“It is an instruction,” Graham said. “A continuation.”
Mercer swallowed. “He said… if you found it, you would know what to do.”
Eleanor’s fingers tightened on the broadsheet.
She did know.
It was not comfort.
It was momentum.
Graham’s gaze flicked over the lane once more, then returned to Eleanor. Rain clung to his lashes, and his face looked carved from restraint. “We get Mercer out of London,” he said. “Today.”
Eleanor nodded once, then glanced down at her bandage, at the ink smudges on her fingers, at the little blue flower that had become a threat.
“Immediately,” she said quietly, “then we figure out our next step.”
Graham’s hand found her wrist, his grip firm, warm, far too intimate. “You did that on purpose,” he murmured.
“What?” she asked.
“The tray,” he said. “You made a riot without anyone realizing you meant to.”
Eleanor’s mouth tightened. “You wanted me not to intervene.”
“I wanted you alive,” he said.
“And I intend to remain so,” she replied.
He nodded, his chest tightening a fraction. Then he stepped back and motioned Mercer toward the far gate.
They left the churchyard in measured silence, moving as three ordinary figures in a city full of ordinary dangers.
But in Eleanor’s reticule, tucked beside the catalogue, the broadsheet crackled like a living thing.
E2. Seven on the sixteenth. Covent Garden.
And whatever waited there had already learned that Eleanor Hargrove could turn a room of men into a weapon.
Chapter 10
The mews house felt safest twice a day, in the hush before London fully woke, and in the hour after midnight, when even danger seemed to sleep.
Tonight, the study had become a small sanctuary of flame and paper. The air smelled of tallow and damp wool drying by the hearth. On the desk, the catalogue lay open beside Eleanor’s ledger. After seeing Mercer to safety, she had added his note. Now her pencil hovered as though she might coax the truth to confess by force of will.
“B4,” she said.
Graham leaned over her shoulder, bracing one hand on the desk. His sleeves were rolled, exposing old scars that looked like pale punctuation against his skin. His hair was rumpled, his eyes darker than the room.
He read quietly, as if the wrong cadence might summon someone to the door. “B4. Goldsmith. The Vicar of Wakefield. Eight on the sixteenth. Duplicate. Mayfair.”
Eleanor nodded and turned the map she had built from memory. The margins were crowded with her neat handwriting—notes, routes, contingencies, everything that kept helplessness at bay.
“Eight,” she repeated. “Not a dawn drop. A gathering. A room full of noise and music where a message can change hands without anyone noticing.”
“A party,” Graham said.
“Or something that pretends to be one,” Eleanor replied. “The conduit isn’t the point. The handoff is.”
