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“Oh.” Artemis couldn’t help a small jolt of pleasure. She quite liked the elder of the Batten sisters, though she didn’t know her as well as she knew Phoebe.
Another block further, just past an elegant millinery shop, Crutherby’s ornate sign loomed up ahead. A smiling maid opened the door, and Artemis immediately caught sight of a flaming head of hair sitting in the corner of the little shop.
“Miss Greaves!” Lady Hero Reading looked up at their approach. “What a lovely surprise. I hadn’t known you’d be accompanying Phoebe here today.”
“Lady Penelope has lent her to me,” Phoebe said as she felt for a chair and lowered herself into the seat. “We’ve been shopping.”
Hero rolled her eyes at Artemis. “She didn’t take you to that terrible tobacconist, did she?”
“Well…” Artemis tried to think of how to answer.
“It’s not terrible,” Phoebe said, rescuing her. “Besides, how else am I to surprise Maximus with snuff?”
“Maximus has quite enough snuff as it is,” Lady Hero said as two girls began placing tea things on the little table between them. “And I can’t help but think ’tisn’t quite respectable for an unmarried lady to be seen in such an establishment.”
Phoebe’s brows drew together ominously. “That’s the very shop you buy Lord Griffin’s snuff at.”
Hero looked smug. “And I’m no longer a maiden.”
“Shall I pour?” Artemis hastily cut in.
“Please,” Lady Hero said, distracted. “Oh, there are fairy cakes. I always like fairy cakes.”
“I did get something for you as well,” Phoebe said and fished the little bumblebee notebook from her pocket.
“Oh, Phoebe, you are a dear!” Lady Hero’s face shone with genuine delight.
Artemis felt a twinge of sadness. Of course the notebook wasn’t for Phoebe herself—she wasn’t sure the girl could see to read or write anymore. She looked down, careful to steady her hand as she poured. It wouldn’t do to spill the hot tea.
“It looks just like the one Mother used to have,” Hero murmured, still examining the notebook.
“Really?” Phoebe leaned forward.
“Mmm.” Her elder sister looked up. “Do you remember? I showed you it when you were in the schoolroom. Mother used it to remember names. She was dreadful at it, you know, and she hated to admit it, so she always had the notebook and a small pencil with her…” For a moment Lady Hero’s voice trailed away, and she stared into space as if looking at something far distant from the cozy teahouse. “She forgot it that night, for I found it in her rooms months later.” Lady Hero frowned at the small notebook. “It must’ve vexed her—they’d gone to the theater, you know.”
“I didn’t know,” Artemis said, though she wasn’t sure Lady Hero had been speaking to her. “I thought they were killed in St. Giles.”
“They were,” Lady Hero murmured, tucking the little notebook away before accepting a dish of tea. “But why they were there no one knows. St. Giles is quite the opposite direction home from the theater they’d attended. What’s more, they were on foot. The carriage was left streets away. Why they left the carriage and why they headed into St. Giles is a mystery.”
Artemis knit her brows as she poured a second dish. “Doesn’t the duke know why they went that way on foot?”
Lady Hero glanced at Phoebe before staring into her tea. “I don’t know if he can remember.”
“What?” Phoebe looked up.
Lady Hero shrugged. “Maximus doesn’t like to talk about it—you know that—but over the years I’ve gleaned bits and pieces here and there. As far as I can tell, he won’t talk about anything that happened that night after the last act of the play.”
For a moment they were silent as Artemis poured herself the last dish of tea.
“He saw them killed, I have no doubt,” Lady Hero whispered. “When the coachman and footmen found them, Maximus was lying over their dead bodies.”
Artemis blinked at the terrible image and carefully set down her teacup. “I didn’t know he was wounded.”
Lady Hero looked up, her eyes weary with an old sorrow. “He wasn’t.”
“Oh.” Unaccountably, Artemis’s eyes blurred. The thought of Maximus, so strong, so sure, broken as a boy and huddling over the bodies of his parents… it was simply too awful to contemplate.
“I wish I could’ve known them.” Phoebe broke the silence. “And Maximus, too, before… Well, he must’ve been different.”
