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AUTHOR OF A VINDICATION OF THE RIGHTS

OF WOMAN

He noted the years of her birth and death. “How did she die? Do you know?” he asked.

“Of a complication after giving birth to her daughter Mary, the writer, Mary Shelley.” He must have looked blank because she added, “Frankenstein?”

“So, you’ll turn her mother’s grave into a tourist attraction?”

She turned to him, bristling at once. It was easy to provoke her. “Not at all. More like a place of pilgrimage, for women to be inspired. Being a man, you may not have noticed how few of our London monuments celebrate women, as if we were an invisible thread in the city’s history.”

He made an effort to keep his expression bland.

Then she laughed. “You,” she said, “are having me on.” And she gave him a more penetrating glance. “Is your wound troubling you?”

He started to deny it and changed his mind. Better that she thought him weak in body than in the head. “A little,” he said.

“Then let’s get you off your feet.” She tucked her pencil and notebook into her bag.

“You found your story of the day?”

She nodded. “Now to find somewhere nearby where a lady might refresh herself.”

“There’s a tavern across the way.” He pointed to a two-storied building in the old half-timber style with a rather large sign reading THE ADAM AND EVE.

“I’ll tell Tim Coachman to bring the carriage round.”

*

From the brightness of midday, they stepped into a dark, low-ceilinged chamber smelling of ale, beef, and smoke. Lark instinctively turned for the taproom when the host, with a white apron tied around his middle, came to greet them.

“Private room for you and yer lady, sir?” the man asked. “We have a fine ordinary, if I say so meself,” he added.

Lark halted, abruptly, and Viv slammed into him, jarring his side. He sucked in a breath, waiting for the sharp pain to subside.

“Idiot,” she said. “You’re hurting.”

Lark turned to the landlord. “Yes, to the room and the ordinary, and coffee, if you will.” He hoped he’d covered his mistake. He’d been about to blunder into the common taproom because he’d forgotten the role he was playing.

*

Viv thought The Adam and Eve’s upstairs dining parlor, quaintly pleasing. The old-fashioned room had butter-colored walls above a dark oak wainscot and a bow window that looked back across the green toward St. Pancras church. A large round table in the center of the room was set for two, and a small fire burned in the grate. If the ordinary was at all edible, she would make a note of the tavern in her account of the day.

Mr. Larkin immediately took up a position at the window facing the old churchyard.

Viv put down her bag and removed her bonnet, cape, and gloves with quick efficiency. They’d had little more than a day’s acquaintance and already she understood that he was stubborn and determined to conceal his injury. She had been trying to judge his mood since he’d met her at the Wollstonecraft grave. Something had sobered him, though perhaps it was only the wound in his side. He was dressed with the same unobtrusive elegance as before with just a hint of flash in the burgundy silk waistcoat he wore. Her Mr. Larkin did like his finery.

“How is your wound?”

He turned that blue gaze on her. “It smarts some,” he said.

“Let me look, then. Just to be sure you’ve not undone the doctor’s work.”

“The doctor’s work?” He quirked one dark brow.

She reached for his waistcoat buttons, and their hands met. The contact jolted her. Her gaze locked with his, until the intensity of it made her pull back. He really was a difficult patient.

“You must not suppose that I make a habit of undressing gentlemen,” she said.