The big man blinked down at the barrister. “Lem.”
“Right,” said Mr. Harcourt, giving his head a little shake. “We’ll go to the inn and gather our thoughts, unless we ought to go grab your brother on the way, Miss Lennox?”
Libba made a face. “No. Let me wash and change before I face Malcolm. And if either of you tells him about this jail business, I’ll make hell for you. Understand?”
Hattie nodded immediately, while Mr. Harcourt just looked weary, the circles under his eyes seeming darker and heavier than they had been back on the docks.
Lem did not react at all.
“Good,” said Libba, brightening. “Off we go. Good God, Harriet. What on earth are you doing back in England, anyway?”
“Well,” said Hattie. “It’s been seven years, you see. And there are seven of us.”
“Naturally,” said Libba in an amused, fond way that always meant she didn’t understand at all.
“Eight,” corrected Mr. Harcourt as they walked toward the carriage. “There are eight of you.”
Harriet French frowned.
Dark blue, she thought, counting her fingers.Stormy, dark blue and the smell of smoke.
Eight.
She had forgotten Elias Selwyn.
Chapter Two
It had takena lot longer to get out of London than Harriet had anticipated. Almost an entire month.
A month! And the trouble had not been entirely because of Libba’s legal muck, either. While Julian Harcourt, Esquire had handled the matter rapidly and cleanly, with details Harriet was happy to never know entirely, there had been the matter of Libba’s acting troupe and their contract with a Seven Dials playhouse that would not end for another half dozen performances.
Libba’s brother, Malcolm, had also thrown a wrench into the works. He worked as a junior banker at a respected institution near Bow Street and evidently also required quite a bit of preparation before he could simply step away from his life, though he’d reacted with immediate enthusiasm at the idea of returning to Brighton.
“I’ll have to write ahead to the lads!” he’d exclaimed after lifting Hattie fully off her feet in an embrace of greeting. “They’ll toast me properly the instant we set boots to pebbles. You’ll come, of course.”
“Oh, of course,” Libba had replied with a roll of her eyes, even though the invitation had been directed at Hattie, actually.
Next, Hattie had written a letter directly to Starling’s Rest, where one of them still resided. Errol Cagney would preparefor their imminent stay and further, she entrusted him with tracking down one of the other wards, Ruby Little.
Errol and Ruby had long been inseparable, both as whispering, giggling friends when they had been children, and as shrewd and passionate business partners in adulthood. Ruby traveled to sell and market their wares, but he would know how to find her and how best to convince her to leave whatever she was about and return to the Rest.
While they had hoped Monica Thresher would be in London for the High Season, as many well-known modistes were prone to be, she had not been seen in St. James’s or on Regent Street in some time. It had taken quite a lot of gossip and questioning, but eventually, the other modistes had been able to provide her whereabouts.
Berlin, apparently. On commission.
“She always goes back to Brighton to visit her mum by autumn if you just want to wait,” they had told Harriet and Libba. “She’s a very good daughter.”
“I wish wecouldwait,” Hattie had said sincerely. “But we require her now. Do you have the address?”
“Well, no,” the narrow-faced modiste had said. “But I imagine if you writeRoyal Opera Houseon the envelope, it’ll find her.”
“‘Royal Opera House’!” Libba had gasped, at which point the conversation had devolved past the point of productivity, with Libba far more interested in the theatrical pedigree of the commission than her foster sister’s ultimate whereabouts.
That left Rhys Caradoc, who was always going to be the most impossible of the seven to track down.
“Have either of you heard from him?” Hattie asked the Lennoxes over dinner, her distress growing at the glance they exchanged. “Anything at all?”
“Well, he’s always somewhere,” Libba said cryptically. “Up to something.”
