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“I trust you don’t intend to make a habit of it.”
“No,” he said immediately. “Believe me, cariad, I wouldn’t go to such a place if there were a choice.” The hint of a smile lurked in the corner of his mouth. “I’ve never had someone to worry over me before.”
She sent him a wry glance, remembering when she’d said the same thing to him. “You do now.”
Their gloved hands folded together.
The hansom cab went by St. Paul’s, where a thin wash of moonlight over the cathedral dome gave its structural beams the appearance of ribs under skin. Long shadows sprang from gas lamps and warped slowly as the vehicle passed the curve of the churchyard. The cab horse’s stony hoofbeats echoed in the eerie stillness of a district that was always crowded and busy by day. Now emptied of living things, it was all angles and sharp edges.
Reina had never noticed the smell of the nearby Thames here before, but at this time of night it was unmistakable: the fecund rot of exposed mudflats and decaying rope, the slick of wet stone, the bitter edges of tar and smoke, the rusty salted sweetness of fish and timber pilings.
The hansom cab trundled down King William Street. They came to a halt at the junction with Lombard.
“We’re getting out here,” John told Reina. He descended from the cab, helped her down, and gave the driver a florin.
“Obliged, mate,” the driver said in return for the generous tip, and the cab rolled away in search of new occupants.
Reina took John’s arm as they walked along the footpath toward Farlow’s. She’d come to Lombard at least a hundred times before, but always during the day. It didn’t look or feel at all familiar at night. It was the italicized version of itself, the way Edgar Allan Poe would write it: “This was not the city he knew. The doors loomed—tall, blind, and pitiless—each with its own inscrutable eye of keyhole, each with its secrets buried in vaults below!”
Unfortunately, while her brain was busy with its imitation of Poe, she wasn’t paying attention to her surroundings. Her booted foot trod on the cast-iron ventilation grate near the wall of a countinghouse, and a rush of coal-scented air went up her skirt. The metallic clang of the grate, along with the surprise billow of air, caused her to leap sideways like a startled pigeon.
John immediately reached out to steady her. She couldn’t see his face, as he was in silhouette. But she could hear him, his voice a stroke of velvet against her ear.
“I have you, cariad. I’ll let nothing harm you.”
She shaped a breath into an unsteady laugh, feeling foolish. “I’m a bit on edge,” she admitted. “It all looks so different in the dark.”
He brought her close, and the gentle, hot brand of his mouth pressed her temple. She felt his lips curve before he said softly, “Reina Martin . . . there’s nothing on Lombard Street more dangerous than you.”
No other words could have pleased her more.
As they continued, her gaze found familiar landmarks. There was the post office, an Italianate fortress. There were the dark capillaries of Change Alley and Pope’s Head Alley, lined with medieval brick. There was Crédit Lyonnais, neatly corseted in pilasters, its arched windows headed with lion-mask keystones.
Certain features were common to the buildings on Lombard . . . deep-jointed masonry blocks . . . symmetrical arrangements of columns, pediments, and windows; names and dates engraved in stone lintels to suggest the presence of centuries. It was the architectural language of respectability.
But nighttime had disrupted the street’s discipline, breaking and bending straight lines, blotting out rooflines and upper floors. Now it all looked a bit unstable. Deteriorating.
And here she was, the irritant Lombard Street had never wanted, bringing the kind of remedy that always hurt before it healed.
As they neared Farlow’s, John drew her to the side of the footpath and looked back in the direction they’d come from. Reina followed his gaze but couldn’t see a thing.
“What is it?” she whispered.
“The guard has started his patrol at that end of the street. Northwest corner.”
“How did you notice?” she asked, mystified.
John smiled and slid an arm around her. “I was a night detective for three years,” he said by way of explanation. His gaze moved along the buildings on the opposite side of the street. “The guard has at least two dozen checkpoints to go before he reaches the one opposite Farlow’s. If he spends an average of sixty seconds at a stop, and twenty seconds walking between each one, that’s at least half an hour.”
“Thirty-one minutes and forty seconds,” Reina said.
For some reason, that drew a quiet laugh from him. He took her hand and pulled her along with him, heading to the alley beside Farlow’s. They reached it quickly and went into the narrow space, where extra darkness had been funneled like ink into a bottle.
Disoriented, Reina stood still while she heard John rummaging through his coat. There was a faint rattle of tin, the strike and flare of a vesta match, and a cottony sputter. Deftly John lit the wick of a pocket-sized bullseye lantern.
He extended the lamp to Reina, and she took the wire handle, careful not to direct the beam out into the street.
John tugged a canvas roll from inside his jacket and fished out a pick and an L-shaped wrench.
