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“Tomorrow? Surely there’s no rush for you to…know him better. We promised not to marry before the guidebook is done.”

Again, Viv experienced a bit of confusion. Lady Melforth seemed to think that Viv was going to need a husband after all, on whose income and rank in society Viv would depend and not on her work as a writer. But the point of their guide was for Viv to make her way in the world by her own abilities, by fearlessness and skill with words. With the publication of the guide, Viv was to have her own money and not depend on Mr. Larkin or any man.

She did not want Lady Melforth questioning her betrothed too closely. Mr. Larkin had the careless air of a man who did not need to grub for money. That was the phrase. Viv knew she would always need to grub for it with ink stains on her fingers and precious notebooks filled with her observations. But if he had an employer, even a generous one like the Duke of Wenlocke, he could not have a large income. His income was something about him she had not yet considered, like his direction, which she did not know. She had the impression that he no longer lived with the duke, so she had no sure way to send him an invitation for tea. He did say he would see her on the morrow, but could she count on his coming? What if the duke required him for some reason? “Oh Waterloo,” she said. She was going to need the signal he’d invented.

“Waterloo? My girl, are you woolgathering?”

“Not at all, ma’am. I’m sure Mr. Larkin will be delighted to join us for tea. Now, let me tell you about Mary Godwin’s grave.”

“I see you don’t have your notebook. You’ve not lost it, have you? It’s not like you to be careless with our work. No rivals must ever get hold of our material.”

“I’m sorry. We were so late returning, I rushed in. I left it in the carriage. Tim Coachman will bring it in, I’m sure.”

“Ah, well, Godwin’s grave can wait until you have your notes. I’m tired. Help me up to bed, will you?”

“Of course, ma’am.”

An hour later Viv sent Thomas, her favorite footman, to ask Tim Coachman if her notebook had turned up. The two men returned to the house together to assure her that they’d both searched the carriage thoroughly and the notebook was not there.

“But it must be,” Viv insisted to the two sober-faced men, “I put it…” Realization stopped her. She knew where it was, well, she didn’t know where it was, but she knew who had it. “Thank you both for looking.”

*

Rook was out when Lark turned up at the old place. He put a meat pie and a pint pot of ale on the ancient vanity in his old room, lit a lamp, and withdrew the little notebook from his inner pocket. Taking the notebook had been an impulse. Walking to Rook’s with the little moleskin pad pressed to his good side while each step pulled at his stitches, he had rapidly passed from being curious about her writing to needing to see it for himself. Now he saw the notebook as a dilemma. He tossed it onto the vanity into the circle of lamp light.

He turned to the makeshift wardrobe he had long ago created out of a pair of old doors and some green damask bed hangings from a bankruptcy sale. He shed coat and waistcoat, discarded his silk tie, and gingerly pulled his shirt away from the wound in his side. A bit of blood now marked the shirt. He pulled it off and draped it over the cabinet that formerly held his shaving things. For a moment he regarded the blood-marked plaster on his ribs. It would have to be changed, and he had no valet to do the changing. He hoped he could persuade Rook to do it, but what he wanted was for Viv to change it. She seemed to have no hesitation about examining the wound or even about touching him. He would just need a story to explain his dependence on her help rather than a valet’s.

A sudden chill shook him, and he reached into the wardrobe. His hand brushed the black velvet coat Dav had worn as their leader, the coat he had discarded when he returned to his family and true name. That day, the day Lark and Rook had set out for London, Lark had picked up the fallen coat and donned it. He slipped it on now. Though the hem was in tatters, the silky lining warmed him.

He settled in the chair at the vanity and took a pull from the ale pot, ready to consider the problem of the little notebook. There was no question that he would return it to her. Nor was there a question of when. He would return it first thing in the morning.

She would be angry that he had taken it. The little notebook mattered to her, unlike the purse of pebbles she’d lost in their first encounter. He wondered whether she would confess the trick to him. She apparently had no need of ready money in Lady Melforth’s household, but she wanted money, he was sure of that. The story she told, revealed half-sisters and a mother who did not manage well on a low income.

He put aside the ale and took up the notebook. It fit neatly in his hands. In taking it, he had planned to read it, at least those parts where she might have written about him. He wanted to know whether the doctor was right, that Lark was a mere anecdote in her tales of London, a bit of passing street life. He wanted to know if the book was dangerous and whether reading it would put ladies on their guard against pickpockets. He wanted to know whether she knew anything of the city as he knew it. He wanted to know if she wrote in a fine lady’s delicate hand, or in quick jottings that matched her rapidity of thought. He held the book to his nose and thumbed the edge, letting the leaves fan his face as if they would release her secrets. Oh, he wanted to read it.

The problem was that if he read it, he would satisfy his curiosity, but violate her trust. Taking the notebook was one thing, but reading it, he knew, would be a worse offense. As it was, he had no idea whether he could distract her from her anger when he returned it. But he must. He might be daft to keep their charade going, but he meant to try. She declared herself at odds with the ideal of female respectability, a woman who fired a pistol at a fleeing assailant. She was the opposite of a mark, curious and confident, and bold. He’d grant her that, but she was no Liza. Whatever desires he’d had while Viv nestled against him in the carriage, she fell into that lofty category of respectable women known as ladies.

Not that he wanted her to be Liza, but he wanted her to be susceptible to him, and not in the way that the usual female mark was. He never had carnal thoughts about a mark. Most of them didn’t see him at all. They saw his clothes, heard his posh accent, and accepted that he was a gentleman, a man to lean on in a moment of distress when the city proved to be too much for them. Later when such a woman spoke to a copper, she would describe the kind gentleman who helped her. She wouldn’t remember his appearance or the name he gave her.

The city did not seem to overwhelm Viv, but to thrill her, and she would not forget his name, still his heart was in no danger. He was having a lark, playing a game in her company. With her he could stroll those regions of London he had not yet searched. And what he needed was for her to change the bandage without suspecting his real circumstances. That meant he had to come up with a story for her. He could cover the bit about his education, but he needed to invent some sort of family. How lofty a family, that was the question. He broke the still-warm pie in half. He thought he’d allow himself a maiden aunt, of modest means, but generous in nature. She’d live a retired life in a country village, perhaps Somerton, and from time to time she’d send her nephew a gift.

The door opened behind him. Rook was not one for knocking. “You going to eat that pie?”

“I am.”

“I did a click today.”

Lark spun around, immediately regretting the action, as a sharp pain jabbed at him. “Where?”

“There was some ceremony, ribbon-cutting thing, at a digging. I bagged a gold turnip watch. Sold it, too.” He jingled some coins in the pocket of his ragged jacket.

“In Hoxton?” They never fenced anything in their own neighborhood.

“I can do clicks without you, you know. Most dippers do.”

“What if you’d been twigged? How would I get you out?”

Rook shrugged. “Sure yer going to eat that pie?”

“I’m sure.”

Rook shrugged again and turned away.

Lark bit into the pie and caught the crumbs before they landed on Viv’s notebook.

He knew what he wanted, what everything around him could deny him. He wanted Viv to read the notebook to him.