The house had grown smaller since he died.
It was not that the walls had moved, nor the ceilings dropped, yet everything seemed somehow cramped now. The corridors pressed close. The drawing room, once airy with laughter and the scrape of chairs and the bustle of servants, felt like a box someone had forgotten to open.
Mira Godwin stood in that same drawing room and stared at the collection of ledgers spread over the mahogany table where her husband used to slice his bread.
Every column, every number, was a betrayal.
“You cannot remain here like this,” her brother-in-law said behind her. “It is morbid.”
“It is economical,” she corrected, though her voice lacked force. Her eyes would not leave the ink-scratched pages. “And economical must suffice, since there is nothing else.”
Gilbert Godwin made a sound that hovered between impatience and sympathy. He had perfected that sound in the weeks since her husband’s death.
“You have *me*,” he reminded her. “You need only say the word and I will see to your comfort. The cottage at Linton is quiet, well-sheltered, and the rent—”
“Is paid by you,” Mira finished. She turned at last to face him. “And then, Gilbert, I must be grateful for every slice of bread you allow me, every candle I burn?”
His ruddy cheeks mottled darker. “You make me sound a miser.”
“You are not,” she said gently. And he was not. Gilbert was a solid sort of man, with thick wrists and thinning sandy hair and an earnest frown. He was also a practical man. Practical men liked their widowed relations safely tucked away in the country, taking up very little space and less money.
“You know I only wish to do what is proper,” he said, falling back on his favorite defense. “The world expects—”
“The world,” Mira said, “can look elsewhere if it is offended.”
Gilbert stared at her. A bird chirped, absurdly bright, beyond the tall windows; the May light slanted across the worn carpet.
He recovered first. “You are still in deep mourning,” he said, as if she might have forgotten. His gaze flicked to her gown: the black bombazine, the hopelessly unfashionable cut, the dull crepe trim that swallowed every shaft of light. “It has been but eight months.”
“Eight months and three days,” she said, because she counted.
He shifted. “You cannot think of…of *society* yet. It would be indecent. People would talk.”
“People always talk.” Mira gathered the nearest ledger and flipped it open, as if the ink might arrange itself into a better answer if she only glared at it fiercely enough. “That is partly the problem.”
Gilbert rubbed a hand over his face. “The problem,” he said, “is that you will not listen to reason.”
She snapped the ledger shut. “The problem, Gilbert, is that my husband’s estate is empty.”
He flinched, as though she had struck him. Yet he did not contradict her. He had been the first to say the words, standing with the London solicitor in this same room, three months ago. *Insolvent, Mrs. Godwin. Quite…unexpectedly so.*
Gilbert took a step toward the table. “You know accidents occur in trade. Thomas took risks. He always did.”
“Thomas took calculated risks,” she returned. “He told me so often enough.” She slid a thin sheaf of crumpled papers from beneath the ledger. Her fingers trembled, but from anger, not grief. “There is nothing calculated about this. This is—” She forced her voice down from a dangerous pitch. “This is a vanishing.”
The papers were letters: snippets of correspondence between Thomas and his business partner, a Mr. Lysander Pell. They were full of assurances. Profits. Opportunities. A new ship bound for Jamaica. A warehouse on the river. And then, abruptly, nothing. The last letter from Mr. Pell was nearly a year old. Shortly after that, Thomas began to pace at odd hours, to stare at the fire with a crease between his brows.
Shortly after that, he began to cough.
“You do not know what happened,” Gilbert said. “None of us do.”
“That is precisely the difficulty,” Mira replied. “We *ought* to know. There are ledgers missing. Ships unaccounted for. Bills—” She swept one hand over the table, where neat stacks of folded, ominous papers stood like a regiment of accusing soldiers. “Bills everywhere, and no money with which to pay them.”
Gilbert’s mouth thinned. “I have offered to settle what I can. To take the house—”
“And with it, the last thing I possess that is *mine,*” she cut in. “My name remains. My reputation. And this roof over my head, until the creditors lose patience.” She drew a long breath, cool and sharp in her chest like stepping into a frosty stream. “You asked me, when Thomas died, what I wanted. Do you recall?”
