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“Girl pickpockets?” Jane had seen girls with the thinnest of shawls around their narrow shoulders.

“Are you shocked?”

“I’m impressed. You must know that girls in Halab have no such avenue of self-reliance.”

He’d laughed again. “An admirer of female enterprise, are you?”

“I am. A woman can always do what necessity requires, you know.” She twisted to look around, but no seemed to note their passing.

“I have been followed before. I wouldn’t let it cause you any alarm.”

“And what have you done to invite a dogged pursuit through the streets of London?”

He gave a slight jerk to the horses’ mouths at her tone. “It’s what I’ve not done. You’d think any self-respecting tradesman would be good for thirty-four pounds, six and eleven, but Poole and Davies hound a man as if he’d borrowed the whole of the royal treasury.”

He meant it as a joke, she knew, though he might have creditors, and creditors in England might be a ruthless lot. But it was an evasion as well to pretend that he was the one being followed. His hotel room had not been ransacked. He was unwilling to acknowledge that he was something other than a protocol officer. She would do well to remember that he was the government’s man and as interested in her father’s information as the enemy was.

At the house on Conduit Street, habit stopped her from entering. There was one door only, through which both men and women passed.

He read her hesitation as something else. “Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked. “Tell me. What do you remember of your grandmother?”

“Almost nothing.”

“And what do you want from her?” The warm rumble of his voice was almost gentle. A sudden ache rose in her throat.

She closed her eyes. What she wanted was in the word grandmother itself. She had heard the term for grandmother often enough in the souks of Halab—teta. Teta, the word conjured warnings about the evil eye and offers of sweet treats and always fierce pride in a child. So what did she want from her English grandmother? Kindness. A warm welcome. A chance to talk about my father. Support for the search. She opened her eyes again. It was probably foolish to want those things and definitely foolish to admit that she did.

“My book says that one’s relations are the best source of introductions to potential husbands. Perhaps my grandmother knows a rich widower.”

He only raised a brow at her and reached for the door knocker.

A solemn butler of advanced years and stooped aspect greeted Hazelwood’s knock and ushered them into a black and white tiled hall with no place to shed their shoes. Jane looked. A footman took their outerwear, and the butler led them up to a blue-walled sitting room crowded with dainty furnishings and warmed to roasting by a crackling fire in a white marble hearth.

“Remember,” Hazelwood advised on the threshold, “a short visit.”

The butler announced their presence sonorously to the room’s two occupants. Jane’s grandmother, Lady Eliza Fawkener, daughter of an earl and widow of a wealthy gentleman, was a diminutive woman with a shock of white hair under a lace cap. Her pale, blue-lined flesh was pared down to the thinnest covering over her bones. She sat in a red and gold tapestried armchair, swathed in a silver silk wrapper, her slippered feet resting on a low red velvet ottoman. A collection of jars and vials vied for space on a silver tray at her right hand. The other woman, Margaret Leach, who looked perhaps forty, with soft rosy features, chocolate brown curls under her lace cap, and round wire spectacles on her nose, stood at Lady Eliza’s elbow, offering her a drink from one of the vials on the tray. Margaret offered Jane’s grandmother each of the vials in turn in a ritual of medicine-taking.

After a final sip of water from a glass, Lady Eliza spoke. “Margaret, don’t hover.” Margaret retreated to a chair on the opposite side of the fire, taking up a closed book and holding it in her lap. Lady Eliza curled a pale, fine-boned hand to urge Jane closer. “Let me see you, girl.”

Jane stepped forward, conscious of a small pang of disappointment. She could see nothing in Lady Eliza’s appearance or manner to remind her of her father. She guessed that her grandmother meant to frighten her by the frankness of her scrutiny, but Jane felt her courage rise under the icy blue stare. Hazelwood had temporarily deserted her to stand at the window looking down into the street.

“I suppose my wayward son sends you as a peace offering for getting himself killed. You know that you must marry now,” Lady Eliza began, her strong voice at odds with her frail appearance.

“So I’ve been told, ma’am.”

“You’re twenty-three, if you’re a day.”

“It’s true.”

“You’re on the shelf. What was your father thinking to stay away so long?”

Jane had no answer for the obvious, and Papa would advise her not to bait an angry person.

“And what am I to do with you? You’ve none of your mother’s beauty, have you? Oh, you’re tall enough, that’s something. Nothing to be done about your nose and chin, but with the hair there’s some possibility of improvement. Do you own a curling iron?” Lady Eliza twirled a boney finger vaguely in Jane’s direction.

“I doubt any man will notice her nose.” Hazelwood spoke from the window, his back to them, his voice a low rumble, lazy and distinctly masculine in the frilly room.

“How right you are, Lord Hazelwood. Gentlemen don’t fall in love with noses, do they?” added Margaret from her chair.