Page 179 of Faceless

“Yes?”

“I need Jane.”

Richard twisted round to face her. Hodges, in his chair, looked up from the folio for the first time since the conversation had begun. Webb, opposite her, set his hat down on the cushion beside him with the careful slowness of a man who had seen, before anyone else in the room, that something in the case had just altered.

“You… you want me to bring your sister?”

“I need Jane. She is unknown to Sterling. She is plausible at a Wapping door. She has the kind of face the clerk’s wife will open the door to. She has, I have reason to know, more steadiness in a difficult interview than any of us in this room, including you, Colonel. I shall brief her at once. We have two days.”

“Mrs Darcy, what can you hope to —”

“Hear me before you tell me no. I do not propose to ask Jane to persuade the clerk’s wife to turn her husband. That is not work Jane can do, nor work I can ask of her, nor even, properly speaking, work that ought to be done at a Wapping doorstep on a Saturday afternoon by a woman who has just met her. I propose only that Jane persuade her to come and see me.”

Richard narrowed his eyes. “Come and see you. You realise you are not, strictly, supposed to be entertaining Webb here either — though I decided the court has better things to do today than throw out the case over one unauthorised caller. But if you intend to make a parade of my father’s drawing room —”

“The reasoning remains sound. Who would notice or care if a woman from Wapping comes with my sister when she calls tomorrow? I am not going to ask the clerk’s wife to do anything but step into a carriage and come and sit with another wife who has been required to be silent on her husband’s behalf and who would like, very much, to be of use to her. Once she is in this room, Mr Webb, the rest is mine.”

“And you believe she will come?”

“I believe she will come if Jane is the one who asks. Jane is a young woman in a plain pelisse, not a gentlewoman in finery sweeping up to the door. She will sit on the woman’s doorstep, if she has to, and ask her to come and have tea with another wife who knows what it is to wait. She needs only to persuade the clerk’s wife that no one means harm to her or her husband.”

Richard crossed his arms. “And if she does?”

“Then she puts the woman in the carriage and brings her here. I am aware of what I am asking of my sister, Colonel. I once went to marry a stranger in a dark tower to save her. I am asking her to call on a woman in Wapping, which, I think, is not very much to ask by comparison. It is something I would trust no one else in London to do.”

Hodges closed the folio. “It is the only piece of intelligence we have left, Colonel. And the lady is correct as to who can use it. I had not thought of it from this angle. I do not see another door.”

Webb cleared his throat, a sound he had not made in the room until then.

“Mrs Darcy. If your sister will go, I shall give her the precise direction, the time at which the neighbour woman is most often absent, the approach I should advise her to take at the door, and the questions she should not ask in the first quarter of an hour. I will write it for her at once, if the colonel permits.”

“He shall permit. Will you not, Colonel? And you will wait in the carriage, to be sure of her safety, I hope?”

Richard glanced around the room, studying each face arrayed against him. His gaze went last to the small curve under Elizabeth’s shawl, which she had not moved her hands to cover, and stayed there while his jaw ticked.

“I permit it. I will also accompany her, in plain coat, on the box of the carriage. I shall not enter the house, but I shall be within reach of it. That is my condition.”

“That is acceptable.”

“You are not to write to Darcy of this until we have a result. He is two days from arraignment. He cannot sit in that cell with a plan he cannot affect.”

“I had not intended to write to him of it. I shall write to him of other things.”

“Good.”

Richard rose. Webb and Hodges rose with him. Elizabeth, by a small strategy she had been working since they sat down, did not rise. To stand at the close of the interview, heavy and slow, would cost her the dignity she had held throughout; she would rather be the one to hold the room. She held out her hand to Webb instead, across the small distance between the sofas.

“Thank you, Mr Webb. I shall see you in court on Monday.”

LXVI

I Will Remember You

Jane brought her up to the small drawing room a little after eight in the evening.

Elizabeth had asked Mrs Hatchett to set the room with the fire built up, two extra candles at the writing-table, and tea things laid for three. Not for a crowd. She had decided that Mrs Marsh should arrive in a room prepared for her and for her alone, and that the earl and the colonel and Mrs Gardiner, who had come to lend moral support, could be sent for later. The first half-hour would be Mrs Marsh, Elizabeth, and Jane.

She rose from her chair when the door opened. She did it without putting her hand against the arm of the chair, because the woman coming through the door had been brought across half of London under conditions she had not chosen, and the least Elizabeth could do was be on her feet to receive her.