids, seamstresses, laundry maids. They’ve disappeared. As I understand it, one of the young women on that list—Anna Price—was pulled from the Thames a month ago. The police think her death an accident. But Miss Larkin swears she was deadly afraid of the water and would not have gone anywhere near it.”
Finch quietly read the note with his head slightly bent. Then he read the names aloud, but softly, as though speaking them might tie the girls more firmly to the world. “Anna Price…Bess Tyler…Mary C. — the handwriting trails here,” he pointed out. “She must not have known the surname.” He continued reading the names on the list, six in all. Done, he set the sheet down and leaned back, steepling his fingers beneath his chin.
“I’ve heard talk,” he said at length. “Not the sort a gentleman hears in his club. The sort that moves under doors and up stairwells. Girls who went into service and vanished. A carriage seen one day near a lodging-house, then never again. False addresses on cards that look proper until you stand before a shuttered door. But talk is smoke. Without evidence of a crime, there’s nothing to show a magistrate.”
“That’s why I’d like to hire you,” I said, my voice tighter than I intended. “To find the evidence the law would need.”
He huffed a quiet breath, not quite a laugh. “You’re warm today, my lady.”
“I am furious,” I said plainly. “These girls have no one to speak for them. If I must shout until ears ring, I will. But I prefer—” I gestured to the tidy desk, the maps bristling with pins “—I prefer results.”
“You’ll have my best,” he said. And that, from Caleb Finch, was a promise weightier than any oath dressed in lace. He wrote down the names and addresses and slipped the paper into his coat before returning my list to me. “I’ll talk to the employers and landlords. Those are the ones who know who comes and goes and when. And I’ll do it without rattling cages, if I can help it.”
Relief fluttered at my breast, light as a moth’s wing. “Thank you, Mr. Finch. I would like it to be done swiftly. Time?—”
“—Is against the girls,” he finished. “I know.” He rose and crossed to the map tacked on the wall, selecting a red pin and pressing it into Bloomsbury.
“Why there?” I asked.
