Ahmad privately conceded her point. “Very well. If not me, then someone else. I know of a solicitor who might help.”
“I can’t afford—”
“He wouldn’t ask for payment.” At least, Ahmad didn’t think so. “Not for something that requires so little work. And this would be the work of a moment for a man like him.”
Finchley wasn’t motivated by money. He trafficked in information. A whispered word into the ear of one of his old contacts and an entire network of informants would spring into action.
“You know this person well?” she asked.
“He and his wife took me on when I left Mrs. Pritchard’s establishment. Mira works for them still. They’re good people, if a trifle eccentric.”
A fleeting smile briefly softened her mouth. “I can’t object to eccentricity.”
“Do you object generally?”
“No. Not if you think it wise to approach this man.”
He nodded once. “Leave it with me.”
Some of the tension eased from her face. “Thank you.”
“I haven’t done anything yet.”
“You have.” Her voice was husky with sincerity. “You’ve offered to help me. And . . . you’ve listened to me. It’s for that I’m grateful. For everything you’ve . . .”
Her words trailed away as he finally did what he’d been wanting to do all morning.
He brushed the stray curl from her cheek, tucking it gently behind the delicate curve of her ear. The action was as impulsive as the question that followed it. “May I call you Evelyn?”
Her eyes were riveted to his. She looked adorably flustered. “If you like.”
His pulse thrummed.
Evelyn.
He hadn’t intended to ask for the privilege. But he’d wanted to.
By God, how he’d wanted to.
He forced himself to drop his hand from her face. His fingers had lingered long enough. Any longer and he wouldn’t be able to pass it off as a meaningless gesture. A simple adjustment to her coiffure—the sort of thing a dressmaker might do.
Any longer and it would be a caress. A touch that spoke more of tenderness than of fashion.
He’d no sooner withdrawn from her than her horse swung his head back over the door, coming between them as surely as any chaperone.
Evelyn cradled the great beast’s nose, giving him an absent pet. “What shall I call you?”
“Anything you want,” Ahmad said.
“I wish to use your Christian name.”
His mouth hitched. “I can’t vouch for its Christianness.”
“You know what I mean. I wish—that is, I should very much like to call you Ahmad. If you don’t object to—”
“I don’t object.”
She looked into his eyes, her gaze uncertain. He had the sense that she was as much out to sea as he was himself. “It doesn’t have to mean anything,” she said softly.
“No,” he agreed. And yet . . .
He very much feared that it did.
Eighteen
Ahmad. Come in and have a seat.” Tom Finchley stood from behind the barrier of his desk to welcome Ahmad into his office in Fleet Street. The walls behind him were lined with bookcases filled with neat rows of leather-bound law books, locked securely behind glass.
Ahmad availed himself of one of the upholstered chairs opposite the desk.
It wasn’t his first time facing Finchley in this manner.
He’d been here before, in the aftermath of the incident at Mrs. Pritchard’s. Then, Ahmad had been confronting the very real prospect of transportation. Finchley had saved him from such a fate. And then he’d saved him again by offering him employment as a manservant to his future wife, Jenny Holloway.
“That will be all, Poole,” Finchley said, dismissing the weedy-looking clerk who had escorted Ahmad upstairs.
Bowing, the young man withdrew, shutting the door after him.
Finchley resumed his seat. His cravat and waistcoat were rumpled, and his hair was mussed as if he’d been pushing his fingers through it. He was plainly in the midst of one of his cases. Teetering stacks of paper littered the surface of his desk in company with heaps of rolled documents tied with ribbon. “I’d offer you tea, but I’m afraid I can spare you no more than ten minutes. I’m due in court.”
“This won’t take long.”
“It’s not about Mira, I hope?”
Ahmad frowned. “Why would it be?”
“She’s seemed as though she’s preoccupied with something.”
“She is preoccupied. I’ve tasked her with a great deal of needlework.”
“And you’re sure that’s all? There isn’t something else that’s troubling her?”
Ahmad didn’t think so.
Then again, he scarcely saw Mira from day to day. While she worked in King William Street with Becky, he was toiling from dawn until dusk in the back room of Doyle and Heppenstall’s.
Was Mira still feeling isolated and alone? As if she didn’t belong? Even now, with dresses to sew and Becky to keep her company while sewing them?
“Has she said something?” he asked.
“No, no. It’s just a feeling I had.” Finchley seemed to dismiss the concern as quickly as he mentioned it. “No doubt I’m reading her wrong. I’ve been somewhat distracted myself.”
“The work is good for her,” Ahmad said. “It gives her purpose.”
“I don’t dispute it. But this isn’t about Mira, you said.”
“No. It’s about another lady.” Ahmad swiftly explained his predicament. Or rather, Evelyn’s predicament.
Finchley listened in silence, his brow creased and his keen blue eyes thoughtful.
“I hoped you might drop a word in the ear of one of your informants,” Ahmad said when he’d finished. “If you still employ any of them.”
Finchley’s mouth hitched briefly. “If.”
The single word spoke volumes.
These past years, happily married and comfortable in his newfound domesticity, Finchley no longer worked on behalf of the more sinister elements of society. Instead, he directed his talents to worthier causes.
But knowledge was still power.
Ahmad couldn’t imagine Finchley being eager to give up his means of acquiring it.