Grace looked puzzled with my choice of Hyde Park—we usually did not go so far on my half days, but then she smiled. She suspected what I was up to.
Joanna insisted on helping Grace into her coat, as attentive as any mother, and she sent us off with a wave and a smile.
“I am lucky to have such a friend,” I said as we walked back to Cheapside so I could seek yet another hansom.
“Aunt Joanna is lovely,” Grace said. “I do love her. I hope you don’t mind.”
I regarded her in surprise. “Why on earth should I mind?”
I supposed I ought to be jealous of Joanna for being able to spend more time with my daughter than I could. Iwasenvious, because I wanted to be the one to tuck Grace into bed and kiss her good night. But Joanna, my dearest friend in life, would never, ever think to usurp my place.
At one time, she and Sam had offered to adopt Grace, the too-good people believing they’d do me a favor, and I’d wept for days over such an agonizing choice. In the end, I’d refused, and Joanna had understood exactly why.
I did not have the skill to simply summon a cab as James did, so we walked through St. Paul’s Churchyard to a hansom stand in Ludgate Hill. The cab we embarked took us along Fleet Street and then to the Strand, which was as thronged asCheapside. The cabbie turned through the West End’s theater district, and soon we emerged into Piccadilly and Mayfair.
I’d swept as many coins as I could into my purse today, in anticipation of this journey, so I had no trouble paying over the shillings when we descended at Hyde Park Corner.
We chose a path that reached out to entice us into wide swaths of green. Hyde Park was open to anyone in London, and a cook and her daughter could stroll there with impunity, though mostly we saw ladies with parasols and fine feathered hats or nannies pushing children in their tiny carriages.
I kept busy Knightsbridge in our sights, and Grace, an intelligent girl, pointed toward it. “What’s on the other side of that road, Mum? Should we go look at the pretty houses there?”
I paused and wrinkled my forehead as though I hadn’t considered this every day since Daniel had locked himself into Viscount Peyton’s home in Belgrave Square. “I suppose we could,” I said, trying to sound doubtful. “It isn’t far, is it?”
We returned to Knightsbridge, waited for a clearing in traffic, then plunged across the road, hand in hand, sealing our fate.
6
Grace and I peered into a few shop windows in Knightsbridge, pretending idle curiosity, then we turned down Wilton Place to Wilton Crescent, as though simply wandering along. We admired the elegant rows of homes we passed and soon found ourselves approaching the elite quadrangle that was Belgrave Square.
Lord Peyton leased number 38. Daniel had told me only that the house was on the south side of the square, but it hadn’t taken much inquiry to discover its number. I’d needed to, in order to send Hannah to the correct house. Daniel hadn’t given James a more specific address than he’d given me, but James had discovered it easily enough too.
The fact that Daniel wanted his son and me to know his exact whereabouts—he’d never have told us as much as he did if not—meant he feared what might happen to him in that abode. If he hadn’t, he’d have said nothing at all.
I kept us to the north side of the square, worried that asharp-eyed Daniel would spy us if we drew too close. Grand houses in pale shades of yellow, ivory, and pink lined the roads, surrounding a lushly wooded park behind an iron fence.
Each home rose four floors from the street with an attic above and had flat-roofed porticoes over the front entrances supported by Greek-style columns. A pediment ran above most second floors, lending interest to the otherwise flat facade, and railings shut off the stairs that led down to the kitchens and servants’ domains.
The entire street had a classical appearance, which had been popular much earlier this century, unlike the red bricks and black shutters of the older homes in Mayfair.
The entire area was luxurious but rather forbidding to those not wealthy enough to live here. One had to be invited into these places, with no cheery welcome as I would receive knocking on the door of Joanna’s house.
I led Grace across the street to walk along the west side of the square, keeping carriages and delivery vans between us and the park side of the road. Grace traipsed along beside me, subdued, as though she had no interest in the beautiful homes around her.
I continued south, well past the square, the road changing to one called Belgrave Place. Not far along, I found the narrow artery that was the mews James had mentioned.
This lane, which ran behind the large homes on the south end of the square, contained coach houses and stables for horses and carriages, plus quarters for the grooms and coachmen who worked for the families. It was a typical mews, with horses being groomed under the open sky, men tinkering with vehicles their masters would soon require, and grooms and stable boys lounging against the walls, passing the time of day when they weren’t harried to another chore.
I spied the back of number 38, having found its exact location on a map I’d been studying in my chamber for the past few nights.
James had been right about the passageway to the kitchen door. I edged into the mews as far as I dared, and saw that the small corridor ran between the wall of the house next door and whatever room jutted from the house it was in. I glimpsed a solid door, shut, at the end of the passageway.
The house’s ground floor had no windows in back, possibly so the inhabitants wouldn’t have to view the horses, who left dung everywhere, and the stable boys with brooms who swept the refuse away. The higher floors did have windows, which fortunately for me were muffled by heavy curtains.
I gazed at the door, probably meant for deliveries, which likely opened to a set of wooden stairs leading to the kitchens. Behind those windows above me, Daniel was no doubt attending to whatever business a secretary to a viscount would do.
He might also be ill, hurt, held captive, even dead. I could not know, and Mr.Monaghan probably wouldn’t bother to tell me if so.
Would the others at Scotland Yard give James or me the awful news if the worst happened? Or did Inspector McGregor and other detectives even know what Daniel and Monaghan were up to? Would they realize if Daniel had been killed or simply wonder why he’d ceased turning up?
