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For a moment he had no answer. He had not yet given his fictional Mr. Larkin a family.

To hear the words your mother unsettled him when he had been thinking about his mother ever since the fire, trying to revive elusive wisps of memory that would yield some clue to her fate, her absence in his life. The one sure memory he had was of her beringed fingers turning the pages of a book as she read to him.

The carriage, well-sprung and comfortably padded as it was, rattled over some uneven ground, jarring the wound in his side. He flinched, and the fleeting sense of memory returned more strongly. He had ridden in such a carriage with his mother.

“What? What did I say?” Viv asked, stretching out a hand.

He froze, waiting for her touch, but she withdrew her hand. “Nothing. I have no sisters. My mother is …gone.”

“I beg your pardon.” She folded her hands in her lap and dropped her gaze.

“No need to apologize. You could not know.” Her ready sympathy undid him. He turned to the window. He needed a story, and he was quite used to making one up in the moment, taking his cue from the mark. Already, he’d told this girl truths about himself. He needed to be more careful.

He made himself concentrate on their direction and the distance traveled. He figured they’d gone nearly a mile before she again lifted her gaze to meet his, her expression earnest.

“I’ve been thinking. My blunder about your mother only shows the weakness of our charade. Were we truly betrothed, we would know more of each other’s … histories.”

The carriage slowed and made a turn. Through the window Lark could see a green expanse unlike his usual London haunts. “Do you expect Lady Melforth to unmask us?”

Viv shook her head. “She’s clever, you know, but her illness makes her less likely to worry over inconsistencies in our story.”

“The Strydes, on the other hand …” he said. And, he thought, the good doctor.

Viv grinned at him. “The Strydes would delight in discrediting you and seeing me gone. If they meet your duke, they will question him.”

He laughed. “The duke is definitely not a member of the Anti-Vice Society, but let them try to reach him.”

She gave him a puzzled look.

“Don’t worry, you can tell me all about your family, and I’ll tell you about mine.”

“After we visit the church. You won’t mind if I wander and take notes. This is a working visit for me.”

“To find your story of the day?”

“Just so.”

The carriage halted, and Lark opened the door and let down the steps. They had stopped in a lane above a green embankment with a river flowing below and some boys lounging with fishing poles on its banks. He paused to get his bearings. They’d gone east and north, somewhere near Camden Town, he thought. On a rise above them stood the old church, the east section of its roof crumbling, surrounded by leaning headstones crowded near one another like a throng pressing to enter a narrow gate.

Viv put her hand in his and descended, a small act of customary feminine dependence on a man. Her feet on the ground, she let go at once and headed down a path toward the church tower. “I’ll be a while. Wander as you like.”

“You didn’t mention that the place is in ruins,” he called after her.

“It’s picturesque,” she said. She stopped to read a lichen-darkened headstone, reaching into her reticule for a moleskin notebook and a pencil.

He turned the other way, along the south side of the old church. At the moment, her keen enthusiasm for discovery grated on him. Maybe it was their conversation in the carriage, but at the graveyard gate, the old sense of abandonment had come over him, and he needed to clear his head. He had no idea how long he could keep the false betrothal going, but he meant to make the most of it. In her company he would explore that part of London he had so far avoided. He could name no wrong his mother had done him, except the wrong of being absent. He tried to shake off that reflection, winding his way among headstones with faint names, obscured by time and mossy growth, no clearer than his old resentments.

A slight breeze stirred the leaves of the trees beyond the graveyard’s boundary, the air fresh after the stink of the city’s streets. At the end of a row of larger monuments, he halted, surprised to come upon an open grave. The smell of newly turned earth assaulted his senses and a chill passed over him. He stared into the dark pit of the unfilled grave. He had not thought of his mother as dead. By his calculation she would be a woman in her fifties, younger than Alice Povey or Lady Melforth. It struck him now, facing that emptiness, that he was unjust to blame her. Maybe her absence had not been a desertion, but something else entirely. Maybe she had not chosen to leave him, but lay in a grave somewhere in London. He shuddered and lifted his gaze, but the sight that met his eyes did not help. Beyond the tended and marked graves, at the very edge of the cemetery, were low mounds over which a few blades of vegetation had sprouted, the sort of graves that drew the Resurrection men to their work.

He turned back, looking for Viv, and when he didn’t see her, his heart gave an odd skip. Then he spotted Lady Melforth’s carriage outside the church gate. Viv had not deserted him. He picked up his pace, striding the main path to the west. There she stood in the far corner in front of a large square monument surmounted with a moss-covered capstone, her skirts vivid with color and life. She was scribbling away in her notebook, and he couldn’t wait to spar with her again.

“You found the lady’s grave, I see,” he said, coming to stand beside her.

“I did.” She kept up her jotting in the little notebook.

He read the inscription on the monument.

MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT GODWIN