Page 38

“I can handle this. There’s a coffeehouse not far from here. I can meet you there.”

He opened the door for her. “Don’t shoot anyone.”

“You won’t leave it, will you?” she said and swept past him. He was learning to judge her mood by the swish of her skirts. Sometimes they rustled gently, faintly stirred by calm and steady movement. Other times, they made an agitated sound like dry leaves in a gust of wind. Today a wind was blowing. He thought her fierceness better than her meekness the night of the tea. He hadn’t quite figured out her relationship with Lady Melforth. On the one hand, Viv seemed to revere the viscountess, and Lark could see the advantages of Viv’s position, but Lark thought the overbearing woman not simply cross, as a person might be with an injury, but jealous.

Viv strode to the counter and slapped the bundle of pages in front of the young man behind it. Lark pitied the poor fellow. Even unarmed, Viv was out to get her way about something. A white-haired gentleman in black appeared from the back of the premises, speaking to Viv and plainly, inviting her into an inner room.

Lark turned his attention to the crowded Strand. Since Viv shot him, he had avoided his old haunts by daylight. Rook’s assault added another reason for caution, and he stepped back into the recess created by Dodsley’s front door.

A steady stream of open-topped, horse-drawn omnibuses, packed with passengers, headed for Charing Cross. On the pavements, working men in butcher’s aprons or rough fellows with sacks on their shoulders, mingled with gentlemen in top hats. Every man seemed intent on his own business. Dozens of signs proclaimed establishments doing business in an array of goods. Lark looked east toward the Temple Bar marking the entrance to Fleet Street, keeping an eye out for Rook, who could move unnoticed in such a crowd.

The thought of Rook on his own remained troubling. Their partnership had worked when they were boys because Lark had always been there to give Rook time to disappear after a pinch. The night of the fire had ended that. Lark had joined the men manning the pumps; Rook had picked pockets.

Rook refused to accept Lark’s withdrawal from the partnership, and Lark’s efforts to persuade Rook to leave the game had led to Rook’s snatching Viv’s purse and Viv shooting Lark. The encounter off Oxford Street proved that Rook was growing bolder, more reckless. Rook, acting on his own, could easily be taken up and hauled off to gaol.

As he had the thought, Rook came through the Temple Bar carrying a grease-marked paper parcel, almost certainly fish from his favorite shop. In an instant, Lark lost sight of him in the shifting crowd. Lark pulled his hat lower on his brow and concentrated on picking out Rook’s wool cap bobbing in the sea of hats coming his way.

He was trying to gauge how far Rook had come toward him when Viv erupted from the shop in a violent swirl of silk. She brushed past him and charged off toward Charing Cross. Lark sprinted in pursuit. “What happened? What’s made you so angry?”

“Dodsley wants to change our title.”

“And?”

“He wants to call the book Rambles with a Lady in London or Vignettes of London by a Lady.”

“You object to the term lady?” Lark needed to figure out the source of her anger.

“I object to trivializing our work, making it out to be mere amusement.” She stepped off the pavement to pass a man carrying a sack, and Lark grabbed her elbow, pulling her back to safety as a dray rumbled toward her.

“What is the title you want?”

“A City of Their Own, A Women’s Guide to London.”

“Ah.”

“That’s it? That’s all you can say? Ah.”

“Hasn’t Dodsley published all Lady Melforth’s books? He must have some understanding of how to sell them.”

She stopped, and the stream of pedestrians parted, flowing around them. She fixed Lark with a glare. “That’s what he said. He told me to look at his best sellers—A Spinster’s Tour in Genoa, Sketches of London Life, Notes of a Lady Traveler.”

“So how did you leave it?” Lark turned her toward Charing Cross. Rook was somewhere close, and it wouldn’t do to meet him in Viv’s company. Lark doubted that Viv would recognize Rook, but Rook certainly knew her.

Viv started walking again with brisk, angry strides. “I couldn’t make Dodsley understand what we are trying to do, how our book is a call to action, how we are encouraging women to make the city their own.”

Lark suspected that Dodsley understood all too well and had no intention of promoting the free movement of women in London. “Does the title matter so much?”

“It does,” she snapped.

“But, isn’t the book going to call women to action whatever the title is?”

“What do you mean?” She stopped and turned to him.

For a brief moment he forgot what he meant to say under the influence of those lively brown eyes. Then it came back to him. “Some things you don’t control, right? Dodsley decides the paper and binding and cover and print, right? He arranges for the book to reach booksellers, right?”

She let out a gusty sigh. “I don’t like it.”

He laughed. She wouldn’t. “You control the writing, the words on the page.”