The days before Good Friday flowed and fractured.
There were practicalities. Letters to Ellison. Messages to Cobb. Brief, taut conversations with Bess. Quiet visits to Lady Bennett, who, after reading the Gazette with destructive glee, promised to “sit on” a certain magistrate until he agreed to be at the wharf at the appointed time.
“She is very good at sitting on people,” Mrs. Willoughby remarked. “She once pinned a duke in my drawing room for an hour just by sitting *near* him.”
There were also, incongruously, balls.
London did not pause its social whirl for the sake of a few scandalous paragraphs. If anything, it spun faster, eager to see how the pieces would fall.
“You must go out,” Mrs. Willoughby decreed, riffling through gowns. “If you hide, they will think you have something to be ashamed of.”
“I do,” Mira said. “We are planning a raid on a warehouse. That feels vaguely shameful.”
“Not that,” Mrs. Willoughby said. “That is *admirable.* I mean the imaginary tumbling about with Ferris they have you doing. And your supposed affair with Pell. And the suggestion that you seduced Harcourt’s clerk by showing him your ankles.”
“If I could achieve that,” Mira said drily, “we would have solved half our problems already.”
Mrs. Willoughby chuckled. “Fair point. Wear the green silk tonight. The one with the sleeves that make your shoulders look like sin.”
Mira arched a brow. “You want me to encourage them.”
“I want you to control the story,” Mrs. Willoughby said. “If they are going to talk, give them something to talk *about* that distracts them from the way you listen in corners.”
The green silk hugged in different places than the blue. It made her eyes look darker, almost mossy. The neckline was not scandalous, but suggestive. The color whispered rather than shouted.
At Lord Renshaw’s ball—a glittering affair suffused with too many candles and not enough fresh air—Mira found herself the object of more attention than ever.
Gentlemen she barely knew lined up to ask her to dance, some with real curiosity, some with the ghoulish fascination of men who liked to see how far a widow would stray.
She refused more than she accepted.
She watched.
Lord Renshaw himself, in a coat of such deep purple it nearly swallowed the room, cornered her near a potted palm.
“Mrs. Godwin,” he drawled, faning himself with his own invitation card. “You are the talk of the town.”
“So I hear,” she said, taking a sip of watered wine.
He leaned in, uninvited. “If you grow tired of warehouses and second sons, I have a very respectable town house you may haunt. No crates. Very little dust.”
She smiled coolly. “How dull.”
He blinked. “Dull?”
“I have developed a taste for dust,” she said. “And for men who know what to do with crates.”
His mouth dropped open. “Mrs. Godwin—”
She moved away, leaving him sputtering.
Daniel, watching from across the room, shook with silent laughter.
“Stop enjoying this,” she mouthed at him.
He lifted his glass in salute.
Pell was there too, of course.
He cornered her later, in a corridor that led to the retiring rooms, his hand lightly spanning the doorway to block others’ passage—not enough to be scandalous, but enough to create a pocket.
“You are playing your part very well,” he said, eyes glinting.
“I have no part,” she said. “Only a purpose.”
He smiled. “You make everything so grave. Sometimes it is only…play.”
“Is it?” she asked. “Was Ned’s neck-breaking play?”
A shadow crossed his face. “No,” he said. “That was…clumsiness.”
“Clumsiness,” she repeated with contempt.
He shifted. “Have you been back to Turner’s?”
“Yes,” she said. “We watched your wagons.”
“Not my wagons,” he said. “Harcourt’s. I merely…observed.”
“Like Caine,” she said.
He chuckled. “Not quite. My knife is much duller.”
“Sharpen it on your own sins before you bring it near mine,” she said.
He winced. “You wound, Mrs. Godwin.”
“I aim to,” she said.
He hesitated, then lowered his voice further. “Good Friday. You truly mean to…?”
“Yes,” she said.
“You will need more than one magistrate,” he murmured. “Harcourt has friends. They will try to smooth it over. ‘Clerical error.’ ‘Miscommunication.’ His sort always do.”
“I have Lady Bennett,” she said. “She can cow a bench with a look.”
Pell’s lips twitched. “Yes. She once reduced a Member of Parliament to tears over supper.”
He sobered. “Be careful. Caine will be watching. If he senses you mean to topple more than he considers…savvy…he will step in.”
“On whose side?” she asked.
“His,” Pell said. “Always his. Never forget that.”
“Do you?” she asked.
“Very rarely,” he said. “It is why I am still breathing.”
“Barely,” she said.
He laughed.
“Do you ever tire of this mask?” she asked suddenly. “The charm. The jokes.”
He blinked. “It is not a mask.”
“Liar,” she said.
He stared at her for a heartbeat.
Then his smile faded, slowly.
“Sometimes,” he admitted quietly. “Yes.”
She regarded him.
“You could have been different,” she said. “Once.”
“Yes,” he said. “So could your husband. So could Ferris. So could I. So could *you.* We are all a hair’s breadth from some other self. Comfort yourself with that if you like. It doesn’t change where we stand.”
“No,” she said. “But it makes the ground less certain.”
He inclined his head. “Be ready on Friday, Mrs. Godwin.”
“I am always ready,” she said.
His gaze flicked over her green silk, his mouth twisting.
“I do not doubt it,” he murmured.
***
Later that night, back in her chamber, Mira lay awake, listening to the distant rumble of carriages.
Her body felt electric—buzzing with impressions, with people’s eyes, with Daniel’s amused glances across the room, with Pell’s reluctant honesty, with Lord Renshaw’s offended splutter.
The Gazette lay on her bedside table, folded back to Jillet’s latest contribution.
*RUMBLINGS ON THE RIVER: CERTAIN PILLARS ABOUT TO CRACK?*
He had done as promised: hints, names with dashes, phrases like *“a respected mercantile firm may find its ledgers under scrutiny by more than one eye”* and *“boys on the wharf do not fall without making a splash.”*
Harcourt would recognize himself.
Others might.
Whether it would accomplish anything beyond gossip remained to be seen.
Mira turned onto her side, staring at the faint gleam of moonlight on the dressing table.
Her thoughts slid, inevitably, to Friday.
To the warehouse door.
To Daniel.
She pictured him as he had looked that morning in the mews, sleeves rolled, hair wild, smoke clinging to his shirt. The way his hands had steadied hers around the pistol. The shape of his mouth when he’d said *not yet.*
Her body reacted, traitorous and hot.
You are in mourning, she reminded herself.
For a man you loved.
For a life you lost.
What, then, was this new hunger?
A betrayal?
Or a stubborn, defiant affirmation that she was still flesh, not stone?
She pressed her thighs together, the leather purse between them a too-conscious presence.
The key.
Always the key.
She swung her legs over the side of the bed and padded to the window, pulling the curtains apart a fraction.
The square lay quiet, silvered.
She did not expect to see him tonight.
He had walked her to the door, bowed properly, left with a joke about Renshaw’s coat being visible from the moon.
He needed rest as much as she did.
Still.
Her eyes traced the path he usually took, the patch of cobblestones he seemed to favor.
Empty.
She closed the curtains again.
Loneliness, she thought, was not always about being alone. It was about who you wanted there when you weren’t.
She climbed back into bed.
Sleep, when it came, brought not rivers, not warehouses, not guns.
It brought an absurd, vivid dream of Daniel trying to teach Lady Bennett to shoot while Mrs. Willoughby critiqued their stances and Caine leaned in a doorway, laughing.
She woke laughing.
Perhaps, she thought, that was something.
---