By the time she unscrewed her eyes and straightened her spine again, Miss Crewe had passed the gate and was striding between the headstones. Sophie watched until her tall gray figure vanished behind the corner of the church.
The gate swung slowly shut on a long, anguished moan.
Sophie stared and stared at that empty corner, until a passing carter yelled at her to get out of his way. She scrambled out of the street, putting out one hand on the graveyard fence to steady herself.
Cold and iron bit through the worn leather of her glove. Sophie felt the drumbeat of panic—until she realized it was no memory this time. Her hand was wrapped around one of the gate’s iron spikes—the same one Miss Crewe had clutched, when Sophie had asked her... No, when Sophie had told her...
I will kindly ask you not to meddle in my business,Miss Crewe had said, haughty as any princess.
The wealthy woman’s voice plucked at Sophie’s memory:I know this weave... it hasneverbeen offered for sale.
Until today. By someone who didn’t even care how much it had sold for. Who responded with anger when someone tried to tell them they might have been cheated.
It didn’t make any sense—unless you had seen something equally senseless before. Something that turned out to be a lie—and a lie dreadful enough to have ruined her entire family.
Cold spread from her hand, up her arm, and unfolded dark wings in her chest. Suspicion stretched, and fixed itself into a terrible certainty: something was horribly wrong in Carrisford.
Somebody was running a swindle.
And Miss Crewe was in it up to her pretty neck.
Sophie clenched her jaw, clutched her skirts, and marched back to Mr. Giles’s shop. She was going to ask him a few questions about Miss Crewe. And she didn’t care how many inches—or feet—or miles—of romantic ribbons she had to purchase to get the answers.
She wouldn’t ignore her misgivings, or tell herself she was imagining things. Not this time.
Nobody else was going to get ruined, if Sophie could prevent it.
Chapter Three
Maddie Crewe walked home in twilight, past where the new paving stones gave way to the rough medieval cobbles that marked the older parts of town. Once this neighborhood had been a fine estate with gardens, glasshouses, and overwealthy guests. But times had changed, the town had crowded in, and now it was a warren of homes divided up piecemeal and given out as poor relief by the parish overseers.
It was a place you lived when there wasn’t anywhere else for them to put you, except the workhouse.
Maddie let herself in the front door and breathed in the smell of Cat’s oyster stew. Soft humming came from the kitchen, and the appetizing clink of a pot being stirred. Some knot in Maddie’s heart unloosed a little at the prospect of a proper meal, and she hurried to shed her scarf and mittens and hang them up on their peg.
John Hedingham was in the front room, his cotton sleeves rolled up, punching lacing holes in kid leather with an awl. His wife, Emma, was sitting in the last of the light, embroidering a pair of satin slippers with delicate gilt clocks. Dozens of pairs of boots and slippers and shoes danced on the walls around them, the newness of silk and satin aggressively shiny against plain plaster and well-worn wood. Every flat surface in the room held tools or trimming—silk and lace, leather and damask, rolls of cord and thread and ribbon.
Beads and buttons and buckles gleamed like gorgeous insects as Maddie pulled up a stool and sat, taking care not to block the wan winter sunlight. Candles were dear and hard on the eyes.
“We spoke to Mrs. Ravenell today,” John began. “And Mr. Colson, Mrs. Doorey, and the Tahourdin brothers. Asked if they’d heard anything about a strange blue silk with... unusual properties.”
Maddie grinned. “And had they?”
John laughed. “Of course not—though you know Mrs. Ravenell. Shepretendedshe’d heard it already.” His grin widened, and the awl punctured the leather once more. “So Ipretendedto tell her the next part of the tale.”
“Good,” Maddie said. “I know the rest of the Weavers’ Library has been around to nearly every workshop and draper’s in town. We might as well have posted handbills on street corners. It’ll be mysterious blue silk for three weeks, at least.” She leaned back, rolling her head to stretch the old crick out of her neck.
Emma peered anxiously over at her, though her hands never faltered. “Well?”
“Well yourself,” Maddie replied, spreading her gray wool skirts and stretching her feet out to take some pressure off her aching soles. Emma pouted, so with a flash of a grin Maddie took pity and stopped stalling. “Mr. Giles took the bait, no trouble. He paid me the rate I asked, and never let on how much profit he’d made on the sale.” Just like Miss Anybody had predicted—and just like Maddie and the Library had planned. “Mrs. Money said he nearly fell over himself trying to wriggle into her good graces.”
“Must be that aristocratic French blood of his,” John replied.
Maddie snorted. “How many times has he told that lie?” she groused. “His mother was an oyster farmer’s daughter—and about as French as I am.”
“I hear he asked the magistrates if he could display his comte grandfather’s coat of arms,” John said.
“If they said no, that’ll be the first time the magistrates ever said no to him,” Emma replied.
