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Vere opened the window. He heard the soft hiss of rain. Though he discerned no hint of coming daylight, the air carried the promise of dawn.
Tuesday, then, he thought. The girls had been missing for a full week, and no one could find a trace of them.
He washed and dressed himself. He’d left Jaynes with Grenville. The valet was more useful in London, knew all its nooks and crannies. He could go anywhere in its netherworld and blend in.
Vere didn’t want to think about the netherworld, about his wards stumbling into it, as so many runaways did. Miss Price, for instance. In Coralie’s clutches.
If you would take the bawd into custody…
On that day in Vinegar Yard, Grenville had asked no more of him than was any British subject’s duty, most especially that of the ruling class.
He’d let Coralie go, to prey on other girls. And she was one of so many predators.
But shame was a weight he’d been carrying since Saturday, and if this added to it, he could hardly feel the increase.
He took out the writing box Grenville had made him take along, drew out paper, unstopped the inkwell, and picked up a pen. He had to write his report.
Grenville had appointed herself general. London was headquarters, and all her “officers” were required to report twice a day. Servants and friends acted as couriers, carrying messages back and forth.
The army of searchers was to keep within a maximum fifty-mile radius of London, though the most intense area of search was within thirty miles. The groups worked along the main coaching routes. Dain, for instance, was in charge of the Exeter and Southampton routes, which converged forty-five miles from London.
Vere and Mars were in Maidenhead, where the Bath, Stroud, and Gloucester roads met.
Vere and Dain worked near enough to exchange messages regularly. As of last evening, Dain had learned nothing.
Vere dutifully reported this as well as his own searches of the previous day, and today’s itinerary.
“We must exclude Millie from these plans,” he continued, after wracking his brains for something hopeful to write down. “She’s shown a tendency to wander from her assigned routes. But she goes in search of the local gossips, and has heard plenty, though not much to the point. The common folk are not so shy with her as with us. Yesterday, we procured a dog cart for her, and gave one of Mars’s servants the job of driving her. She did not rejoin us last night. Still, you assured me she might be relied upon, and she has a sturdy fellow with her. I’ve told myself she’s following a trail, in her own way, and I wish with all my heart it may be fruitful.”
He frowned at what he’d written. It was cool and factual, as all his notes were. Yet not all the facts.
He got up, paced the room, sat down again. He took a fresh sheet of paper and took up his pen once more.
My love,
Twice a day I write to you, and all it amounts to is, we haven’t found the girls. I haven’t mentioned what I have found.
Their brother is here. There’s no escaping him. We traveled this road together, Robin and I. Everywhere I look, I see what he and I once looked upon together. From the carriage window. From the back of a horse. On foot, and from time to time, with him upon my shoulders.
I had blotted him from my mind, with drink and whores and fights, and by avoiding everyone and everything associated with him. Since you came into my life, these cowardly escapes have been cut off. You cut off the last when you asked me to take you to Bedfordshire. I knew what you wanted. I had a pair of orphans in my keeping—a journalist would have no difficulty finding that out—and you wanted to take them in, as you took in Miss Price, and Bess and Millie. I know you chose those three yourself, and must choose carefully, else every waif and orphan in London would have been crammed under your roof in Soho Square. But I recalled what Lady Dain had done, how she’d made Dain take in his bastard son, because the boy was Dain’s responsibility. I doubted your views of responsibility were any more flexible than hers.
All the same, while a man may discern the inevitable, that doesn’t mean he’ll accept it without a fight. Especially the man you married.
Now I have the reward for my stupidity, and I while away the hours flagellating myself with if onlys. I recall, for instance, my moving speech on all you’d gain by marrying me. Gad, what an idiot. All I had to do was tell you I had two girls in my keeping, and needed you to help me look after them. But I never thought of them. I blotted them from my mind as I did Robin. Charlie had left me the most precious of all gifts, his children, and I—ah, well, I’ve made a muck of it, sweetheart. I can only pray I shall have a chance to make it right.
Lydia sat at her dressing table, reading Ainswood’s letter for the tenth time at least. It had arrived late in the morning, and she’d given the first sheet to Tamsin, who kept track of the search parties’ movements on the maps spread in the library. The second part of the letter Lydia had reread privately in her study during the too-frequent lulls between reports.
