By the time they reached Mrs. Willoughby’s house again, Mira’s feet ached and her head hummed with too many impressions: the thud of the warehouse door, the creak of loaded wagons, the flicker of Daniel’s hand as he saluted the upstairs window.
The key bruised her thigh with every step.
Mrs. Willoughby stormed ahead into the front hall in a cloud of shawl and indignation.
“Tea,” she barked at the startled butler. “And sherry. And something solid. Meat. Bread. Cake. We have been watching men work, it is utterly exhausting.”
“Yes, madam,” the butler said, wisely screening any amusement.
Sally appeared at the top of the stairs, eyes huge. “You’re back! Cook said as how—”
“Cook may gloat later,” Mrs. Willoughby said. “For now, tell her we require enough food to feed a small regiment and at least one foolish second son.”
“Mr. Ferris ain’t with you?” Sally asked, craning to see behind Mira.
“He will come later,” Mira said, unfastening her cloak. “If he is not crushed, drowned, stabbed, or otherwise inconvenienced.”
Sally paled. “Ma’am—”
“He’s fine,” Mrs. Willoughby said, more sure than she felt. “He has an uncanny talent for slipping out of scrapes. Like an eel in boots.”
Mira managed a small smile. “Go help in the kitchen, Sally. We shall need trays.”
When Sally had gone, Mrs. Willoughby turned to Mira, her expression losing its brisk edges.
“Well?” she demanded in a lower voice. “Did you see enough to satisfy yourself that Harcourt is a rat?”
“Yes,” Mira said. “And no. I saw enough to know that he is more than a rat. Rats are simple. He is…intricate.”
“Intricate?” Mrs. Willoughby repeated. “That sounds like a compliment. Take it back.”
Mira’s lips twitched. “He is…efficient. His men moved as if they had rehearsed this. As if they have done it before. Many times.”
“They have,” a voice said from the doorway.
Daniel.
He stood there, flush still high on his cheekbones from exertion, coat dusted with floury streaks from crate edges, hair more hopelessly disordered than usual.
Mira’s breath caught.
“You’re alive,” she said, more sharply than she intended.
“For the moment,” he said. “It keeps happening, despite everyone’s best efforts.”
Mrs. Willoughby made a little flapping motion with her hands. “Sit. Both of you. Talk. I shall go terrorize the cook into wasting her best ham on you.”
She swept off toward the kitchen, leaving them in the hall.
Mira realized they were standing in exactly the spot where, not so many weeks ago, she had first stepped into this house in her grey bombazine, a stranger to this stage of her own life.
Now she was in deep blue, toes still damp with river air, powder under her nails.
“Did you get what you needed?” she asked.
“Not nearly,” he said. “But more than I feared I wouldn’t.”
They moved toward the smaller sitting room, one of Mrs. Willoughby’s less formal spaces, where the fire was already banked and the sofa cushions bore the faint impression of earlier, idle gossip.
Mira sank into a chair by the hearth. Daniel remained standing, pacing once before the mantel as if his limbs could not yet relinquish motion.
“Well?” she prompted, unable to bear his silence. “Tell me.”
He raked a hand through his hair. “There’s far more there than Harcourt ever admitted,” he said. “Godwin & Pell crates, yes. But also bales with marks scoured off and repainted. Casks labeled for one importer but stenciled, underneath, with others. Sugar from islands we are not supposed to be trading with yet. Cloth that did not pass through proper customs halls, unless customs has taken to stamping in invisible ink.”
“Names?” she asked. “On papers? On crate lists?”
A flash of something like satisfaction crossed his face. “Yes,” he said. “Turner kept better notes than anyone gave him credit for. There’s a ledger nailed up just inside the door—seems he was tired of Harcourt’s confusion. Columns of arrivals, departures, reassignments. Dates. Initials.”
“Initials,” she echoed. “H for Harcourt. P for Pell. G for…”
He shook his head. “No. No G. That, at least, they kept off the walls. A smudge here or there. A ‘G&P’ on a crate. Enough to make my stomach turn. But not blatant.”
