Daniel Ferris had long since accepted that he was the sort of man at whom fortune liked to laugh.
Not with him. *At* him.
He sat in the back room of the Blue Fig—a coffee-house that had notions above its station and linens below it—staring at the cards laid out before him, and listened to the universe chuckle.
“Bad luck, Ferris,” drawled a gentleman opposite, as if Daniel had not noticed.
“Is it?” Daniel asked mildly. “I thought it was your superior skill.”
The man, one Mr. Armitage of no particular distinction save a loud waistcoat, smirked. “That as well.”
Daniel laid his cards down, one by one, as if each were a piece of his pride. They were very poor cards indeed. “I fold,” he said.
“That makes three hands in a row,” Armitage remarked. “You’re off your game.”
“Perhaps my game is off *me,*” Daniel said. “We’ve never got on.”
Laughter rippled around the table. A few other men—clerks, younger sons, the sort of gentlemen who frequented establishments like the Blue Fig rather than the more fashionable clubs—shuffled their own coins uneasily. No one liked to be seated next to a man visibly losing.
Daniel’s gaze dropped to the meagre pile of coins left at his elbow. Even if he won the next hand, they would not stretch to what he owed his landlord.
Again.
“You’re bold to keep playing,” Armitage observed, dealing with ostentatious flicks of his wrist. “Doesn’t your brother keep you in comfort at that grand place in Sussex?”
“My brother,” Daniel said, picking up his new cards and fanning them with one hand, “keeps me in sermons and advice. Comfort I must contrive on my own.”
Armitage snorted. “You should ask him for a living. You’d look well in a pulpit. All the ladies would flock to hear your sins confessed.”
“I’d have to acquire some first,” Daniel said. “I’m remarkably well-behaved.”
More laughter. It floated around him, mixing with the bitter scent of coffee and the faint, sour tinge of spilled gin. There was always gin, even in coffee-houses. Men liked to take the sting off their losses with something sharper than Arabica.
His cards were no better than before.
With a sigh, he tossed in another small coin—more for the illusion of sport than any real hope of winning—and let his eyes drift to the window. Outside, the sky hung low and grey over London. Carts rumbled by, sending up spatter. A flower-seller trudged past, basket drooping, her voice a thin thread: “Violets! Fine violets!”
“Ferris.”
He looked up. The man addressing him was not at the table, but just beyond it: a tall, bony fellow in a well-worn coat, his hat clutched in nervous fingers.
“Mr. Ferris?”
Daniel considered pretending not to hear. Men who approached him in this fashion rarely brought good news. But the fellow’s face was familiar in some dim fashion. And there was something in the way he said Daniel’s name—reluctant, as if he would rather be anywhere else—that piqued Daniel’s perverse curiosity.
“Here,” Daniel said, rising. “Excuse me, gentlemen. It seems my sins have found me even without a pulpit.” He scooped up the last of his coins, slipped them into his pocket. “We’ll continue my education in ruin another time.”
“Running away?” Armitage called.
“Retreating strategically,” Daniel corrected, and followed the stranger toward the darker end of the room.
The man cleared his throat. “I’m sorry to disturb your…er…amusements, Mr. Ferris. My name is Cobb.”
“Ah,” Daniel said. “Mr. Cobb of Poplar Lane. You used to hand me sweets when I was small and tried to sneak into your shop without paying for them.”
A startled smile cracked the man’s anxious expression. “Aye, sir. And you paid me back by releasing a mouse in Mrs. Cobb’s petticoats.”
“I was six,” Daniel said. “My principles have improved since then.”
Cobb’s eyes dropped to Daniel’s hands. “You still play cards, though.”
“Alas, yes.” Daniel tucked them ostentatiously into his pockets. “What brings you? Have you forgiven the mouse and come to invite me to tea?”
Cobb shifted. “I come…on behalf of…of a lady, sir.”
Daniel’s brows rose. “I’m listening.”
“Mr. Gilbert Godwin of Sussex told me as how you used to know his brother,” Cobb said, stumbling over the words. “Mr. Thomas Godwin.”
A stone settled into Daniel’s gut. “I did.”
“Then he thought,” Cobb went on, “you should know that Mrs. Godwin—the widow, that is—is coming to London.”
Daniel inhaled, slow. “Is she.”
“Aye, sir.” Cobb twisted his hat. “She means to find Mr. Pell.”