He hesitated. “You said you wanted the truth.”
“Yes.” She looked down at the ink-scarred table, at the broken accounts and the broken promises. “And I intend to have it.”
Gilbert’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”
She lifted her head. “I am going to London.”
For a moment, the silence rang.
“London,” Gilbert repeated, as if she had said she planned to fly to the moon. “London…*now?*”
“Yes.”
“You cannot be serious.”
“I am entirely serious.”
“You are in mourning. Deep mourning.”
“I am in *debt,*” she said. “Deeper still.”
“You are a widow, alone. How would it look for you to—”
“I will not be alone. I will take Sally.” Her maid, overhearing her name out in the corridor, poked her head around the doorframe like a curious thrush. Mira waved her away; this was not a time to have Sally chattering. “Perhaps Mrs. Willoughby would sponsor me for a few weeks.” She chewed the inside of her cheek. “She has always liked me. She likes gossip more. A scandalous widow in half-mourning would be irresistible, I fancy.”
“You joke about your ruin?” Gilbert demanded.
“No.” Her voice smoothed. “But I will not *whimper* about it, either.”
“Even if you find this fellow—this Pell—what can you do?” Gilbert asked, desperate now. “Drag him before a magistrate? A respectable woman cannot—”
“A respectable woman can ask questions,” she said. “I am very good at that. You know I am.”
He pressed his lips together. He did know. No one ever gave Mira a book without being questioned on every page. No one ever told a story without being interrupted by a dozen sharp inquiries. Thomas had teased her, once, drawing her into his lap to silence her with kisses, his hands cupping her face, his murmurs warm against her mouth—
She cut the memory off, ruthlessly.
Gilbert began again, dogged. “Even if you uncover…some irregularity…what then? The money is gone, Mira. Vanished into ships and warehouses and creditors. It’s unfortunate, it’s damned unfair, but it is *done.*”
“Perhaps,” she allowed. “Perhaps not. In any case, I am entitled to understand how my husband came to spend his last months walking from one end of the room to the other like a man pacing his cell.”
Gilbert’s shoulders slumped. For the first time, he looked tired rather than merely stubborn.
“Thomas would not want…this,” he said. “He would want you settled. Safe. He spoke to me, before—” Gilbert broke off, swallowed. “He made me promise I would look after you.”
“And I am grateful,” she said softly. “Truly I am. But I never asked to be looked after, Gilbert. I asked to be treated as though I still had a spine.”
Color rose in his cheeks again, this time in shame. He glanced at the open doorway, where Sally’s shadow lingered.
“I cannot stop you,” he said at last. “Not without locking you in your chamber, I suppose. And you would likely climb down the ivy and break your neck.”
She lifted a hand to the window. Beyond the glass, the dark smudge of ivy clung to the stone like a net. “Very likely,” she said.
“But—” He took a breath, the sort that seemed to scrape the inside of his ribs. “I will not approve it. I cannot. You ask too much of me.”
“I am not asking your approval.” Her voice remained gentle. “Only your assistance. I will need some funds to begin. Passage to town, a modest wardrobe fit to be seen. I will pay you back.”
“With what?” he demanded.
She looked at the ledgers. “With the truth, I hope.” Then, because practicality had never been foreign to her: “Or, failing that, with the sale of the Pierce silver. It was my mother’s.”
He swore, quietly. “Keep the damned silver. Sell the pianoforte if you must. I hate the way you bang at the thing.”
She smiled, small and real. “I shall miss that pianoforte dearly.”
He swore again, but weaker. “Mira… Are you certain? You know how they speak in town. A woman in your position—one misstep and your name will not be worth the soap to wash it from someone’s tongue.”
“I know.” She walked to the window, laid her hand against the cool glass. The gardens beyond still bore traces of the man who had planned them: the square of orderly vegetable beds, the pair of clipped yews shaped like chess pieces. But the roses had gone wild in his absence, reaching greedy fingers over the gravel walk.
She understood them.