Her fists slowly uncurled. “Good.”
He watched her. “You’re relieved.”
“Yes,” she said. “Ridiculously so. I know it sounds foolish. But seeing my husband’s name written on that wall would have…” She swallowed. “It feels like a barometer. Of how deeply he let himself be drawn in.”
“He didn’t,” Daniel said quietly. “Not that far. He signed papers; he took loans; he agreed to ventures he didn’t fully understand. But he never picked up a brush and wrote his initials on crates being hidden from the Crown. That…is something.”
“Yes,” she agreed, her chest tight. “Small. But something.”
He moved to the arm of the chair opposite her, leaning one hand on the carved wood.
“There were other initials,” he said. “H, certainly. P. A few I don’t yet know—‘B&H,’ ‘T.S.’—likely other firms who thought themselves clever. And one that interested me particularly: M.”
“M,” she repeated. “For…?”
“I don’t yet know,” he said. “But there were enough of them that whoever M is, he—or she—has a great deal at stake in that warehouse.”
“Another merchant?” she asked. “Another Harcourt?”
“Or someone in Parliament,” he said grimly. “Or someone at Customs. Or…” He shrugged. “Too many possibilities. We’ll have to pick at it.”
“We?” she echoed.
His mouth quirked. “You think I’m letting you have all the fun?”
She allowed herself a small smile.
“How much did they manage to move?” she asked. “From what you could see.”
“Three wagonloads full,” he said. “Mostly the more obvious contraband. The G&P crates. Anything with foreign stamps too easy to trace. The quiet stuff—barrels labeled simply ‘Molasses,’ bales marked ‘Cotton’—those they seem content to leave. For now.”
“So if we wait too long,” she said, “the worst of it will be gone.”
“Yes,” he said. “But if we act too soon, we’ll be accused of raiding a warehouse full of…molasses.”
“Men have hung for less,” she said.
“Not men with Harcourt’s friends,” he returned.
Silence stretched for a moment, thick as the air in that warehouse had been.
“You went inside,” she said. “Further than the door.”
“Yes,” he said.
“Did you feel…fear?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said again.
She blinked. “You admit it,” she said, oddly moved.
“I’d be an idiot not to,” he said. “One misstep, one wrong word, and I’d have been on the floor with a crate where my skull ought to be. Or ‘accidentally’ pinned under a wagon wheel. Men die in these places all the time. It makes a very neat line in the accounts.”
Her stomach turned. “And yet you went.”
“I grew up in places like that,” he said. “If I can walk there to keep you from doing it alone, I will. Every time.”
“Stop saying things like that,” she said, too quickly.
He cocked his head. “Like what?”
“Like…” She floundered. “Like you have decided my safety is your…project.”
He frowned. “I thought we’d established that some time ago.”
“It is worse, now that you’ve…named other things,” she said.
His expression shifted, softening. “You mean…love.”
Heat flared in her cheeks. “Must you say it like that?”
“Like what?” he asked. “As if it’s a fact, like the weather?”
“Yes,” she said. “You speak as if it were…simple.”
“It isn’t,” he said. “But the saying of it is easier than the feeling.”
She shook her head, half exasperated, half helpless. “You complicate everything.”
He huffed. “You have that backwards. Everything was already complicated. You’ve made parts of it…clearer. Infuriatingly so.”
Their gazes caught.
The air between them felt denser suddenly. The crackle of the fire seemed louder. Somewhere in the house a clock ticked, absurdly precise.
He broke first, looking toward the doorway just as Sally appeared, bearing a heavily laden tray and trying hard not to eavesdrop.
“There you are!” she said breathlessly, cheeks pink. “Cook’s done the beef in them little pasties you like, ma’am, and there’s ham, and bread, and Mrs. Willoughby says if you don’t eat at least three things each, she’ll start feedin’ you herself.”
“God forbid,” Daniel murmured, accepting a plate.
