Archer blinked back the desire to throw himself into the sea and instead made himself grin at his former bosun.Everything’s going to be fine, you see? Look at my smile and know I’ll keep us safe.“Home,” he said.
Lamentation’s gold brows came together. “Home?”
“Yes,” Archer said. “Back to Pomeroy House.”
He could come up with another plan. Another way to keep his people fed.
He had to.
Chapter 2
Sandwiched in between her two best friends at the British Museum, Ruby considered the soulless eyes of a stuffed golden-crested crane.
There was a three-foot radius of empty space around her. Complete social ruin came with one silver lining at least—it was certainly easier to talk.
“Ruby, dearest,” Alice said delicately, “are you entirely certain you wish to be out and about?”
Ruby turned to face her friends. Lady Alice Eppington—only child of the disgraced Marquess of Rosthwaite—gazed back at her, dark-fringed cerulean eyes very soft. Tamsin Drake, by contrast, appeared barely able to smother her fury. Her freckled face was pink with outrage, which made an interesting aesthetic contrast with her cropped auburn hair.
Ruby’s chest felt tight, and she reminded herself very firmly of her resolve. This was going to work. It was going to bewonderful.
“Yes,” she said. “I’m certain. I’ve asked the two of you here because I have an idea. One we could not discuss in my drawing room.”
Unfortunately, Alice and Tamsin looked more dismayed at this pronouncement than Ruby might have wished.
“Do you?” Alice said. She sounded extremely polite. “Is this similar to the time you had us dress up as the Three Fates at the Yardsleys’ ball?”
Ruby hid a wince. That had not gone well. She’d taken the outfits rather far, and it had not been a masquerade.
“Not like that,” she said. “Much better than that.”
“Perhaps more like the time you staged a reenactment of the Battle of Thermopylae in Kensington Gardens?” Tamsin asked.
“Of course not, because that was for a paper I was writing, as you know perfectly well, and—”
There was a small commotion at the entrance to the avian exhibit, and Ruby felt her words die in her mouth. At the door stood a handful of familiar ladies, dressed in pale summer colors and delicate straw hats. Ruby knew each one; they’d all debuted the same year as herself and Alice.
At the sight of Ruby, Alice, and Tamsin, the ladies’ eyes widened. Their cheeks went pink and their gloved hands went to their mouths. And then, like a flock of birds, they all rushed as one in the opposite direction.
Ruby’s heart beat hard against her ribs.
Tamsin’s face went even redder. “This is absurd,” she snapped. “I don’t understand why everyone is acting as though Ruby pissed on Gravesmuir’s sculptures in the drawing room.”
“It’s not so bad,” Alice murmured. She was looking down at her gloves, and her dark curls had fallen across her brow. “It will be forgotten in time, Ruby. I’m certain it will.”
Ruby took a breath. For all her friends’ reassurances, she knew precisely why her revelation in Gravesmuir’s gallery had proven so disastrous. It was not just that Gravesmuir had been revealed as a gullible fool to theton. The discovery of how thoroughly and expensively he had been hoodwinked had also drawn the attention of Gravesmuir’s creditors—to whom, it turned out, Gravesmuir owed a very great deal of money.
The marquess could no longer shop on Regent Street or fence in his parlor. His social invitations had dried up. And Ruby’s father, who had relied on Gravesmuir for political support, had lost one of his most important allies.
Tamsin was still shaking her head. “There’s nothing to forget!Rubydidn’t do anything wrong. She has a brain in her head, that’s all. My God, don’t tell anyone a woman is able to possess such a thing, or they’ll start a petition to drain them out through our noses for the benefit of medical science.”
As she always did, Ruby felt a surge of gratitude for Tamsin’s bloodthirsty defense, for her stout rejection of their society’s hypocrisies. Tamsin had courted scandal from her very first day in society. She gambled for money and wore her hair cropped; she was, as everyone knew perfectly well, a sapphist. Her parents, the Viscount and Viscountess Drake, had despaired of their unconventional eldest daughter, who never seemed touched by the censure heaped upon her.
But at this particular moment, Ruby’s attention wasn’t fixed upon Tamsin—nor was it fixed upon herself.
Ruby was thinking about Alice.
Alice—endlessly hopeful, impossibly kind—had brightened when she’d seen the women who’d once been their friends. And when they’d turned away, Alice had flinched.