“I have been very proper, Gilbert,” she said quietly. “I did everything as I ought. I married as I should. I gave my husband my affection and my body and my cheerful conversation. I obeyed the doctors, I bore the black crepe, I turned away callers who wished to make me laugh in the first weeks when my throat still hurt from screaming. I have been good. I have been patient.” She let her fingers trace the joint in the pane. “And yet here I am, with barely enough to pay the butcher.”
Gilbert had the grace not to say that the butcher would be paid, as long as *he* lived. She knew it. That was not the point.
She turned back to him. “Allow me, this once, to be *improper.* Allow me to ask why the sums do not add. Allow me to look Mr. Lysander Pell in the face and say: *Sir, explain yourself.*”
He stared at her a long moment. Then his shoulders sagged in surrender.
“How much do you need?” he asked.
Relief rushed through her so swiftly she had to grip the back of the nearest chair. She hid the movement by leaning upon it carelessly. “Enough for the coach to London, a new gown, and a week or two in a decent lodging,” she said. “After that, I shall manage.”
“You will not,” he muttered. “But I see I cannot stop you from attempting. I shall speak to the solicitor in town. He has…connections. He may know where your Pell fellow has scuttled off to.”
“Thank you,” she said simply.
“Do not thank me yet,” he said. “If you come to grief, I shall never forgive myself.”
“Then I shall endeavor not to come to grief,” she replied.
“You always were contrary,” he said, with reluctant fondness. “Thomas said once that you were like a cat in a burlap sack. The more one tried to pin you down, the more you wriggled.”
Her throat tightened. “He did not say that.”
“He did. At dinner. You threw a roll at him.”
She remembered. The roll had missed and hit Gilbert. Thomas had laughed until he choked; she had scolded and then kissed his brow later, apology and amusement mixed together.
She straightened. “If Thomas thought I wriggled before,” she said, “he had no notion.”
Gilbert looked at her, and in his gaze she saw the understanding settle: that he had lost not only a brother but the illusion that he could simply tuck his sister-in-law away like a worn shawl in a drawer.
Very softly, he said, “You will be ruined, Mira, if you are not careful.”
“Perhaps,” she said. “But *ruin* is relative, is it not? To some, it is being whispered about. To others, it is waking to discover that everyone you trusted has taken everything from you and given you nothing but a neat black dress in return.”
His jaw worked. He nodded, once; a grudging salute. “You were not this ruthless before.”
She considered. “Grief is a rather thorough tutor.”
He opened his mouth, then closed it again. “Very well, then. London.” He sighed, rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I shall write to Mrs. Willoughby and ask if she will take you under her wing for a time. You will make your inquiries, and when you have had your…answers, you will go to Linton and live quietly. Yes?”
She did not promise. But she smiled. “We shall see.”
He snorted. “We shall, indeed.” He gathered his hat from the chair where he had dropped it earlier. “Do not sell the pianoforte without telling me. I want to be here to cheer.”
When he had gone, taking his muttered curses and his clumsy concern with him, the house fell quiet again.
Mira looked around the room. The ledgers lay where they had been, stubborn as ever. The letters from Mr. Pell whispered against each other in the faint draft from the chimney.
London.
The word tasted bright and dangerous on her tongue.
She went to ring for Sally.
***
Sally burst in without knocking, cheeks flushed, apron askew. “Did he agree, ma’am? I nearly wore all the carpet in the passage, waiting.”
Mira’s lips twitched. “You eavesdropped shamelessly.”
“It was that or die of curiosity,” Sally said frankly. “You *are* going to London, ain’t you?”
“Are *we* going to London,” Mira corrected. “I should never manage without you.”
Sally’s eyes shone. “You’ll take me?” She stepped further into the room, pressing her hands to her stomach as if to contain her excitement. “Proper London? With shops and theatres and them big carriages with springs? And the gentlemen with—” She flapped a hand. “With…hats?”
Mira laughed, unexpectedly. It felt rusty but possible. “Yes. With hats. I shall even allow you to look at them.”
“And the ladies with feathers like peacocks,” Sally went on breathlessly. “I’ve heard of it, ma’am, but I never thought… Oh!” Her eyes darted to the ledgers. Her voice softened. “I mean. I know it ain’t for fun. Not only. It’s for…for—”
“For justice,” Mira said, and the word settled into the room like a placed stone. “For answers.”