It was past midnight now, and she’d had a second letter from him since, but that was the usual thing, keeping her informed of his whereabouts.
Those were easy to answer. She had her own nothing to report, and new suggestions for him, based on information gleaned from Dorothea’s hysterical letters, which arrived several times a day. By degrees, Lydia had ascertained what the girls had taken with them, for instance, and passed on those details.
Yesterday, she’d given the searchers a pair of spectacles to add to their descriptions. They might try asking about a young widow, traveling with her maid, or a young female she seemed to be companion or governess to. People might not have observed two sisters, but might have been tricked into thinking they’d seen something else.
Lydia had relayed the same message to her network of informants in London.
The message she’d wanted to send to Ainswood was, “I’ll come to you.” But that was impossible. She could not leave coordination entirely to Tamsin. Tasmin was organized and levelheaded, but there was simply too much work, keeping track, answering messages, keeping everyone calm and productively occupied.
And so, instead, Lydia had written to her husband:
You did not make a muck of everything all by yourself. You had a great deal of help. I reckon Charlie was the last of that lot of siblings with a grain of sense. After reading Dorothea’s letters, I’m not in the least surprised that your wards pulled the wool over her eyes. I am stumped, however, what excuse to make for Mars—that he, who’s been in Parliament for five and twenty years, could be gulled by a pair of schoolroom misses. At any rate, if they could cozen him, they’ve doubtless outwitted scores of coachmen, innkeepers, and innocent cottagers. Take heart, my dear. From what I can gather, they are a pair of dreadful girls. I’m looking forward to taking them in hand.
Writing about Robin was harder, but she did it.
The little ghost you wrote to me about I understand well. I have had Sarah’s with me for fifteen years. When we come together again, we’ll share them. For now, I command you to leave off the if onlys and look about you with him, as you once did. They’re Robin’s sisters. Perhaps, as you look about you through his eyes, you might see through theirs as well. You had him for six months, Dorothea has informed me, and when he came back, she scarcely knew him, he was so changed. What tricks did you teach him, wicked man? Try to remember, for he might have taught them to his sisters. Can they smile, do you think, in such a way as to make observers believe black is white?
She’d fretted about that letter ever since sending it. She knew it had cost him considerable pain to write of the child, and the pain must be all the more grievous for having been bottled up for so very long. He had confided in her, and her answer might have seemed to make light of his grief. Yet she did not see how it would help him if she answered with the sort of tear-stained sentiment she received daily from Dorothea.
Reading his letter again, Lydia told herself she’d done the right thing, or as close as she could come this
day. He surely grieved for the boy, but it was Elizabeth and Emily he was most anxious about, and Lydia had worked on turning his thoughts about them in a positive direction. He would want something to do, not fruitless sympathy. For now, finding the girls was what mattered most. Everything else must take second place.
She put the letter away and went downstairs to tell Tamsin to go to bed. Bertie Trent had Susan, and they were making their nightly tour of the stretch of Piccadilly between the Hyde Park Turnpike—where the girls might disembark from a coach—and Duke Street, in hopes of encountering the runaways en route to St. James’s Square.
That was the most optimistic of conclusions, yet it wasn’t entirely unthinkable. If the girls were so foolish as to complete their journey on foot after dark, they’d have a hard time eluding Susan. Lady Mars had dutifully sent the garments the girls had worn the day before their departure, and Susan now had the scent. She also seemed to have a fair understanding of what was expected because, according to Bertie, she was pretty thorough about sniffing at female passersby, usually to their great alarm.
In any case, it gave Bertie something to do in the evening, and he was exceedingly diligent about it, as he was with every task Lydia gave him. She was amazed at how many she found for him, but that was probably because she had only to think aloud—an idea, a contact she’d forgotten to make—and he’d say, “Oh, I’ll take care of that.” And did.
Bertie, however, had sense enough to go to bed when he came home, and get a decent amount of sleep before starting a new day. Tamsin needed nagging, and Lydia went down to the library, prepared to nag.
