“I don’t know, but we are going to find her, Pixie,” he said with more confidence than he was feeling.
God, he wanted her back safe. He wanted to know she was in her parents’ town house or The Iris Club. Ambrose needed to hear her insulting him about his intelligence or lecturing him on the rights of women. To think he may never do so again left him cold.He had to find her.
“I have heard a voice inside my head. A young girl weeping and upset,” Charles said, rubbing Violet’s arm gently, reassuring her that he was close. “We’ve searched in the direction I believe it is coming from, but there is no sign of her yet.”
They split up once more, and Ambrose took Alex with him, while the others went in opposite directions.
“Is there a gin house close?” Alex said suddenly. “Thewoman in my head is filling it with a combination of juniper sharpness, sour mixed with sweet, and fermented wood. Plus, there is a hint of tallow smoke.”
“You have all those smells inside your head?”
“I have lived with this for many years, Ambrose, and I assure you I have become quite adept at deciphering scents.”
Ambrose asked questions because he was going slowly mad wondering what hell Tilly was being subjected to. “Is it hard, what you all have. Does it sometimes?—”
“Make you go mad? Absolutely, but we have one another and have learned how to block things when we need to. Right now, this woman could be the only way we find Tilly, so I’m letting her in.”
“I remember what you did for Violet. It is truly a gift, Alex.” His sister had struggled after the death of her fiancé, and Alex had helped her hugely.
“Thank you. It is seeing the effects on people I talk to about their loved ones who have passed that makes it all worthwhile.”
They walked until a gin shop was located. Sniffing the air, Alex said the scent was the same, which Ambrose thought was likely true of any gin shop, but he kept that to himself.
When he entered the building, a wave of scents hit him that were just as Alex had described, but it was also mixed with the sour body odors of the patrons drinking there.
“Keep your eyes out for a child, I think she is our key, and perhaps that is where I am being led,” Alex said.
“Why would a child be in here?”
“This is not your world, Ambrose. Children work in such places every day.”
Ambrose loathed people patronizing him but knew Alex was right. He’d led a sheltered life of privilege, and it was not until he’d grown close to the Nightingales and been involvedin the handling of the Pavlov fortune that he’d really understood that.
“So where is the child?” Ambrose could hear the desperation in his voice.
Alex looked at him as they stood there among the noise and gin smells as some people drank to forget their lives, or because they couldn’t live without it, but whatever he’d been about to say, he didn’t. Instead he walked through the patrons to a door that would likely lead to the kitchens.
“You can’t go in there.”
The woman wasn’t tall but she was wide, big-boned like Mavis, and the look on her face suggested she’d seen everything there was on offer in this life, and she wasn’t impressed by it.
“I need to find a child—a girl, madam. She has long dark hair and, I believe, blue eyes. She may hold the answer to locating our friend who is missing.”
She studied Alex as he spoke. Her eyes then went to Ambrose, ran down his body, taking in the expensive fabric of his overcoat, and top hat, and then down to his boots.
“I can pay you for this information,” Ambrose added.
She made a gesture with her head that indicated they should follow.
“She’s either leading us somewhere to be beaten and stolen from or to the child,” Alex said over his shoulder. “Be alert.”
The scents of the kitchen mingled with the gin, and then they were stepping out a rear door behind the woman.
“Ginny!” The bellow brought a small girl out of the shadows. “These men are going to pay us to talk to you.” She looked at them. “Is this the one?”
“I am unsure,” Ambrose said.
“We need Ellen or Theo,” Alex muttered.
