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“And would you do it in my handwriting, but make it a bit easier to read than usual? Miss Nightingale is often troubled with headaches and eye strain.”
“Of course, ma’am. I’ll put a bit more space between the letters for legibility.”
“Perfect,” she said, smiling at him. “That’s enough for now. Let’s resume after lunch.”
After Norman had left the library, John closed the door and turned to Reina. She reached him in a few strides, and he caught her up against him with a quiet laugh.
“What matter from last night did you want to discuss?” he asked.
“This.”
Her mouth lifted to his. The kiss flourished and opened into a soft, dark trance that shut out the rest of the world. He thought of how her body had felt beneath his, the smooth limbs spreading to welcome him, the way her hips had pushed up into his weight. The sweet little sounds she’d made in her throat. He was so hungry for her, he could have sunk down to the floor and taken her right there.
Instead he drew his head back and asked gently, “How are you this morning?”
“John . . . I must go to the bank tonight.”
He absorbed that, while his hand shaped to the small of her back. God knew he wanted to collect the evidence necessary to expose William Farlow’s fraud, as soon as possible. But he couldn’t afford to risk bungling the job.
“That will take a bit of planning, cariad.”
“Yes, I know. But William will want to meet with me tomorrow, to discuss the partnership agreement. And I’m sure he’ll bring up the marriage proposal. And with each day that passes, more people are depositing money at Farlow’s that they may never see again. I can’t live with that on my conscience.”
“It will go worse for many more people if we try to break into the bank and botch the job.”
“Well, yes, but . . . I thought you might have skills . . . things you learned from catching robbers and housebreakers in Manchester . . .”
John couldn’t help laughing at that. “Even the best cracksman in London—which I’m not—would find it a devil of a job to break into a Lombard Street bank. I’ve never even set foot in the building.”
“I have, many times. For three years I’ve lunched with William in his private office—and that’s the only place we’ll want to search.”
“Why are you so sure of that?”
“If William has been falsifying records, then he has two sets of books. One public, one private. The private ledgers would have to be kept in his office.”
“For convenience?”
“Well, yes, he would have to work on them every day, to maintain an accurate internal record. He’d have to constantly balance the fake numbers against the real ones and keep track of how much real cash is actually available. It’s the only way to avoid a mistake that would expose the entire scheme. Bear in mind, the ledgers are very large and heavy—it would be impossible to sneak them back and forth without someone seeing. So he’s keeping them hidden somewhere in his office, but easily accessible.”
“Is there a private safe in his office?”
“I’ve never seen evidence of one,” she admitted. “But there must be.”
John frowned, pondering the many difficulties of breaking into Farlow’s main office. “Do you know if there’s a night watchman?”
“Yes, he has charge of the entire street. He carries a watchman’s clock and stops at each building where there’s a sort of metal box attached to the outside wall—”
“Key station.”
“Exactly. He inserts a key from each place into the clock, to mark the time he stops there. But he doesn’t usually go inside any of the buildings. Sometimes a police constable will stop to check in with him, but . . . I thought perhaps . . . you might ask Mr. Ransom to pull some strings so the constable would go a different route than usual . . .”
“I’m afraid there are no strings to pull, cariad.” John let go of her and went to half sit, half lean against the library table. “The City of London Police have charge of the banking district. They’re a different force than the Metropolitan Police, so Ransom has no authority over them. But even if he did . . . this assignment has to be kept out of the books.”
“Mr. Ransom hasn’t told anyone about it?”
He shook his head. “If I’m caught, none of this can have connection to him.”
Reina was dumbfounded. “Why?”
