“Or perhaps,” he called, his voice hard, “Iwill wait foryouto come. Andyou’llbe the one to know whenyou’reready.”
Before she could answer, he darted ahead, leading the way across the grassy plain.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Dearest Georgiana,
I’m home, Mama. I am home. I’m sending this letter by private messenger from London so you will know straightaway.
The mission was a success; you’ll not believe all we managed. I’ll share every detail when I see you. Unfortunately, the return sailing was dreadful. Autumn weather caught up with us and storms from the north made for relentless rocking and plunging, dipping and bobbing. I was sick for ten days, unrelenting. When finally we reached London, I staggered off the brigantine in search of fresh bread and ginger tea and chocolate.
But this is not what you really want to know, is it?
Before you expire from curiosity, I’ll tell you that the duke and I did . . . grow close on the voyage, but our farewell was largely without ceremony. The duke’s family was at the dock to greet him when we reached London. An important component of the mission had been to recover an abducted cousin, and Northumberland sent word to this man’s parents when our ship entered the Thames at Margate. The note was meant to put ananxious aunt and uncle at ease, but the result was a family reunion at the East India Company docks.
His desperate mother and sisters, aunts, uncles, and cousins created quite a raucous welcoming party, but they served as a useful distraction to my green-gilled quest for solid ground.
So there you go.
I have other news.
Your Norse crystals are in my possession.
I am so anxious to see you.
To that end, please begin to think about what you will pack for a visit. When I come for you, I’ll have no time to indulge this process. We will leave the same day I arrive, please be aware.
I should be relocated to Hammersmith by the time this reaches you. My work in the new shop will be exhausting and very pressing because we’re endeavoring to outplace any retribution from Drummond Hooke. That said, the joy of my own agency will not be as sweet without you there to share it.
All my love,
Bell
Chapter Twenty-Three
Four weeks later
“Mother?” whispered Isobel. “I’m afraid you’ll have to take yourself and your watering can outside to the garden. If you please?”
“What?” asked Georgiana Tinker innocently, looking up from a potted geranium.
“You’re distracting my clients,” Isobel sighed, nodding to the baron currently ignoring Samantha as she tried to explain lodging choices in Malta.
“But I’m merely tending to the—”
“You know very well what you’re doing,” said Isobel, “and we need the baron’s undivided attention.”
Despite being nearly fifty years old, not to mention retired, Georgiana Tinker took center stage wherever she went. The lobby of Isobel’s new travel shop was no exception, and Georgiana could sense male attention without even looking up from her reading. Her vocabulary of guiles and wiles ranged from melodious humming, to requests for the loan of handkerchiefs, to exaggerated fanning with a folded broadsheet.
And when she wasn’t distracting fathers and husbands, Georgiana was asserting her opinion of foreigncities. Most well-traveled people agreed that Venice smelled like a sewer in August, but to make a go of the new shop, Isobel neededall ofthe families to bookall ofthe cities. Even Venice, even in August.
“You’re unsettling the baroness,” said Isobel, thrusting the watering can in her direction. “Out. Go. Take your hat.”
Two weeks had perhaps been too long for her mother’s Hammersmith visit, but she was sending her home on Monday. They need only survive three more days.
“Do forgive me,” said Isobel to the baron, relieving Samantha. “Now where were we?”
Baron Peyton had come to finalize his wife’s itinerary for a late-spring holiday to the island of Malta. The baroness and their two daughters had accompanied him, and the ladies mooned over watercolors of the island while the baron settled the bill.
