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“Where are my pearls then?”

“Ma’am,” said Lark. “Shall we have the footman look under the table? It’s likely that your necklace came loose as you tried to free your skirts.”

Mrs. Stryde turned slowly, her hand still pressed to her unadorned bosom, and stared at Lark. He knew that baffled look, when, in spite of plain fact, a mark could not understand how her possession had simply vanished.

Lark met her gaze with an innocent one of his own that said he wanted only to help.

“Good thought, lad.” Sir Oswald clapped Lark on the shoulder and summoned the footman to their side of the table. “Let’s shift these chairs, Mr. Larkin, and let the fellow look.”

As the footman went down on all fours to peer under the table, the door opened and Newberry entered, escorting Viv and Lady Louisa. Newberry leaned close to whisper something in Viv’s ear and gave her shoulder a squeeze. She smiled, and he slipped out of the room. At the familiarity of the exchange, Lark, who had seen Viv enter rooms many times in their brief betrothal, caught his breath. Only now did he see her clearly in her proper setting among the people to whom she belonged.

An accident of time and place had connected Viv and Lark on Babylon Street. The small, round ball with which she had wounded him had set them on a path neither intended. Now they must return to their separate spheres. The idea that he could propose to her a second time in all sincerity died. He was a man who, to protect her, used the first means that came to mind, a click, a pinch. He was not, and he never would be, a gentleman.

“Oswald, dear,” said Lady Louisa, “what’s going on?”

“Nothing really. Mrs. Stryde’s got herself in a state over a missing necklace. How’s the patient?” asked Sir Oswald.

“She’s much restored,” said Viv, her gaze meeting Lark’s. “Dr. Newberry has elevated the foot, and she’s resting comfortably. She begs your forgiveness for her indisposition and hopes you’ll call on her in a few days.”

“Good, good,” said Sir Oswald.

“Found it, sir,” came a muffled voice from under the table. The footman backed out from under the table and stood, holding the double string of pearls, the red velvet ties dangling from his gloved hand. Viv’s puzzled glance rested briefly on those velvet strings.

“Take it to Mrs. Stryde, boy,” said Sir Oswald. “You see, ma’am, nothing to get worked up about.”

Mrs. Stryde snatched eagerly at the necklace. “Come, Arthur. We’re leaving, but we know our duty to Aurora, and we will return.” She swept her husband through the dining room door.

“Damned difficult female that,” said Sir Oswald. “Did our best to get her out the door, and then such a fuss when she couldn’t manage her skirts and lost her necklace.”

“Ready to go home, my love?” asked Lady Louisa, holding out her hand to her husband.

“Yes!” said Sir Oswald. He turned to Lark. “May we drop you somewhere, Mr. Larkin?”

“Thank you, no. I’ll walk.”

*

As Lark left the house, he met Lady Louisa coming back for something she’d forgotten. He joined Sir Oswald on the pavement to wait for her return.

“Are you sure we can’t take you up, lad?” Sir Oswald asked.

“Thank you, no. A walk will clear my head.”

“Right you are, boy. After that woman made such a fuss, a man’s head needs clearing.”

The door behind them opened, and Sir Oswald turned to his wife. “Never even had my cake. You don’t suppose, Louisa, that they’d send a bit of cake round to us, do you?”

“My dear,” she held up a small basket. “The heroes of the hour deserve some reward.”

“That we do, eh lad?” As Sir Oswald took the basket, a substantial black town coach came to a stop at the curb. A servant leapt down to open the door, and Sir Oswald extended a hand to his wife. “In you go, my dear.”

Lady Louisa took her husband’s hand and offered Lark a parting smile. “We are glad Viv found you, young man. We thought she’d never think of marriage.” She shook her head. “Fond as I am of Aurora, her illness makes quite a tyrant of her.”

Lady Louisa and Sir Oswald climbed into their coach, and when it vanished round a corner into the London night, Lark’s old memories stirred to life. Somewhere in the great city was the spot where he had been a sleepy passenger in another coach as it rumbled away from the building that had swallowed up his mother. In the months since the fire, he had been certain that he would know the place when he found it, and that finding it would change him, give him knowledge of his true self. Lately, he had imagined that other self, the person Edward Larkin was meant to be, proposing to Vivian Bradish a second time with no pretense. Now he knew he would not, could not. A thief could not propose to a lady.

But he could not stop thinking of her. He tried. He stood, firmly rooted to the pavement in front of her door. He counted the windows of neighboring houses, bright rectangles of yellow light. He counted the gas lamps, ranged at intervals down the street, each a smaller glowing globe. He tried to name a familiar tune that came from an upper room across the way, where someone played the pianoforte with heavy, determined fingering. He worked to put words to the posh accents that came and went in snatches of indistinct conversation. He counted the bells that tolled the quarter hour not quite in unison, marking another bit of time that could not be got back again.

A long-forgotten conversation returned to him, an exchange he’d had with the duchess, when she was merely the grinder that Dav had hired to teach their boy gang. Robin, the youngest of them, had found a toad in the hall that spring day and claimed it was a baby dragon. She wanted to preserve the boy’s illusion, his delight, she’d called it, in the squat little creature. Lark had known then that illusions were dangerous and that the world held no lasting delight for boys like them. The argument came back to haunt him now, and he clenched his fists against a rising sense of loss.