Sally nodded vigorously. “For that nasty fellow who took Mr. Godwin’s money and left you with nothing but them ugly mourning gowns.”
Mira’s gaze slid down her own figure. The gown she wore had been fine enough last year when it was made, but black drained it of all charm. It hung on her more loosely now, the outlines of her shape softer, rounder. She had always been full in the bosom and hips, to Thomas’s delight; he had liked to tease that she gave him something to hold onto when the world tried to throw him. The last months had left her tired and thinner, but not fashionably delicate. She doubted London’s most critical matrons would consider her a beauty by any measure.
Let them sneer.
“Yes,” she said. “We must see to gowns. I cannot storm the counting-houses and ballrooms of London looking as if I am on my way to a funeral.”
Sally’s eyes widened. “Ballrooms, ma’am?”
Mira considered this. “If I am to ask questions, I must go where men of commerce spend their time. Some of them will be in counting-houses. Some in coffee-houses. Some”—her lips twisted—“in places I hardly like to name. And some will be in drawing rooms and at dinners, dancing with heiresses and whispering in corners. Business is done everywhere. I mean to be where business is being done.”
Sally swallowed. “You mean to dance, ma’am? In London?”
“I am still in mourning,” Mira said automatically.
“Half-mourning, nearly,” Sally ventured. “Your year ain’t up, but Mr. Gilbert said as how if you go to London, you’ll need…something.”
Mira’s throat tightened again, but for a different reason. Half-mourning. A grey gown, perhaps. Lilac. It felt like betrayal even to think of it.
Thomas would not care, she told herself. Thomas, who had insisted on bringing in musicians at Christmas no matter how badly he coughed, who had made her dance with him in this very room while the wind howled outside, who had called her his stubborn, bright Mira as if the words were a prayer.
Would he really want her draped in black forever, like a tomb draped in soot?
No.
“Perhaps a very modest quadrille,” she said, more to herself than Sally. “If it brings me within a few feet of Mr. Pell. I should dance a reel with the devil himself for that.”
Sally shivered, delighted and horrified. “You are very brave, ma’am.”
“I am very angry,” Mira corrected. “Bravery has little to do with it.”
Sally considered this, then nodded as though it made perfect sense. “I’ll start packing,” she said. “We’ll need to sort through your things. That old lavender muslin can be let out and dyed darker. And there’s that dove-grey silk you wore the spring before last. You looked like you’d stepped out of one of them paintings in the gallery.”
Mira raised a brow. “A plump little saint with crooked fingers?”
“A plump little…divine creature,” Sally improvised. “Anyway, London gentlemen like something to hold onto. So I’ve heard. Cook’s cousin’s boy said—”
“Cook’s cousin’s boy says many things he should not,” Mira cut in. “See that you do not repeat all of them, unless you wish me to faint upon the settee like a proper lady.”
Sally giggled. “You? Faint? You’d sooner knock a man’s head with a candlestick.”
“Only if he deserves it,” Mira said. “Go, then. Sort the gowns. And find the trunk with the city address-book in it. I mean to reacquaint myself with the names of my enemies.”
Sally bobbed a curtsy so enthusiastic she nearly upended a stack of ledgers, then scurried out like a terrier released.
Left alone, Mira sank into the nearest chair. The black bombazine rasped against the upholstery. Outside, the bird sang again, relentless.
“London,” she whispered. Her heart thudded, not entirely with dread.
On the table, one of Mr. Pell’s letters lay half open. She reached for it, smoothing the creased paper.
*My dear Godwin,* it began. *I have an opportunity to propose which may quite change the nature of our operations in the West Indies—*
She read it once more, not for the opportunity described, but for the tone. The easy assumption. The charm that had, for a time, charmed her as well.
Mr. Lysander Pell wrote as if the world were a game and money only counters, to be slid across a green baize table without consequence.
Very well, Mr. Pell, she thought. Let us play, you and I.
And she folded the letter deliberately, tucked it into her reticule as if she had just taken up a weapon.
