They did not have the luxury of a carriage.
The street outside Mrs. Willoughby’s was choked with deliveries and idling vehicles; by the time Mrs. Willoughby’s coach could have been brought around, Harnessed, and sent weaving through traffic, the wagons Bess had described would be long gone.
So they walked.
Mira’s skirts snapped around her ankles as she strode, Mrs. Willoughby puffing gamely at her side, Daniel leading, Bess’s boy darting ahead to clear a path through the midmorning crush.
“Which way?” Daniel demanded when they reached the river’s stink.
“South,” the boy said, pointing. “’Long the wharf. Past the rope-house. You’ll see ’em. Big grey wagons. Men in Harcourt’s colors.”
They hurried.
The south wharf loomed: a maze of sheds and piers, cranes and pulleys, ropes and barrels. Men shouted. Gulls screamed. The water slapped against the pilings with its usual, indifferent rhythm.
And there—Bess’s boy had not been wrong—three large wagons stood outside a warehouse with a peeling sign that read simply *Turner & Co. Storage.*
The wagons’ backs were open. Men moved briskly, passing crates, barrels, sacks. Some wore Harcourt’s livery; others were rougher sorts Mira didn’t recognize.
Turner himself was nowhere in sight.
“How bad is he?” Mira asked Daniel under her breath as they paused in the shadow of a neighboring building.
“Alive,” Daniel said. “For now. Cobb says the surgeon took a piece of wood out of his skull the size of his thumb. If he wakes, he’ll be a miracle.”
“And if he doesn’t,” Mrs. Willoughby murmured, “Harcourt has one less loose tongue to fret about.”
Mira’s hand tightened on the edge of her cloak.
The warehouse door stood open a crack, enough to admit the path of men and crates. Inside, she could see dim rows, the suggestion of more.
The key burned against her skin.
“You see?” Mrs. Willoughby hissed. “They are *not waiting.* If you had waited your fortnight, the only things left in that warehouse would be dust and rats.”
“We’re not going in,” Daniel said. “Not now. In broad daylight, with Harcourt’s men watching.”
“We cannot stand here and watch either,” Mira said. “We look like we’ve lost our way to the theatre.”
“Then we walk,” Daniel said. “Casual. Past. As if we are merely on our way somewhere else.”
“And not stare,” Mrs. Willoughby added.
“I am very poor at not staring,” Mira murmured.
“Practice,” Daniel said.
They walked.
Each step felt like tiptoeing past a sleeping beast.
Men glanced at them, some with idle curiosity, some with the calculating look Mira was already learning to recognize: *can they pay? can they be used?*
No one stopped them.
The open door loomed as they passed.
Mira risked one, quick, sideways glance.
She saw stacks.
Not of random crates, but of *order.* Rows of barrels, all marked with tidy chalk. Bales of cloth. Boxes with foreign stamps. A smell of sugar, of rum, of spices.
And, in the far corner, something that made her breath catch: a stack of crates stamped, faint but visible, with the letters *G & P*. Godwin & Pell.
Her step faltered.
Daniel’s hand clamped around her arm, steadying, propelling.
“Keep walking,” he murmured. “Don’t give them your face.”
She swallowed and obeyed.
They turned down a narrower lane between warehouses, the noise of the main wharf fading slightly.
“That stamp,” she said, when her voice would work. “G & P.”
“Yes,” Daniel said grimly. “Some of the cargo that was supposed to have sunk. Or been ‘lost.’”
“They are moving it,” Mrs. Willoughby panted. “Before…before what? Before you open the door? Before Caine comes? Before the Crown starts sniffing?”
“All of the above,” Daniel said. “Harcourt’s plan, no doubt, was to shift the most incriminating stock to another warehouse—someone else’s name over the door, someone else’s neck on the line.”
“And leave Turner’s as an empty shell,” Mira said. “For me to open on some tidy day and find…nothing. Or very little.”
“Enough to satisfy your curiosity,” Mrs. Willoughby said bitterly. “Not enough to damage him.”
Mira stopped.
The alley around them was quieter here. A shuttered counting-house on one side, a cooper’s yard on the other. The smell of sawdust mingled with tar.
She turned to Daniel.
“Can you get closer?” she asked.
He frowned. “How?”
