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“Close to two thousand pounds.”
Lavinia stumbled back, the lip of the sink cold against her back. It was an astronomical sum, and there was no chance her brother would ever be able to pay it on a solicitor’s salary.
His head fell into his hands and he moaned into his fingers. “I can’t pay. I’m going to throw myself in the Firth of Forth.”
“No, you won’t,” she said firmly.
“But, Livy—”
“I’ll pay it.” Just as she’d always paid Caleb’s debts.
When she’d first arrived in Edinburgh, she’d found him playing the wealthy student, awash in new clothes and fine wine, with nary a care in the world. That was how his group of friends at university lived, but she knew he couldn’t possibly keep up. The reckoning had come a few months later when he’d come to her door sheepishly asking for ten pounds to help him pay a bet he’d placed on a horse.
Over the years there had been more sheepish nights with twenty, fifty pounds doled out disapprovingly, but a year ago he’d come to her asking for five hundred pounds and she’d nearly refused to pay. Caleb hadn’t given her one moment’s peace, begging, pleading, and threatening with the desperation of a cornered man. Finally she’d cracked and given him the money out of her safe because he was her brother. He was all she had left in the world.
But two thousand pounds . . .
“Do you even have two thousand pounds?” he asked without malice but with a tired awareness that cut through her.
“No, but the prince’s visit has been good for business.”
He squinted and then sat back, as though he’d decided to believe her words—true or not—because they were the ones he wanted to hear.
“I’m sorry, Livy.”
“Don’t be sorry. It never sticks,” she said briskly. There would be time to mull this over later. Her brother needed her now, and that meant sucking up her pride and asking for help from the one woman she knew had both the resources and desire to assist her. She’d call on Moira first thing the next day.
Lavinia pulled the boiling pot off the stove and poured it over the coffee grounds, straining the liquid through a fine cheesecloth mesh and into a mug.
“Ask your creditors for a month,” she said, handing Caleb the coffee.
He nodded weakly and sipped at the black coffee.
“You’ll need a good story to tell your employer about the wounds,” she said.
Another nod.
“And, Caleb?”
He looked up, his eyes filled with sadness. “What?”
“When I tell you this is the last time, this is the last time. Don’t test me, because you won’t like what you find.”
“I won’t,” he said, and the two of them settled into an uncomfortable silence at the kitchen table.
On Tuesdays Moira Sullivan liked to take a cup of tea in her morning room and go through the week’s scandal sheets. She scanned them along with the broadsheets every morning to keep abreast of what had happened at balls, exhibitions, and concerts in Edinburgh, London, and all across Britain, but on Tuesdays she wasn’t just reading. She was taking notes.
On the walnut table in front of her were stacked the twenty-six thin, red-leather-bound volumes that were among her most valuable possessions. Each was marked with a letter of the alphabet stamped in gold on its spine, and inside were all the things she knew about every member of Edinburgh’s elite as well as many members of the ton. These notebooks were one of the things that made her so good at the matchmaking trade, as well as the several other more clandestine services she provided on the side.
She selected “H” and flipped it open to note down that the Earl and Countess of Blakeney would be traveling with their married son and his wife, Viscount and Viscountess Hathaway, from their Cumbria estate to Edinburgh for the prince’s ball.
A clearing of the throat brought her attention to the door. Fergus, her butler, stood patiently waiting, his hands clasped behind his back.
“Yes, Fergus?”
“A Miss Gibson to see you, madam,” he said.
A smile tipped the edge of her lips. She liked Miss Gibson, who, despite possessing an atrocious dress sense, was a feisty, bright young lady. She’d come to Moira two years ago when she’d been just sixteen with a proposition: that they share information—Moira regarding her matchmaking and Miss Gibson regarding her work for the War Office. The girl hadn’t even tried to pretend that Moira didn’t already know that she was employed by the War Office, and Moira appreciated that matter-of-fact approach to business.
