Mrs. Lavender lowered her chin and looked up at him like a vexed mother. “She did. Nothing but trouble that one will be.”
“So it is true that her father owns this house.”
“It and a quarter of the business was left to him by my late partner. I had come to think no relatives would be found. It was to be all mine in that event.”
“A disappointment, I am sure.”
“Belvoir kept out of the way, at least. I think it embarrassed him, but not so much that he would sell to me, orrefuse the filthy money. Now his daughter is sounding like she will be very much in the way. She has already questioned my accounting. Can you believe it?”
“What gall.”
“I’ll say so. If I am not careful, she will be trying to change things to her liking. She has that look to her. Noting all the furniture and such, she was, when I showed her about the place.”
Ives pictured Padua facing off against the formidable Mrs. Lavender. The latter normally worried about men overstepping the lines, and had Hector available when that happened. He doubted she ever tangled with the likes of Padua.
“Do you know where she went when she left here?”
“Left here? She hasn’t left. She is up above right now.” She leaned forward, her eyes furious. “She thinks to move in. Up with the servants.”
“Move in?Here?” Surely Mrs. Lavender had misunderstood.
“Here.If she is a friend of yours, I trust you will explain to her how thatwill not do.”
He stood, and shook off his astonishment. “Up with the servants, you say.”
“Turn left on the top landing, then the last door on the right at the end.”
He strode off and mounted the stairs with firm purpose. No doubt learning the use of this house had shocked Padua and she was not herself. Disillusionment with her father had led her into some peculiar decisions. He would indeed explain to her how it wouldnot do, although by now she had probably realized that all on her own.
The door at the end on the right was closed. He heard her moving around inside. Refusing to treat the chamber as her home, he opened the door and let it swing wide. Padua, in the process of pushing a washstand along the wall, did not hear him.
Eyes narrowed, face taut, she shoved the stand along the boards. Her valise sat on the bed. She had removed her pelisse in order to free her arms for her labor.
“Padua.”
His voice made her freeze. She collected herself, her gaze on the washstand. Then she looked at him. A hard smile formed. She stepped into the center of the chamber and gestured widely. “What do you think? It is better than my chamber at Mrs. Ludlow’s. With a new mattress and some decent lamps, it will be comfortable and more than adequate.”
“You are not going to do this.”
“Oh, I am. I am going to live here for free, and make sure that woman pays as she should, and save the money, and in six months I daresay I will have what I need to go abroad. In the meantime this will be my privatestudiolo, where I will read and study and prepare.”
“And your father?”
“You mean John Hadrian Belvoir? The partner in a brothel? If by some luck he is acquitted, he can return to his chambers on Wigmore Street. He prefers it there.”
She sounded bitter and angry. He could not blameher. She had lived her life with her father on a pedestal, only to discover his feet were covered in mud.
“His judgment is rather abstracted, Padua. When presented with this property and its lease and the steady income, he probably could not even imagine how to fix it to be less notorious.”
“No.No more. I am finished making excuses for him. I am done thinking of him as an addled but brilliant scholar, when in fact he is a very, very shrewd whoremonger.” The outburst had her eyes flaming. “It will come to me eventually, I assume. When it does, I will decide whether to find a more respectable use for it. Perhaps I will not. Maybe by then I will have grown accustomed to the steady income too. Now, please help me with this washstand.”
He lent his strength to it and got it to the spot she wanted.
“A bookcase. I need one over here. The wardrobe will do as is.” She opened her valise, and took out a garment to put away.
He went over and stopped her. He placed his hand in the valise, on top of hers. “You will not do this. You will regret it for certain.”
“Who will know? I am no one, Ives. It is perfect. I will use a mail drop, not this address, and I will come and go through the garden. Look, there is a fire stairs right out here.” She took him to the corridor, and opened a door. “The servants who work here do so with the world in ignorance, and are not tainted. I will not even be visiting the lower floors.”