“Men like that—” she nodded back toward the wagons “—see what they expect. Another man in slightly shabby clothes? They have a dozen. They won’t look twice.”
“You want me to…what?” he said. “Offer to help? Pick up a crate?”
“Yes,” she said. “Get inside. Count rows. See how much remains. Hear names shouted. We need…detail.”
“And you?” he asked. “You and Mrs. Willoughby?”
“We will go back to Bess,” she said. “Listen. Watch from the tavern’s roof if we must. Women are invisible there, up high. Men don’t think to look *up.*”
“You are not climbing any roofs,” Mrs. Willoughby said flatly. “My knees.”
“Then we will watch from a window,” Mira said.
Daniel looked between them. “I don’t like splitting,” he said.
“I don’t either,” she said. “But we have very little time before those wagons roll.”
He chewed the inside of his cheek. “All right,” he said at last. “But if anything looks wrong—if you so much as *think* someone has noticed you—you go straight back to Hanover Square. Do not come looking for me.”
She lifted her chin. “I am not a girl waiting at a window for a lover to return from war.”
“No,” he said. “You are a woman who rushes into enemy camps with ledgers. It’s worse.”
She almost smiled. “You have a very poor opinion of my self-control.”
“I have a very *accurate* one,” he said.
She reached out, on impulse, and touched his sleeve. “Be careful,” she said.
His eyes softened.
“If I die under a crate,” he said, “I shall be very annoyed with you.”
“You can lecture me in the next life,” she said. “Gilbert has already promised.”
He huffed. “I’ll get in line.”
He squeezed her fingers once, then turned and melted back toward the wharf, his stride adjusting, shoulders slouching just enough to look like any other overworked clerk.
Mrs. Willoughby watched him go, lips pursed. “I’ve taken a liking to that man,” she said. “It will be very annoying if he gets himself crushed.”
“He won’t,” Mira said. “He’s too stubborn.”
She was trying to convince herself as much as Mrs. Willoughby.
***
Bess’s upper room smelled of onions and beer.
It had one virtue: a small, grimy window that looked out sideways toward Turner’s warehouse.
From here, the wagons were partially obscured, but the rhythm of loading was clear.
Men. Crates. A shout. A pause.
“If you squint,” Mrs. Willoughby said, squinting, “they look like ants. Very…well-fed ants.”
Mira leaned closer to the glass. “I count eighteen men outside,” she murmured. “Two more in the door’s shadow. One on the wagon seat.”
“Harcourt keeps his own hands clean,” Bess snorted from her chair. “He won’t be there. Not for this. He sends his steadiest rats.”
“You see anyone you recognize?” Mrs. Willoughby asked.
Bess squinted. “That one—” she pointed with her chin “—belongs to Harcourt. Jasper. Talks too much. Gambles badly. Owes me. That one there—belongs to Caine. See the way he moves? Like he’s in charge even when he’s not. That one—Turner’s cousin. Means well, brain like a sieve.”
“So it’s a…joint effort,” Mira said. “Harcourt shifting, Caine overseeing, Turner’s men doing the lifting.”
“Pretty picture, ain’t it?” Bess said. “Everyone muckin’ together to hide their mess.”
Mira’s jaw clenched.
Daniel appeared at the edge of the scene.
He approached the nearest wagon, hands in his pockets, posture loose. One of Harcourt’s men turned to bark at him.
Mira’s stomach tightened.
Then the man laughed, clapped Daniel on the shoulder, and jerked his head toward the stack of crates.
Daniel nodded and bent to pick one up.
“How does he do that?” Mrs. Willoughby muttered. “Walk into anything and look like he belongs.”
“He *does* belong,” Mira said quietly. “To this world.”
“And to yours,” Mrs. Willoughby said, giving her a sideways look.
Mira didn’t answer.
Daniel disappeared under the dark yawning mouth of the warehouse, crate in his arms.
Mira’s fingers dug into the windowsill.
“Did you see his face?” she asked Bess. “When he turned?”
“Hard to, from here,” Bess said. “Why?”
“He looked…pleased,” Mira said. “As if lifting heavy things in a stolen warehouse is exactly where he meant to be.”
“Men like him like bein’ useful,” Bess said. “Gives ’em somethin’ to think ‘bout when they can’t sleep.”
