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“I shall speak to her. Convince her.”

“To give up Quimby’s?”

“To give up her plan for the emporium. She has no idea how exhausting it will be to form relationships with silk manufacturers, feather merchants, even cotton mills. She doesn’t understand the enormity of the endeavor.”

“So, you plan to talk her into giving you what you want?” Merry shook her head, eyes dancing with amusement. “That will never work.”

“Yes, it will, if I have the chance.”

Merry broke out laughing. “Promise me you’ll come to dinner the night after you speak to her?”

“I live to entertain,” Jake said dryly.

“In return, I shall find out who your Miss Lewis is,” Merry said. “I have friends who pride themselves on knowing everyone in London worth knowing, by which they mean everyone with money.”

“Invite her to dinner?”

George woke up and got to his feet, looking rather like a small barrel with legs. “I shall,” Merry promised, standing up too. “This elderly gentleman will be waiting for his bedtime snack and then we’re both off to bed.”

Jake rose and bowed. “Your Grace.”

“Ass.” She swatted him again before she left the room, followed by a footman bearing George on a velvet cushion like a royal diadem.

If said diadem snuffled and snorted.

Chapter Five

15, Charles Street, London

Viscount Falconer’s townhouse

March 16, 1815

At the age of seventy-two, Martin Mountgarret-Lennox, Viscount Falconer, was no stranger to grief. His wife had died without knowing if their daughter Julia, who’d run away at the age of seventeen, still lived. And when Julia had died, ten months ago, he’d had no idea. The thought hurt, a physical pain in his chest.

When the library door opened forty minutes later, he hadn’t moved.

“I’ll find my way into the gloom by myself, Ponder,” a husky voice announced. “Though a drink wouldn’t go amiss; a touch of the Massougnes cognac, if you would.”

Elias Byng-Stafford, known to his friends as Byng, advanced into the library holding his lit cheroot over his head like the North Star. “What in the bloody hell are you doing, sitting in the pitchy dark like a troll under a hill?”

He went straight to the mantelpiece and used his cheroot to light both candelabras, revealing that he was clad in an emerald-green smoking jacket embroidered with peacock feathers. “Aren’t we expecting a visit from your granddaughter this evening?”

“Where did you get that absurd costume?” Falconer asked, not really caring.

“Burghart & Davidson,” Byng said, dropping into a chair. “Up and coming, near Savile Row. You aren’t going to adapt Brummell’s gloomy aspect, are you? All that faith in black, as if sober dressing would lead to sober living. The man’s trying to protect himself from shame with a starched neck cloth, and it ain’t going to do it.”

Falconer didn’t bother to answer. He didn’t give a damn about clothing.

“The cloud of despair hanging around your shoulders suggests that you’re thinking about your daughter,” Byng said, sucking his cheroot like a draughty chimney.

“Cleopatra, my granddaughter, wrote that she and Julia traveled to Stratford in a theatrical wagon. My wife would have been horrified,” Falconer said, his voice growling from his chest.

Byng raised an eyebrow. “Julia did always dance to her own drummer. I liked her.”

Falconer’s hand tightened into a fist again because he had loved his daughter dearly, and for twenty years he had never given up hope that she would return home. He’d paid a small fortune to Bow Street Runners over the last two decades, but they hadn’t found her . . . until a letter arrived from Miss Cleopatra Lewis, his granddaughter.

Her married name explained why the Runners never located Julia.