“My papa’s fled from wrongful imprisonment once already. I’ll not sit back and simply wait for it to happen again.”
Brogan’s brows shot upward at that revelation, but Vera didn’t intend to dive into tales of the past.
She squared her shoulders. “What do we know, and how do we fix this?”
“We?” Brogan shook his head. “Everyone in this room, aside from you, are writers. And everyone we associate with are as well. That’s a ‘we’ you’d not be best pleased with.”
“You’d be surprised who and what I’ll endure to protect my papa. And Olly and Licorice. And Burnt Ricky and Bob’s Your Knuckle. And my neighbors.”
“And all of London?” Fletcher added with a laugh. “Banging on about rescuing everybody, you sound like Brogan.”
“That’s a comparison you’d do best not to make,” Brogan said. “You’ll insult the lady.”
At least he was being honest about that. And yet, Fletcher wasn’t entirely off the mark. No matter that Brogan was a liar, he did do a tremendous lot for a great many struggling people. He’d helped the urchins at the shop, the frightened people on Old Compton, the destitute families in the hidden corners of London.
“You still haven’t told me how any of this involves the lot of you.”
Fletcher answered. “A friend heard whispers that there was concern among the ambassador’s staff. To set the bloke’s mind at ease, I said I’d see if I could learn anything. I assumed I wouldn’t, but there was something to it after all. And that something proved to be connected to your father.”
“But why bother yourself with it to begin with?”
“Has Brogan, while you’ve known him, ever done things for people he didn’t know or helped with troubles that weren’t his?”
She couldn’t deny that he had.
“We’ve that in common, the three of us,” Fletcher said. “We when see suffering, we can’t simply turn away.”
That surprised her. “And all three of you are writers?”
“Why is it you think so poorly of writers?” Stone asked.
“They’ve shown themselves untrustworthy. Repeatedly.”
That didn’t appear to satisfy any of them. Brogan continued to pace, but she suspected he was every bit as curious.
She didn’t generally share any details of her family’s past, but learning Papa was in a similar scrape to the one that’d taught them all to be wary made her wonder if there might be solutions lying in the past.
“Are any of you familiar with the Petrashevsky Circle?” she asked them.
All three indicated they weren’t. She wasn’t surprised. There was a reason Papa had chosen England as a place of refuge from that horrific chapter in their lives.
Vera told them what she knew of the Petrashevsky Circle, though it wasn’t much, as her father typically refused to discuss the matter whenever she brought it up. “In the late 1840s, a group in St. Petersburg began writing of things considered treasonous and rabble-rousing,” she said. “They’d been meeting in secret, plotting things beyond the publication of incendiary tracts and pamphlets. They were called the Petrashevsky Circle. They called for improvements in the lives of ordinary Russians, but Tsar Nicholas and his ministers didn’t care for that.”
“I’d imagine not,” Stone said.
“Someone betrayed the Circle,” she continued, “and they were rounded up, arrested, and sentenced to death, though the Tsar himself intervened at the last minute and sent the Circle’s leaders to Siberia instead.”
“Was your father part of the Circle?” Fletcher asked.
“No, he weren’t.”
“He didn’t—He didn’t betray them, did he?” The idea clearly sat uncomfortably on Brogan’s mind, and well it might, he being a writer who kept a number of secrets himself.
“The Circle betrayed him.” She breathed against the flood of remembered retellings and the pain that always filled her papa’s face when he spoke of it. “He weren’t one of them, but he’d done a spot of printing for them. He was an innocent, a provider of a service was all. They named him as part of their group, though they knew he had as much to do with them as those who served up tea at their weekly meetings.”
“What happened to him?” Fletcher asked.
“We fled St. Petersburg,” she said. “Dozens of men were arrested. How he escaped the raids, I don’t know. He rushed us from the house in the middle of the night. I was a very small child, too young to remember anything else about our flight. We’ve been in London ever since.”
“Is he still in danger of being arrested?” Stone asked.
“Russia may have a different Tsar than when all this happened, but Alexander is unlikely to shrug off a fugitive from the law. If Papa returns, he’ll be arrested. If he makes too many waves, even here, they’ll find him.”
“And all on account of a group of writers turning on an innocent man.” Brogan sighed. He met her eye. “I’d say you have ample reason for not trusting members of our profession.”
Stone’s expression was one of deep thought. “Maybe whoever’s twisted your papa into making these forgeries knows about this Circle and is threatening him with it.”
The possibility had occurred to her. “It’d be a powerful threat. Though I cain’t say how the person behind it all learned of Papa’s connection to the Petrashevsky Circle.”
“Does the ambassador know?” Fletcher asked.
Vera shrugged. She hadn’t the first idea.
“Perhaps we’d do well to find out.” Fletcher exchanged looks with his companions. He, it seemed, took a leadership role in this group.
“None of us knows von Brunnow,” Brogan said. “Even if we could invent a reason for seeing the man, we’ve no guarantee he’d allow it.”
Vera leaned back in her chair, hope warring with wariness in her chest. “I know someone on his staff. If I asked, she might be able to get me in to see the ambassador. But if it proves true that he knows Papa’s history and is using it against him, I don’t know that I’d be wise to visit him alone.”
“One of us can go with you,” Fletcher said. “Who that ought to be will depend on what reason you give for calling on the man.”
What reason could she give? “I could say I’ve some worries about the immigrant communities in London. I spend time with enough.”
“That’d do it, I’d wager.” Fletcher hooked a crooked smile. “You’d do best, though, to bring with you a fellow immigrant. That eliminates me.”