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“Nothing grand. I need to send some messages without Hazelwood’s notice. Could I employ one of your footmen?”

“Hah! Escaped your keeper’s leash, have you?”

“For now.”

Upon their return to the house, Jane set to work to craft a message she hoped would persuade Miss Miranda Kirby to help her.

* * * *

The shop was colder than ever when Nate slipped in from the back with a hammer and nails and some thin strips of wood. Even for a man who’d grown up on Bread Street with thin coats and no coal, the cold felt unusually bitter.

Miranda sat huddled on her stool and didn’t look up. The glow of the lamp picked out the fiery strands of her hair.

“I’ll board up that window now.”

“I thought Papa was going to do it.”

It wasn’t Nate’s usual work, but of course, he’d volunteered to do it just to see her. “He’s finishing an evening coat for Lord Hazelwood. He takes Miss Fawkener to a ball tonight.”

“Oh that. It’s not a ball,” she corrected him, “it’s a party. I’ll be surprised if Lord Hazelwood does take her.”

“What do you know about it?” Nate leaned the strips of board against the wall and dropped a fistful of nails on one end of the counter.

“They met right here in the shop today.”

He couldn’t help but turn, and saw his mistake at once. Miranda’s eyes were lit up with whatever secret knowledge she possessed. He turned back to position the first of the wooden strips across the broken window. “She knows about this place? Does she know about the club?”

“Of course not. She came to buy French soap, about which she knows nothing.”

“How did her buying soap put them at odds?” He hammered in the first nail.

“You’d like to know, wouldn’t you?” Miranda really was a frustrating female.

“You want to tell me, so, I expect, I’ll find out.” He hammered three more nails in place. He was positioning the second strip of wood when she spoke again.

“Do you think she’s pretty, Miss Fawkener, I mean?”

He knew how a smart man would answer that one. “Not like you.”

He had time to nail in the second board before she responded.

“What does that mean—not like me—is she pretty in some other way?”

“Most girls are pretty in some way. They all have eyes and cheeks and curls and…” He could see from her frown that he was not making things better. He gave up trying to convey the nuances of male appreciation for female beauty. “You are pretty in all ways.”

He lifted the third board into place, and cut off the chill wind.

“Well, I’ll tell you what put them at odds. He let her see his attachment to me, and she didn’t like it one bit.”

If Nate didn’t know better, he’d think that Miranda had been smoking a pipe in the opium dens of Wapping. He finished his hammering before he turned to her. She would get her heart broken dreaming Lord Hazelwood would marry her.

“Miranda, Lord Hazelwood never suggested that he and you had any kind of attachment. He’s a viscount, and you’re—” He paused. He couldn’t bring himself to say that she was nobody. He knew all about being a nobody, but he couldn’t let her deceive herself in such a serious matter.

She had come off her stool, her eyes big, ready to battle for her illusions when the shop bell jingled.

A footman in dark green livery entered, carrying an envelope in his gloved hand. He stopped cold when he saw her. “Miss Miranda Kirby?” he asked.

Miranda nodded and held out her hand for the envelope. She broke the seal, unfolded the pressed paper, and turned away to her lamp to read.