Mr. Sorokin shook his head. “Without those papers, we’re all dead.”
“You think the ambassador will kill you?” Fletcher asked.
“No.”
Fletcher leaned forward, elbows on the table. “Lord Chelmsford, then?”
“I’m not afraid of him, either.”
Mercy. How many people were involved in this?
“Bung your eye,” Fletcher muttered.
Mr. Sorokin stood. He gave the three of them a quick glance. “You have no idea what you are dealing with.”
“We would if you’d tell us.” Stone had spoken more during this interrogation than Brogan had just about ever heard from him.
Mr. Sorokin only shook his head. He left without another word, without any explanation.
Stone pulled out the forged papers and spread them on the tabletop again.
“The letter’s a fake,” he said, “and the document it references is as well. There ain’t no doubting that. We know the two names in the letter. What we need to find is this other person Sorokin’s worried about.”
“How do we do that?” Brogan asked.
From the sitting room doorway, the last voice Brogan expected to hear answered. “With help.”
Only with effort did Vera keep herself calm and collected. In a twenty-four-hour period, she had learned the man she’d been falling in love with was lying to her, had tossed him from her shop, and had then followed her papa directly to the home of that same man. She’d slipped inside after her papa—the door hadn’t been locked—and had been quiet enough to not be detected over the conversation occurring in the sitting room. While she’d tucked herself out of sight around the kitchen doorway, they’d been discussing her papa’s involvement in something apparently dangerous and illegal involving very important and influential people.
The world around her was spinning, and she was struggling to keep her footing. She was tempted to simply slip back out again after Papa had stormed out—she knew the flat well enough by now to navigate it quickly—but she needed answers.
The men in the room jumped to their feet, clearly surprised to see her.
“Miss Sorokina,” Brogan said. “How long’ve you been here?”
“Long enough to have a vast many questions.” She walked with as much confidence as she could muster to the table where they were gathered. “My first is”—she looked at the two strangers—“who are you? And don’t lie to me. This one”—she hooked a thumb in Brogan’s direction—“already took that approach.”
The man standing nearest her, his entire demeanor filled with amused swagger, dipped his head in greeting and said, “Fletcher Walker, Miss Sorokina. A pleasure.”
Fletcher Walker. That was the author who wrote the “Urchins of London” penny dreadful series. Not a great omen.
Vera looked to the third man in the room. He was taller than his companions, and larger. His deep brown eyes studied her in a way that told her he was not one to miss any detail, large or small. Was he also a writer of penny dreadfuls? She knew of two among that fraternity who were Black: Martin Afola and Stone.
He didn’t leave her in suspense. “Stone,” he said.
She was surrounded by members of the very profession she’d been taught all her life to avoid.
She eyed Brogan out of the corner of her eye. “Let me guess, Lafayette Jones and Barnabus Milligan are in the kitchen, preparing tea?”
Brogan actually looked guilty, though whether that was because other writers were in the flat or because he felt bad about lying to her, she wasn’t certain.
Though she didn’t know the other two men, she suspected Stone was the most forthright of them all. So she directed her question to him. “Are there any others here?”
He shook his head. “No, miss. We do know them other fellas, but they ain’t here.”
Hearing him talk, she could tell Stone wasn’t from England.
“How long’ve you been in England?” she asked.
“Eight years,” was his quick reply. “From America.”
There was a story there, but she wouldn’t press for it. A person ought to be entitled to choose when and if he talked about his past.
For her part, Vera needed to talk about the present. She took the empty seat at the table. “What papers of my papa’s do you have? What do they have to do with Ambassador von Brunnow and Lord Chelmsford? And why are you concerning yourselves with it?”
“Wanna take these questions, Brog?” Fletcher tossed out.
Vera shook her head. “Not him. He might lie to me.”
“We’re talking about Brogan Donnelly, are we?” Fletcher shook his head, eyes dancing with apparent amusement. “Brogan, who despises lying?”
“He’s gained a liking for it of late,” Vera said dryly. “I haven’t a heap of time. What are these papers, and why did you say they were putting myself and the urchins that work at my shop in danger?”
Brogan paced away. While she’d said she didn’t want him explaining, she found herself disappointed that he was so readily leaving his associates to give her the details.
“The papers are a letter and a few versions of a printed document,” Fletcher said. “The letter is from Lord Chelmsford to the ambassador talking about the document.”
Nothing in that was alarming.
In three words, Stone turned everything on its head. “They’re all forgeries.”
“We’ve every reason to believe your papa created them,” Fletcher continued. “But we couldn’t get the bloke to tell us why or who hired him to do the job.”
There had to be a mistake. “Papa abhors falsehoods. He’d not be involved in anything that’d risk an innocent person being hurt by lies.”
“The man he wouldn’t identify might be strong-arming him,” Brogan said as he continued to pace. “He and Clare could likely compare experiences.”
Strong-armed. That made more sense than voluntarily participating. Except . . . “He was happy at snatching this print job. He’d not’ve thought it the cat’s whiskers if it were something underhanded.”
“Might not’ve known at the time,” Stone said.
“And if the whole thing falls to bits, Papa’s likely to get bashed up for it.” Endangered by someone else’s scheme. Again.
“Depending on how these papers are used,” Brogan said, “he’ll find himself far more than bashed up. He’ll be locked up.”