“Well, you make sure to watch over Miss Nightingale or her family will not be best pleased.”
He nodded.
“Right. I’ll be back soon, Bud.” Ellen appeared now in her coat and bonnet.
“Will you be wanting me to come with you?”
“I won’t, no. But thank you.” Ellen kissed the housekeeper’s cheek. She then looked down at Chester.
“Is that Alex’s other shoe? You are a good boy.” She patted his head and then waved Gray out the door.
She’d kissed her housekeeper’s cheek as if she was… what?Important?Worthy of her attention? Damn the woman. She was confusing him.
He waved down his carriage. Opening the door, he took Ellen’s hand and helped her inside.
“Why is Chester a good boy for stealing your brother’s shoe?”
“You have met Alex. Surely the reason is clear. He, like Leo, can be infuriating. It’s quite funny, really. Chester only takes Mungo’s and Alex’s things.”
She then leaned out the window, which he’d had open.
“Good day, Mrs. Varney! How is your foot?”
“A great deal better!” The woman wandering down Crabbett Close called back.
“Excellent!” Ellen replied. She then sat in the seat across from Gray once more.
The woman was unlike anyone he knew. Born into nobility, she could now not be further from it.
“Do you often shriek likea fishwife from the carriage window?” Gray asked.
“Asking after someone’s welfare, out a carriage window in the street you live in, is not shrieking like a fishwife. It’s being supportive.”
“Right, silly me.” It didn’t sit well with him that she had no one with her, but it had made his job easier of getting her into the carriage.
“It’s quite freeing not needing a chaperone,” she said.
“There is no way you could have known what I was thinking.”
“No, I didn’t, but I knew that thought would be in there.” She pointed to his head. “My brothers are not dissimilar to you, Detective Fletcher. They may no longer live in society, yet sometimes they are sticklers for propriety.”
“I’m sure they would disagree with you.”
“About being similar to you?”
He nodded.
“Possibly that is true,” she said.
That had him snorting.
“How do the visions come to you?” Gray asked, intrigued. To his shame, he’d never shown his aunt any interest because his family had wanted it that way.
“‘Don’t encourage your aunt, she’s addled in the head,’” his father would say. But his aunt hadn’t been addled. She’d been, for the most, a sensible, if colorful person, or so she’d seemed to him. Not that his family had allowed him to spend much time with her.
“I see things that were or are going to be, but, I cannot tell when they will appear.”
“Visions?”
