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The group of friends moved toward the entrance. Margaret took over with Lady Eliza. Jane was looking for Hazelwood when the broad-shouldered gentleman who had entered late came up to her. “Jane Fawkener, is it? They told me you’d be here. Let me look at you.” His hearty voice echoed through the emptying church. “It’s your Uncle Thaddeus, niece.”

Jane looked up at a rosy-cheeked gentleman with smiling blue eyes. Now that she could observe him closely, she saw the threadbare condition of his coat. “Uncle Thaddeus, hello.”

“Doing my duty, don’t you know.” He looked around. “Used to come here after your mother passed. Put in a word or two, you know”—he glanced upward—“on her behalf. Not that she needed anything from the likes of a plain naval man like me. She always was a good sort of girl, even when she was mad for your father.” He cleared his throat. “Now, he, mind you, he probably needs all the words you’ve got to say, eh?”

“He needs more than words, Uncle. He needs our help. I’m sure he’s very much alive and probably in trouble.” Jane spoke quietly but clearly, sure that no one else could hear her in the general murmur of leave taking.

Her uncle’s brows shot up, and he glanced around. “Do you know what you’re saying, niece?”

She nodded.

His brows contracted in a heavy frown, and he offered his arm to her.

Again, Jane felt that moment of hesitation, caught between the ways of Halab and the ways of London. She took his arm, and he turned them toward the church door.

The crowd was thinning, but her uncle looked about before he spoke again. “Did your father leave you a map? Always giving maps to people, as if we were all about to go haring off on an adventure.”

“Did he give you one, Uncle?”

“No, but I have one, one he gave to your mother long ago. Don’t know where the thing has got to, but if you’ve got one, best to keep it to yourself. Don’t let anyone see it.” He looked around again although the vestibule was now nearly empty.

She nodded. She had believed the map in The Husband Hunter’s Guide to be significant from the moment she’d seen it. Now curiosity consumed her about her uncle’s map. She glanced around. No one seemed to note their conversation. The Last Bench Lending Library friends stood at the foot of the chapel steps, exchanging talk and laughs.

Her uncle looked chagrinned. “Well, I’d best be on my way, niece. You’ve got other fish to fry, eh? Your grandmamma tells me you’re on the lookout for a husband. Don’t want to hurt your chances by talking to an oldster like me.”

“I hope I may talk to family, Uncle Thaddeus, and still expect to attract a husband.” Jane smiled at him. She didn’t want to ask him outright for his map from her father, but she did want to see it. “May I call on you, Uncle? Is it done?”

His face brightened. “Of course, my girl. You’ve got some kind of companion, haven’t you?”

“I do.”

“Well, I’ve only my bachelor’s digs in Hampstead, but my man can make a decent cup of tea. You’ll come have a dish of tea, eh? This afternoon?”

Jane nodded. Her uncle had a map of her father’s. She would get Hazelwood to take her. “Thank you, Uncle Thaddeus.”

She joined the Last Bench Lending Library members as churchgoers waited for carriages to arrive. Margaret smiled at her. Her grandmother’s companion looked different after her talk with her friends, livelier, brighter, almost cheerful. Jane would have to get her grandmother out more often. “Now that you know how we operate, Miss Fawkener, you must bring a book next time.”

“I shall.” Jane smiled back.

Across the narrow street Hazelwood emerged from behind his carriage, and she wondered whether he had seen his mother leave the church.

* * * *

In the end Jane could get him to say nothing about his family other than to admit that he had an older, married sister. When the conversation shifted back to the investiture ceremony, she was able to persuade him to take her to Hampstead by refusing to practice another minute and by agreeing that she would return from her cousins’ musicale that evening in his carriage.

Uncle Thaddeus’s white cottage was tucked away among other houses on a hillside sloping toward the heath. A narrow lane passed by the high-walled garden, and the interior was fitted up like the inside of the ship that had brought Jane back to London with wood paneled walls, upon which hung the brass tools of the sailor’s trade—clocks, barometers, and sextants.

Uncle Thaddeus settled them in the small dark parlor in heavy chairs with worn leather seats. His man brought the tea tray and set it on a battered old sea chest that filled the center of the room. The tea was weak, the old-fashioned dishes worn and chipped, and the plate of biscuits quite sparse. A meager fire burned in the grate. Her uncle was either very frugal or very short of cash. For a few moments they talked about the house and how her uncle’s prize money had allowed him to settle there when he left the navy. A large square of blank paneling above the hearth drew Hazelwood’s attention.

“Are you missing a work of art, Captain Drummond?”

Uncle Thaddeus put down his dish of tea and patted his whiskers with a napkin. “That I am, Hazelwood. Hoping to ask my niece Jane for some help in the matter, but first things first. Promised to show her one of her father’s maps.”

Thaddeus rose from his chair and signaled them both to stand, beckoning them across the room to a large desk under a round window like a ship’s porthole. He lit a lamp.

“Didn’t think I’d know where this was, but I found it right off.” He unrolled a sheet of heavy yellowing paper and spread it on his desk anchoring the ends with a compass and some bits of sea-weathered wood and loops of iron that Jane did not recognize.

She bit back her disappointment when she leaned over to look and found that it was a map of the city of Oxford, the locations of the ancient colleges marked by shields of their coats of arms.