She cupped his face with her hands. “Think of your children.”
“I am thinking of them. Moriarty is a danger to them as well.” He kissed her, a kiss of only their lips. “Now think of yourself. Think of how long you have schemed to have me. If you refuse my request, not only will you be unsatisfied tonight, but I will still turn up at the Garden of Hermopolis tomorrow.”
If she were a better woman she wouldn’t accede to his demands. “You want too much.”
“I’ve always wanted a great deal. Now do you want me to sin or not?”
His words were accompanied by little drop kisses to her neck, light, gentle, very slightly moist, followed by a bite that didn’t hurt at all, but made her toes curl and her eyelashes flutter.
Of course she wanted him to come with her to Cornwall. She had never been that better woman and the thought of the Garden of Hermopolis and Moriarty’s murky aims chilled her to the spleen.
But to have him tie his fate to hers, even knowing that he would have never chosen any other course . . . She sighed, pulled him closer, and kissed him hard.
“Let us sin then. Let us show Sodom and Gomorrah how it’s done.”
8
Livia didn’t sleep much at night. In the morning she joined Mrs. Newell in the older woman’s bedroom for breakfast.
“I was thinking of inviting you to come with me today—I’ve a long visit with an old friend planned. But I know how much you dislike having to smile at strangers and pretend to take an interest, my dear,” said Mrs. Newell with a wink. “So what say you to spending the day away from us old fuddy-duddies and doing only what you wish?”
Livia remembered what Charlotte had said. Mrs. Newell was setting her free again, exactly as Charlotte had predicted.
Her heart thrummed with gratitude. “That would be wonderful. I mean, I’m sure your friend is wonderful, too, but I do yearn to take a nice long walk in the park and then spend some time at the British Museum, especially the Reading Room.”
“Then it shall be so,” declared Mrs. Newell as she adjusted the lapels of her rose brocade dressing gown. “I am fully settled in for a luxurious breakfast with two newspapers and a magazine and will not leave this table until half past nine. Do things at your own pace, my impatient girl, and don’t wait for me to move these old bones.”
Her lively kindness made Livia’s spirits rise. She, whose appetite was usually anemic, consumed a decent amount of bacon and eggs—and even made all the appropriate responses as Mrs. Newell read aloud passages from a breathless article about the upcoming Jubilee.
When Livia, ready to leave, poked in her head to say her good-byes, Mrs. Newell was indeed still at table, her maid hovering nearby.
“I shall have both luncheon and tea with my friend. So if you come back and I have not returned yet, don’t wait for me. Order your own tea,” said Mrs. Newell between instructions to her maid on which dresses to lay out.
In town Mrs. Newell took her tea at five and liked to linger a good while for conversation. Livia, therefore, didn’t need to return to the hotel before dark. She left with a smile. Her good mood lasted until she turned the first street corner. And then all the doubts and misgivings Mrs. Newell’s fortifying company had kept at bay came crashing back.
The last time someone had called on Charlotte on Moriarty’s orders, the goal had been to ferret out the whereabouts of their illegitimate half brother, Mr. Myron Finch, who had defected from Moriarty’s service. Livia had been awake in the middle of the night wondering what new diabolical schemes required the participation of Moriarty himself, when she’d abruptly asked herself whether Mr. Finch didn’t factor into this new charade.
The idea had struck with the force of one of her mother’s openhanded slaps and in its wake, the anxiety pumping through her veins had made her bolt up in bed, breathing hard.
When she thought of Mr. Finch’s peril, she usually understood it in terms of Moriarty’s vindictiveness—minions were allowed to gather under his banner, but never to leave on their own terms. But from time to time, she remembered that, according to Charlotte, who had heard it from Mr. Marbleton, Mr. Finch might have absconded with something of Moriarty’s, something of vital importance.
So important that Moriarty had risked a valuable and well-placed spy for a chance at its recovery.
That particular ploy, staged the previous summer, had failed. Mr. Finch had disappeared into the ether, not to be seen again. Soon even coded messages from him no longer appeared in the papers. Charlotte and Livia did not speak much of this brother, but Livia knew that Charlotte, too, had become increasingly uneasy about his prolonged silence.
Before Livia had met Mr. Finch, she had never wished to speak of him—the disgust she had felt toward her father for having sired a child out of wedlock had spread to Mr. Finch himself. But he had turned out to be one of the few people she could trust and his well-being was often on her mind.
Two streets away, Lord Ingram was already waiting in a hackney. Livia could not go to the Garden of Hermopolis, but this morning she and Lord Ingram were headed for Snowham, the country station named on Mr. Marbleton’s ticket stub.
After they exchanged greetings, Livia told him of the misgivings that had plagued her last night. “I have no concrete evidence that this is the case. But if Moriarty still hasn’t recovered what he sought from Mr. Finch, then we cannot eliminate that possibility.”
“A valid line of thinking,” said Lord Ingram.
Livia, habitually starved of approbation, felt the usual nervous fluttering in her stomach, from both pleasure at being praised and fear that ultimately she might not live up to that praise. “Thank you, my lord.”
“If it makes you more at ease, there was a message from Mr. Finch in the papers, at the beginning of the year,” said Lord Ingram. “I learned of this recently myself, from Holmes.”
Livia’s hand came to her lips. “So he was all right—at least as of then!”
Charlotte would probably have told her that in person as soon as they’d met, if yesterday hadn’t been what it was.
“And if it’s as you suspect, that Moriarty is still seeking Mr. Finch with all his might, then that, too, is good news of a sort. It would imply that as of this moment, Mr. Finch remains at large.”
The relief Livia felt, however, proved fleeting—Moriarty’s shadow loomed not only large but cold. “I hope he can continue to remain safe,” she murmured. “Do you not feel chilled every time you think about what Moriarty might be doing?”
“I do,” said Lord Ingram. “At times I feel dizzy.”
But he did not look light-headed with fear. In fact, as he knocked on the top of the hackney to signal the cabbie to stop, and then walked a short distance and handed her up into a different vehicle—maneuvers meant to confound anyone who might be following them—he appeared, for all that they were at a difficult, dangerous, and likely futile endeavor, to be . . . well, chirpy.
Not that he babbled or grinned or anything of the sort, but it was hard not to notice the spring in his step and the smile he occasionally wore as he glanced about.
At first she was wholly baffled, until insight landed with a thud: He was happy about Charlotte.