Edward chewed the toast with efficiency, not tasting a single bite. He imagined Beatrice at Highgate, black skirts trailing in the mud, umbrella tilted against the wind, standing vigil at her father’s headstone as if the old bastard might climb out and offer her the answers he, Edward, could not.
Everyone knew her father was a blackguard. His dalliances were open secrets and his treatment of his ever-suffering wife a source of gossip. No one ever thought of the effect of his comings and goings on his daughter though.
Nor on the man her daughter might marry. It seemed to Edward he was to be marred with the same brush, and he didn’t know how to persuade Beatrice otherwise, especially if she preferred the company of gravestones and mausoleums to him.
Was he really such awful company?
Edward was still contemplating quite where it had all gone wrong when all he wanted to do was kiss his wife very thoroughly and cease their squabbles when the butler entered with a letter on a tray. The paper was damp, its edges curled.
Spotting the handwriting, he let out a sound that was less a sigh and more an involuntary groan.
He read it once, twice, then once more, as if repetition might render the message less disagreeable.
“Will there be an answer, my lord?”
“No,” Edward said. Then, reconsidering, “Not yet.” He folded the letter with a series of precise, angry motions and thrust it into his pocket.
He needed to go to Beatrice. To fix this damned mess he’d made. Even now, if he hurried, he might catch her at the cemetery, might find her staring at a stone or whatever it was she was wont to do. He imagined the confrontation or perhaps just a standoff in the rain. He might even apologize, if the mood so demanded.
But the letter in his pocket was not to be ignored.
“My coat please,” he said. The butler fetched it without question, along with his gloves and hat.
“Should her ladyship return, tell her I’m gone to Town. And—” He hesitated. “And tell her I would have preferred to speak with her first.” The words tasted bitter, but he let them stand.
With haste, he caught a hackney. As the carriage made its way south, London became a different creature entirely. The streets narrowed, the houses grew smaller, pressed closetogether. Gone were the light stone facades, replaced with red brick and dirt.
He found himself thinking of the first time he’d come to this part of London. He’d been fourteen, and everything had seemed possible—dangerous, but possible. He remembered the thrill of anonymity, the way the city could swallow a person whole and never spit them out.
The hackney lurched to a halt in front of a narrow, three-story building with a bay window and a peeling green door. A sign swung from a wrought iron post but the painted words had vanished under coal dust long ago.
The rain had intensified, heavy droplets that found their way inside his collar and down the back of his neck. Edward heard the hack roll off and silently willed it back. He’d rather be with Beatrice. Even if it was in a damned cemetery.
But he owed it to Georgina to be here.
The entryway smelled of boiled cabbage and the staircase was steep and crooked, the carpet threadbare and patched in places with scraps of cloth. At the end of the narrow corridor, a door opened and an old woman eyed him.
“You’ll be wanting Mrs. Winters, then?” she said, her tone disinterested. “She’s been wailing all bloody morning.”
Edward nodded.
“Tell her to keep her trap shut or I’ll have her out on her arse before evening,” the woman said as she gestured for him to go up.
Suppressing a shudder, Edward made his way up the stairs to the second floor and rapped his knuckles on the door. He could have funded better lodgings for Georgina but she refused to take money from him.
“Everything must be for Annabel,” she said.
Well, Annabel had everything—an education, money, health. Much good it had done. The girl had still run off.
Georgina opened the door and silently let him in. Though only a decade older than Edward, the strain of Annabel’s disappearance had taken its toll, making her look even older. The beauty that had no doubt once entranced Edward’s father was long gone.
“Your letter seemed urgent.”
Georgina inhaled a shuddery breath. “She was spotted in St. Giles of all places.”
“Who said as much?” Edward demanded more sharply than intended.
“A boy down at the Royal Oak.” Georgina wrung her bony hands together. “I’ve been spending nights at various inns,” she admitted. “I thought I might be able to help.”
