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Chapter Twenty-One

Viv stormed into the hall past an astonished Haxton still wielding the poker, and a trembling Jenny, wringing her hands.

“Miss!” cried Jenny. “Are you unharmed?”

Viv flung her gloves and the soiled velvet purse onto the demi-lune table, and tore off her bonnet, moving toward the stairs.

“Perfectly unharmed, Jenny, thank you. But oh he’s a liar and a thief and I shall—” She railed at his perfidy. She did not know what dreadful fate could possibly satisfy her wrath. Really, the whole barbaric idea of four horses pulling his disemboweled body apart seemed reasonable at the moment except for the distress to the horses.

Behind her Haxton closed the door. “Shall we call for the constables to apprehend the ruffian, Miss Bradish?”

“Yes! He will have gone in the direction of Weymouth Street.” A burly constable taking him up would be a good first step. A cell in some low, dank corner of Newgate would be a start. Leg irons would be a nice touch.

“Weymouth Street? Very good, miss.”

Viv reached the foot of the stairs and turned back, her thoughts racing. “No. He’ll go to Wenlocke.” He would go to his grand friend the duke who would protect him from the law, and from Viv, too.

“The duke, miss, that ruffian?” Haxton plainly thought she had taken leave of her senses, and perhaps she had. Somewhere deep in her was a place where a monstrous hurt lay coiled and waiting, and if she stopped being angry even for an instant, it would spring and eat her alive.

“No. The ruffian is a man named Rook. He is Mr. Larkin’s partner.” Only he wasn’t a mister Larkin. He had told her he was Lark. My friends call me Lark. He meant his pickpocket friends and his titled friends. It made no sense that he’d told her such an intimate thing. Her knees threatened to give. She grabbed the newel post and pulled herself together to speak plainly, to name the betrayal. “Mr. Larkin is the thief. First, he stole my purse. Now he’s taken our book proofs.”

Haxton and Jenny stared at her with complete incomprehension.

“Oh, truly, believe me, he is a thief, a common pickpocket. I can’t explain right now.”

A rustle of skirts on the landing above made Viv look up. There stood Mrs. Stryde, the little black curls on the side of her face as tight as ever, her lips compressed into a thin red downward bow.

“Who has taken the book proofs, Miss Bradish? They were your responsibility, were they not?”

“Good morning, Mrs. Stryde.”

“You’d best come up, Miss Bradish. We’ve been waiting for you.”

“Directly.” She turned to Haxton and Jenny, still standing confused and distraught. “Thank you for coming to my aid. There’s no need to send for a constable. Lady Melforth will decide how she wishes to deal with the thief.”

Viv gathered her dignity, clutched her dirtied skirts in one hand, and began to climb. The corrected proofs had been her last tie to her ladyship. In the night at her desk, Viv had restored the copy as closely as she could to the original, the one that had emerged from their work together, from hours of exchanging ideas and playing with words and laughing. Viv had worn out her pencil making those changes. In the end it was as if she had recovered those lost good times. But Dodsley had refused to look at Viv’s corrections. He had his orders, he said, direct from Lady Melforth. The Traveling Viscountess was the name that sold books, and he was going to publish the guide as she wrote it. Only she hadn’t written it. That was the rub.

Viv had wandered for some time, hugging the corrected proofs to her chest, thinking about her mother’s house, about the room she shared with her sisters, about the daily round of errands and chores that kept their meager household going, about scrimping and saving for paper and pencils, about her mother’s weariness and her stepfather’s demands. She did not want to go home, but she could see no way forward in London. She could take the guide to a rival publisher or to the law, but any claim she made of her role in the writing of it would expose Lady Melforth as a liar. Or, more likely, given her ladyship’s established position, would land Viv herself in jail as a fraud.

The garnet ring on her finger had mocked her as she wandered. If Viv’s betrothal had been a real one, if Lark had truly been open with her about his situation, if he had once said that he loved her… But those were not the facts. She hardly knew how she found her way back to the house.

The act of climbing the stairs steadied her. She had been in a fog, and now the fog had cleared. By the time she entered the upstairs drawing room her mind was made up. They were all there, the Strydes, Lady Melforth, and Dr. Newberry. Lady Melforth stretched out on her favorite couch supported by pillows. Her jutting nose gave a cold, unbending expression to the pale, sunken face. Plump, bewhiskered Mr. Stryde sat in a chair by her feet, while Mrs. Stryde in another of her endless striped gowns hovered over a tray of medicines on the side table. From the hearth Newberry shot Viv a scornful glance that took in her dragging skirts. She knew she would receive no support from him.

“You look a right mess, miss. Where have you been this morning?” Lady Melforth’s frown deepened.

Viv waited. They all looked at her, expecting her to wilt or crumble under their censure, but she had nothing to lose. She met Lady Melforth’s gaze. “I took the proofs that arrived yesterday back to Dodsley for correction. He, of course, refused to make any changes.”

Lady Melforth’s eyes flashed with a quick gleam of recognition and alarm. Her hand shook and she glanced aside. Her ladyship understood what it meant that Viv had read those proofs. “But Mrs. Stryde has just said they were stolen.” Her voice quavered.

“From your very doorstep, by Mr. Larkin, working with a partner to create a diversion. It’s a method pickpockets commonly use.”

Mrs. Stryde gasped. Her glance flew to her husband. “I told you my necklace was stolen.”

Newberry shoved away from the mantel, moving to stand beside Mrs. Stryde. “You were sharper than the rest of us apparently, Eustacia. You recognized the man as a fraud from the beginning.”

“Your necklace was not stolen, however. You still have it,” said Viv, insisting on the truth. She would not have Lark condemned for something he didn’t do.

“But my proofs are gone,” said Lady Melforth, her brow furrowed in perplexity.