Sally hovered, then blurted, “Mr. Ferris, is it true you carried three crates at once? Cook said Bess’s cousin said—”
“Sally,” Mira cut in gently. “Let the man breathe before you interrogate him.”
Sally flushed. “Yes, ma’am.” She bit her lip. “I just… It’s like one of them plays, ain’t it? With smugglers and dark warehouses and noblemen in disguise.”
“Daniel is hardly a nobleman,” Mrs. Willoughby said, sailing in, though her eyes were bright with something suspiciously like relief. “He is a second son. Entirely different species. More teeth.”
Daniel put a hand to his chest. “You wound me.”
“Eat,” she ordered, flopping into a chair. “Then tell me every word anyone said within ten feet of you that might be useful. No embroidery; I prefer my scandal plain.”
The next hour passed in a flurry of forkfuls and fragments.
Daniel recounted snatches of conversation he’d overheard: Jasper complaining about “extra work for no extra coin;” another man muttering that “if M finds out Harcourt’s touching his goods, there’ll be hell to pay;” someone whispering about “that Godwin woman” being “more dangerous than any gauger.”
Mira listened, mind mapping names, comments, tones.
Mrs. Willoughby interjected questions, prods, occasional indignant asides.
Sally occasionally gasped or muttered, “The nerve,” under her breath.
When the worst of the hunger had been blunted and the details laid out as best they could, a lull settled.
“Very well,” Mrs. Willoughby said at last, steepling her fingers. “Let us make some sense of this mess. What, precisely, does this change?”
“They are accelerating,” Mira said. “Harcourt. Pell. Whoever M is. They are moving. Hiding. Reassigning. Our window shrinks.”
“Yes,” Daniel said. “But they cannot move *everything* at once. That warehouse is thick with goods that would look very bad in the wrong light. They’ll prioritize. The rest…will sit. For a time.”
“And if we time it wrong,” Mrs. Willoughby said, “we will open a door on a half-emptied room and be told we have overreacted.”
“And if we time it right,” Mira said quietly, “we may open it on enough to topple several men at once.”
Mrs. Willoughby eyed her. “You are beginning to speak like Caine. It is most unnerving.”
“Caine,” Daniel said, “gave instructions.”
Mrs. Willoughby stiffened. “He *what*?”
“Suggestions,” Mira corrected. “Warnings. He summoned me yesterday. He is not pleased with Harcourt’s…improvisations.”
“Good,” Mrs. Willoughby said. “Let them eat each other.”
“He told me not to go at night,” Mira said. “Not to go alone. Not to go on a day when the wharf is too busy.”
“Caine,” Mrs. Willoughby said slowly, “caring whether you get your head knocked in. How…novel.”
“He cares because I complicate his sums,” Mira said. “He dislikes variables he cannot predict.”
Mrs. Willoughby sniffed. “Then remain unpredictable. It annoys men like that.”
“I thought you liked annoying men like that,” Daniel said.
“I do,” she said. “But I prefer to do it from a chaise-longue, not a coffin.”
Mira rubbed her temples. “We cannot wait weeks,” she said. “But neither can we rush tomorrow. Harcourt will expect that; his men will be jumpy. We need…a day when he thinks he can breathe again.”
“A lull,” Daniel said. “After a storm.”
“Yes,” she said. “When everyone thinks the worst is past.”
Sally, who had been frowning in concentration, brightened. “What about Good Friday?” she blurted.
Three heads turned.
“Good Friday?” Mrs. Willoughby repeated. “We are planning blasphemy now?”
“No—well, yes, but—hear me out,” Sally said, hands fluttering. “Half the city goes all quiet that day. Shops close. Men go to church or to their mamas. The docks is slower, Cook’s cousin says; fewer wagons, ‘cause no one wants to be seen cartin’ liquor on a holy day. But there’s still…some. It ain’t empty. Just…less noisy.”
Daniel considered. “She’s right,” he said. “Trade dips, but doesn’t stop. Men with real business keep at it; men with things to hide try to look pious. It might mask our…expedition.”
