Page 158

“What’s needed now is a different kind of strength, Maddock. You’ve said you’d kill for the sake of anyone in this household. The question is whether you could bring yourself not to.”

They brought the horses in, and John helped Maddock to align the carriage wheels to the metal track that guided it into the carriage house. Together they pushed the vehicle inside.

While John washed his hands in a stone basin, Maddock mixed warm mash for the horses.

“Mr. Pembroke,” he asked casually, scooping grain into a feed tub, “did Miss Martin find what she needed at the bank?”

“Aye, she did.”

“Is there trouble ahead for her?”

John responded with the flick of a rueful smile. “You could say she is the trouble.” He stretched his tight shoulders as he went into the house to attend to his usual evening rounds.

Lock the doors and windows, bank the fires. Lower the flames on the entrance hall lamps, as well as the ones at the servants’ corridor and stairs. Extinguish everything else. Make sure no gas jets are leaking. Lock up the silver and the wine cellar. Wind the clocks.

All was as it should be. The carpets had been sprinkled with damp tea leaves and swept until they were fresh and fragrant. The woodwork gleamed with beeswax polish, and the windows had been cleaned with white vinegar. There was a tidy cloakroom under the stairs. And if any last specimen of Rattus norvegicus dared to emerge, Alan was on his guard, ready to pop out of Belinda’s room—or the nearest cat door—to manage the situation.

John found a deep satisfaction in walking around Westbrook House and seeing that everything had been done well.

There was a different feeling here than when he’d first arrived. A better feeling, but more complex, shadowed by the loss of Tuppence. Grieving together had made all of them—including John—more willing to relate to others “on a human level,” as Reina had put it.

He came to the threshold of the library, where a lamp was glowing. Reina sat at the end of the long table, reading the bank ledger and making notes on a sheet of parchment.

She’d changed from her clothes into a worn blue wrapper. As she wrote with her propelling pencil, she slowly pulled pins from her hair and dropped them into a little heap on the table. The beautiful long locks fell over her shoulders and down her back in chestnut ripples. How young she looked, like a weary schoolgirl. A stranger who saw her like this would never guess at the sharp and elegant weapon of her mind, or the force of her will.

She paused in her writing to blot her eyes with the sleeve of the wrapper. One would have thought she were reading a tragic novel instead of an account book.

He entered the room and closed the door. Reina’s head lifted, her eyes glittering.

Without a word, he reached into his waistcoat pocket for a handkerchief and gave it to her.

She pressed the folded handkerchief over her eyes and held it there.

John half sat on the edge of the table and reached out to stroke a few loose locks of her hair, the strands vibrant and rich in his fingers. His gaze fell to the page, where she’d started a list of actions to help bank customers.

1.Immediately suspend executive pay & dividend distributions

2.Temporarily halt withdrawals to prevent run on the bank

3.Neutral receiver to manage bank during investigation

4.Create committee of depositors including women

5.Seek contributions for emergency hardship fund—Church of England, Bankers’ Clearing House Committee, City of London local boards of guardians

6.Notify Bank of England to warn of instability, also ask for political backing

Near the bottom of the page, she’d written a curious phrase:

Light without heat

John puzzled over the words. Was she referring to electricity? Religion? Bloody fireflies?

Then he understood. It was how she intended to go forward. It was her creed. She would expose all the dark corners of William Farlow’s financial labyrinth—but it would be done without anger or dramatics. Only calm, rational, moral clarity.

In a world that insisted women’s natures were too sensitive for serious work, Reina knew any display of strong feeling would undermine her in a way it wouldn’t for a man.

But the habit of suppressing emotion had taken its toll. He saw signs of it in the tears and tension, the white-knuckled clamp of her fingers on the gold pencil. Too much had happened lately, and the revelations about William Farlow had been the final blow.