Page 49 of A Murder in Bloomsbury

"I think you should acknowledge him." No hesitation. No calculation. No concern for scandal before the welfare of the child.

The simplicity of it struck me harder than it should have. I leaned forward without meaning to, closing some of the distance between us across the small table. "Then I shall."

Something flickered in her expression at that. Not triumph. Approval. It settled somewhere low in my chest and stayed there.

"The question now becomes how," I said. "Do I keep him in London or return him to Yorkshire? Do I engage a tutor or send him away to school?"

A faint smile curved her mouth. "You have been thinking."

"All the blasted night." I caught myself a fraction too late, the oath slipping out before discipline could stop it. "Begging your pardon."

That earned me an actual smile, the first unguarded one I had seen from her all afternoon, and something in me responded to it entirely against my will.

"You can take the man out of the army," I said.

"But not the army out of the man,” she finished.

For several seconds neither of us spoke. I was aware, with an acuteness that unsettled me, of the small distance remaining between us across the table, of her gloved hand resting near mine.

The tavern around us faded strangely into the background. The muted voices below. The crackle of the fire. The fogged windows and smell of ale and smoke.

There was only Lark sitting across from me in candlelight with her gloved hands resting lightly beside her untouched tea. And the deeply unsettling realization that this felt dangerously close to peace, something I hadn't experienced in a long time.

She glanced toward the neglected meal between us. "Surely this establishment serves something stronger than tea."

Relief broke the tension at once, and I welcomed it. "Aye," I said. "They serve an excellent ale, and the chops are surprisingly decent as well."

"Then I should like both."

I rose to find Burch, grateful for movement, grateful for anything that put my body back under my own command. "Shouldn't be long," I said when I returned.

Barely any time had passed before the food and drink arrived in a cloud of steam and roasting meat.

For a little while, we spoke of nothing at all while we ate, and I found the silence between us easier than any I had shared with another person in years.

Only after the plates had been cleared and fresh ale poured did I retrieve the pencil from my coat. "Now," I said, "what do you advise?"

She laid out a practical strategy with astonishing efficiency, ticking items off on her gloved fingers as though she had already composed the list in her head before ever arriving. A distant relation had entrusted the boy to my care. Legal wardship would follow. I should keep Will in London. He would never forgive me if I sent him away so soon after losing his mother. I would need to hire a tutor as well. She recommended one she knew from her literary salon. The boy would require an entirely new wardrobe. The clothes he'd worn in Yorkshire would not do.

"That is quite the list," I muttered, making notes on the sheets of paper, my pencil struggling to keep pace with her. "Perhaps I should equip him with his own horse and carriage while I am at it."

She grinned. "Not for at least several years."

I found myself wanting to prolong the moment. The meal. The conversation. The simple fact of sitting opposite her while the world beyond the tavern walls ceased to exist.

Dangerous instinct. I noted it as such and did nothing whatsoever to curb it.

At one point, she warned me solemnly that I would need patience. "Will is bound to resent you," she said. "You represent everything denied to him."

"I am beginning to suspect you enjoy issuing military campaigns under the guise of domestic advice."

A spark of laughter entered her eyes, and I felt it land somewhere just beneath my ribs.

When she declined another glass of spiced ale, citing Miriam's disapproval should she return home tipsy, I reluctantly tucked away the papers, already regretting the practical turn the evening was about to take.

"So," I said, forcing my thoughts back toward the investigation, straightening in my chair as though the motion alone could reassemble my composure. "How do we proceed?"

Her expression sharpened, the softness of a moment ago replaced by something keener. "Lydia's poem. She was on her way to a publisher when she left my house."