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Leonie said, “We’ve insurance. We’ve money in the bank. But above all, we’re all alive.”
Completely true, Marcelline thought. They were all alive. Lucie was alive, unhurt. Everything else ...
Oh, but it would be hard. They hadn’t enough insurance. They hadn’t enough money in the bank. They would have to start over. Again.
Leonie put her arms about her. Marcelline couldn’t cry, though she wanted to. It would be a relief to cry. But tears wouldn’t come. She could only rest her head on her sister’s shoulder. She had her daughter, she told herself. She had her sisters. Right now, that was all that mattered.
All the same, they couldn’t stay like this, in the street. She needed to think. She raised her head and moved away and straightened her posture. “We’d better go to an inn,” she said. “We can send to Belcher.” He was their solicitor.
“Yes, of course,” Leonie said. “He’ll advance us some money—enough to pay for lodgings, I daresay.”
This area of London, where the Inns of Court lay, was the lawyers’ domain. Their solicitor’s office was only a short distance away. The question was whether they’d find him at his office at this hour.
“We’ll find a ticket porter, and send to Belcher,” Marcelline said. “Sophy, give Lucie back to me. We need you to talk sweet to one of the reporters, and get a pencil and paper to write a note to Belcher. I think I saw your friend Tom Foxe in the crowd.”
While Marcelline took Lucie back, she searched the area for the publisher of Foxe’s Morning Spectacle.
She became aware of a flurry of motion.
The Duke of Clevedon emerged from the shadows, Tom Foxe hot on his heels. “Your grace, I know our readers will be eager to hear of your heroic rescue—”
“Foxe!” Sophy cried. “Precisely the man I was looking for.”
“But his grace—”
“My dear, you know he won’t talk to the likes of you.” Sophy led him away.
Clevedon came to Marcelline. “You need to come with me,” he said.
“No,” she said.
“You can’t stay here,” he said.
“We’re sending for our solicitor,” she said.
“You can send for your solicitor tomorrow,” he said. “He’ll have gone home by now. It must be close to midnight. You all need something to eat and a place to sleep.”
“You need to go away,” she said, lowering her voice. “Sophy will keep Foxe off for as long as she can, but you’ve given them a prime story, and he won’t be kept off forever.”
“In that case, we’ve not a moment to lose,” Clevedon said. He held out his soot-blackened hands to Lucie. “Erroll, would you like to see my house?”
Lucie lifted her head from Marcelline’s shoulder. “Is the c-carriage th-there?” Her voice shook, but she was talking.
Relief surged, so powerful that Marcelline swayed a little. She hadn’t realized how terrified she’d been, that Lucie would never speak again. For months after recovering from the cholera, she’d had terrible nightmares. It had left her a little more fearful and temperamental than before. Children were resilient; that didn’t mean terrible experiences couldn’t damage them.
“I’ve lots of carriages,” he said. “But we’ll need to take a hackney to get there.”
“Are there d-dolls?”
“Yes,” he said. “And a dollhouse.”
“Y-yes,” Lucie said. “I’ll c-come.”
She practically leapt out of her mother’s arms into his.
“Clevedon,” Marcelline said. But how could she lecture him, when he’d saved Lucie’s life? “Your grace, this isn’t wise.”
“It isn’t convenient, either,” he said. “But it must be done.”
And he walked away with her daughter.