***
Two weeks later, the house looked as if someone had shaken it by the shoulders.
Trunks stood open in the hall. Bundles of linens lay tied with blue string. A footman lugged the smaller of the traveling chests toward the door, puffing beneath its weight.
At the bottom of the stairs, Gilbert waited, his hat crushed between his hands like a man twisting out a confession.
“You are certain you will not let me accompany you?” he asked for the fifth time.
“I am certain,” Mira said, descending in deliberate calm. “If you stand at my elbow, everyone will assume I have no notions of my own. And I have…several.”
He eyed her, half worried, half resigned. “You look very…un-mournful.”
She glanced down at herself. The gown was a deep slate-gray silk, nearly black in some lights, with narrow sleeves that hugged her arms and a bodice cut square and modest, but not shapeless. The seamstress in town had done wonders with little. The only purely black thing she wore was the ribbon at her throat, tied in a neat bow, and the gloves on her hands.
“It is half-mourning,” she reminded him. “It has been nearly nine months.”
He made a disapproving sound. “Do not, I beg you, allow those London frights to bully you out of your respectability.”
“I shall cling to my respectability with all the tenacity of a barnacle,” she promised lightly. “Do not fret so, Gilbert. You will need your strength for scowling at the butcher.”
He stared at her, something like admiration flickering behind his irritation. “You are enjoying this,” he accused.
Her smile faded. “No. I am not. I would rather be…anywhere else, doing anything else.” With him. With Thomas. In a world where ledgers balanced and men did not vanish with other men’s livelihoods in their pockets. “But since I cannot have that, I will have this.”
He swallowed. “I have written to the solicitor. He has instructed a clerk in London to discover what he can of Mr. Pell. And Mrs. Willoughby has replied that she will receive you for a fortnight. *A fortnight,* mind, and no more, unless you win her over entirely. She warns that her patience for widows who stray from proper melancholy is limited.”
Mira made a face. “I shall endeavor to be just gloomy enough.”
“How will you know when you’ve managed it?” he muttered.
Sally bustled past with an armful of hatboxes nearly as tall as she was. “Oh, pardon, sir! Mrs. Godwin, I’ve put the grey pelisse in the small trunk, like you said. The one with the silk lining.”
“Thank you, Sally.”
Gilbert watched the maid scurry away. “You are not to go to any…low places,” he said abruptly. “I have told the solicitor as much. No gaming hells, no taverns. If there is to be anything of that sort, he is to handle it.”
“I do not intend to stroll into a gaming hell alone,” Mira said. “I am reckless, not foolish.”
He grunted. “You shall have a chaperone in Mrs. Willoughby, at least. She is a dragon.”
“Oh, good,” Mira said. “I have always wanted a dragon.”
The coach clattered into the drive. The horses tossed their heads, their breath puffing white in the chill morning air. The coachman sprang down, touched his hat.
Mira turned to Gilbert and, for a moment, set all her levity aside. “Thank you,” she said quietly. “Truly. You needn’t have helped. You could have locked me up, or starved me into obedience.”
“It occurred to me,” he admitted. “But your mother would have risen from her grave to haunt me. And Thomas would have laughed himself sick.”
“Probably,” she agreed.
He hesitated, then stepped forward and pulled her into a brief, awkward embrace. He smelled of starch and pipe smoke and the outdoor air.
“Write,” he said, his voice rough. “If you need anything. If these—Pell people—prove dangerous…”
“I shall send Sally to whack them with a hatbox,” she promised, her voice steady.
He let her go. “Be careful, Mira.”
She nodded.
As she climbed into the coach, the weight of what she was attempting settled over her shoulders like an invisible cloak. Not as heavy as mourning crepe, perhaps—but real.
London loomed ahead: glitter and grime, music and muck.
And somewhere within it: Mr. Lysander Pell, with Thomas’s money and Thomas’s secrets bound up in his clever hands.
Mira settled back against the worn leather seat, the letter from Pell warm in her reticule at her side, and felt the first jolt as the coach lurched forward.
The house shrank behind her. The roses clambered over the wall, untidy and uncontained.
She did not look back.
---