Mira looked down at her hands.
She understood that more than she wanted to.
Time stretched.
Men moved.
Crates shifted.
She tried to count how many G & P-stamped boxes came out. Lost track at twelve.
“Enough,” she whispered. “Far more than he admitted.”
“Harcourt lied?” Mrs. Willoughby said. “Send for the papers.”
Mira almost smiled.
The air in the little room grew warm and close as the sun rose higher, beating against the dirty glass.
“Do you think we’ve been seen?” Mrs. Willoughby asked suddenly.
Mira blinked. “Why?”
“There’s a man,” Mrs. Willoughby said. “Down there. Not movin’ boxes. Not havin’ a smoke. Just standin’. Look.”
Mira followed her gesture.
A man in a plain dark coat leaned against a post near the edge of the wharf.
He held no rope. He spoke to no one. His hat was pulled low, obscuring his eyes. But his posture—
“Caine,” she whispered.
Bess grunted. “Aye. Or one of his. Hard to say. They all move the same. Like they own the ground.”
He wasn’t watching the wagons.
He was watching the *warehouse door.*
Every so often, his gaze flicked to the narrow gap, sharp and assessing.
He was counting, Mira realized.
Not crates.
People.
Who went in. Who came out.
“How long have you had this room?” Mrs. Willoughby asked Bess in an undertone.
“Five years,” Bess said. “Rented it from an old sailor what don’t like stairs no more.”
“And how often do men like that”—she flicked her eyes toward Caine—“stand in view of this window?”
“Often,” Bess said. “They think no one’s lookin’. Or no one who matters, anyway.”
“I see,” Mrs. Willoughby said quietly. “We’ll have to disabuse them of that notion.”
Mira’s gaze riveted itself to the doorway.
Minutes ticked.
Daniel emerged once, empty-handed, wiping his brow, saying something to the man called Jasper. He laughed. It looked easy. It wasn’t.
He went back in.
“Idiots,” Mrs. Willoughby muttered. “All of you. Running in and out of lion’s mouths as if they were parlors.”
Another crate.
Another.
Finally, after what felt like an hour and a decade all at once, the flow slowed.
The wagons’ beds filled, tarpaulins tossed over, ropes tied.
Voices rose.
The men began to climb up, clamber down, stretch backs.
Daniel slipped away toward the side of the building, disappearing out of their line of sight.
Mira’s breath caught.
“Where is he going?” Mrs. Willoughby demanded. “Has he lost his mind?”
“Likely,” Bess said.
The man by the post—Caine, or his echo—straightened.
His head turned, slow and precise, following some movement Mira couldn’t see.
“What is he—” she began.
“Look,” Mrs. Willoughby hissed.
The warehouse door.
It was closing.
Slowly, reluctantly, as if unused to shutting.
The last man out—Jasper—paused, looking back, then shoved it harder.
It met the jamb with a dull thud.
The sound carried, faint but distinct, up to the little window.
Mira’s hand flew to her thigh.
The key pressed into her flesh.
“For now,” she whispered, “the secrets stay inside.”
“For now,” Mrs. Willoughby echoed.
The wagons rolled.
Caine—or the man who was almost him—watched them go, then turned and melted into the crowd.
Mira stared at the shut door until her vision blurred.
It was just wood.
Just iron.
Just hinges and planks.
But beyond it lay…everything.
“Soon,” she whispered.
The word felt more like a vow than anything she’d ever said before.
She did not yet know what it would cost.
But she knew this:
She would be the one turning that key.
Not Pell.
Not Harcourt.
Not even Caine.
Her.
And Daniel—stubborn, infuriating, loyal Daniel—would be beside her.
Unless the river, or a bullet, or some other miscalculation took him first.
She pressed her hand flat against the place where the key lay.
“Stay alive,” she breathed, to the warehouse, to the wagons, to the city, to herself.
No one answered.
But somewhere, below, she saw Daniel slip around the far corner and look up, just once, toward the tavern’s window.
She lifted her hand.
He lifted his.
A tiny, defiant salute in the midst of so much looming ruin.
Then he was gone again, into the maze.
And she smiled, despite the ache in her chest.
Slow burn, she thought, did not only describe romance.
It also described revolution.
And hers had just inched closer to the fuse.