“And the magistrates?” Mira asked. “Ellison. Would they stir on such a day?”
“They ought to,” Daniel said. “If they care about anything more than their own hams. We’ll have to frame it properly. As…cleansing.” His mouth twitched. “Good Friday for Harcourt’s conscience.”
Mrs. Willoughby sighed. “If I am struck by lightning, I shall blame all of you.”
“When is Good Friday?” Mira asked.
“Next week,” Daniel said. “Eight days.”
Eight days.
Long enough for Harcourt to move more.
Not long enough for him to empty everything.
Long enough for Mira to write certain letters. To put certain affairs in order. To steel certain nerves.
“Very well,” she said. “Good Friday.”
The words felt strange in her mouth. Heavy.
Mrs. Willoughby made a face. “I shall have to explain to Lady Holt why I am not at her annual fish-and-piety dinner.”
“Invite her to the wharf instead,” Daniel suggested. “It will be far more edifying.”
“I am fond of her,” Mrs. Willoughby said. “I do not wish to give her apoplexy.”
Mira exhaled.
Eight days.
Between now and then, she would need to:
Speak again with Ellison. Persuade him to secure a magistrate willing to risk his own skin. Arrange for Cobb and Bess to have eyes open and men ready. Keep Harcourt sufficiently unsettled. Keep Pell sufficiently uncertain. Keep Caine…curious.
And, perhaps most difficult of all, keep her own heart from leaping ahead of her sense.
***
That night, she did something she had not done since before Thomas’s illness.
She wrote a will.
The paper sat blank before her for a long time.
What did she truly have to leave?
A few pieces of jewelry: her mother’s silver, which she had not yet pawned. A scattering of small, sentimental trinkets. Books. Dresses. The house, which was not really hers at all, hanging by the thin string of Harcourt’s grudging promise to “reinterpret” certain accounts.
Names came easier than numbers.
*To Sally Brook, I leave such dresses as she may wish, my smaller jewels, and fifty pounds, to be paid from any funds that may come into my hands from the settlement of my husband’s affairs. If there is nothing, she must take the dresses and my gratitude, which are worth very little in market, but much to me.*
*To Gilbert Godwin, I leave my pianoforte, so that he may continue to hate it in my absence, and my thanks for always arriving just in time to scold.*
*To Mrs. Charlotte Willoughby, I leave my green shawl, which she has coveted since the moment she saw it, and my diaries, on the understanding that she may read them but not publish them without changing all the names.*
She hesitated, pen hovering.
*To Daniel Ferris…*
Ink blotted.
She stared at the spreading, dark circle.
There were things she wanted to leave him: forgiveness. Less guilt. A ledger with fewer red lines.
Those could not be written down.
In the end, she wrote simply:
*To Mr. Daniel Ferris, I leave any ledgers, notes, or correspondences remaining from my husband’s business that have not already been used or destroyed, trusting him more than any other man of my acquaintance to read them truly. I also leave him whatever courage I have not exhausted.*
It was sentimental. Foolish.
She left it.
When she sealed the document and tucked it into the drawer of the desk where Ellison’s clerk knew to look in case of disaster, she felt…lighter.
Not because she expected to die.
But because acknowledging the possibility—and arranging around it—freed her to look ahead without the weight of unspoken fear.
She stood by the window a long time, staring out at the square.
A figure moved below, pausing in the patch of lamplight thrown by the street lantern.
Daniel.
He looked up, as if he knew exactly where she would be.
She lifted a hand, fingers resting against the glass.
He tipped his hat, a small, formal gesture that did nothing to hide the warmth in his eyes.
He did not speak; the pane between them made his mouth a meaningless movement.
Still, she fancied she could hear him.
*Eight days,* his look seemed to say. *Stay alive.*
She nodded.
Then drew the curtains.
Sleep did not come quickly.
When it did, it brought no nightmares of rivers or ropes.
Instead, she dreamed of doors.
Some open. Some closed.
And of a key, warm against her skin, that seemed, in the dream, to weigh as much as the world.
---