The stone in Daniel’s gut dropped lower. “Mr. Lysander Pell,” he said, though it was not a question.
“That’s him.”
“Does Mrs. Godwin know,” Daniel asked carefully, “what sort of company Mr. Pell has been keeping these past months?”
Cobb’s eyes darted about as if the question itself were dangerous. “I—I don’t know all of it. Only what passes along the docks. They say as how he took a deal from certain men what like their profits fast and their questions few.”
Daniel suppressed a bitter laugh. “That sounds like Pell.”
“They say as how he’s in with a man called Caine now,” Cobb added, almost in a whisper. “Maybe not directly, but—”
“Caine?” Daniel’s hand tightened around the back of a chair. “Bloody hell.”
The name was enough to make a colder man than Daniel Ferris consider a strategic retreat—not from the coffee-house, but from London itself. Caine was not a man so much as a shadow with teeth. People in Daniel’s circles spoke of him rarely and in low voices. Smuggling, extortion, cold bales of cloth that had been meant for noble ladies and ended up lining the pockets of cutthroats.
And now, it seemed, Lysander Pell as well.
“Beggin’ your pardon, sir,” Cobb said nervously.
Daniel released the chair. “You did right to tell me. Does Mrs. Godwin know any of this?”
“I don’t think so, sir. Mr. Gilbert wrote to me, like I said, and I went to that Mr. Ellison—the solicitor, you know—to ask what could be done. Mr. Ellison said as how you were in town and as how you might…might…help,” Cobb finished, as if the word itself was a delicate object that might shatter.
Daniel huffed. “Ellison is an optimist.”
Cobb wet his lips. “He said you knew the business. The…ships. The accounts.”
“I do,” Daniel said. To his everlasting regret. “I was the one who introduced Godwin to Pell.”
Cobb’s gaze softened with awkward sympathy. “Oh.”
Yes. *Oh.*
Daniel remembered Thomas Godwin vividly. A large man with an easy laugh and fingers perpetually ink-stained from his accounts, his hair always sticking up as if numbers had electrified it. He had had a knack for making anyone in his orbit feel as though they were part of some grand adventure. Trade with foreign ports; new routes; new partnerships.
He had taken Daniel, an aimless second son with no desire to crawl into a pulpit or marry an heiress with money and resentment in equal measure, and given him something resembling purpose.
“You see, Ferris,” Thomas had said once, slapping a ledger with broad hands, “these are not mere figures. They’re stories. Every line is a family’s bread, every column a ship’s voyage. We shepherd them. We are stewards.”
He had said it with a grin, but he had meant it.
Daniel had believed him.
He had believed Pell, too, when the man had strolled into their modest little office off Wapping High Street with his fine waistcoats and his soft, persuasive voice, painting pictures of warehouses and consignments that doubled themselves like loaves and fishes.
“Your Mr. Pell,” Daniel said now, making the pronoun deliberate, “is a charming viper. Does Mrs. Godwin understand that, I wonder?”
“She understands that he’s got all her money,” Cobb said bluntly. “And that Mr. Godwin died owing more than he left. She’s stubborn, too, so they say. Mr. Gilbert thought as how she might…get herself into trouble. With questions.”
“Women who ask questions,” Daniel murmured, “do tend to make men nervous.”
“I…I don’t like to think of a lady—of—of Mrs. Godwin—asking them sorts of people anything,” Cobb blurted. “I saw her once, you know. Down at the docks with Mr. Godwin. She smiled at Mrs. Cobb like she were no better than us—which is to say, decent polite. She’s a proper lady. She shouldn’t be walking where Caine’s men have their boots.”
Daniel pinched the bridge of his nose. He could, he supposed, mind his own business. He owed nothing to Mrs. Godwin. He had never met her. He had not even attended the funeral; by the time he heard the news, his last shilling had gone to his landlady in exchange for another week’s bed and a very watery stew. He had written a letter of condolence and then crumpled it, reading back over his own polite emptiness with disgust.
He owed Thomas, though.
And guilt was a great motivator.
“When is Mrs. Godwin expected?” he asked.
“Tomorrow afternoon,” Cobb said. “She’s to stay with a Mrs. Willoughby in Hanover Square. Only for a fortnight.”
Hanover Square. That placed her squarely in the world of polished tables and polished tongues. Not the docks. Not the warehouses. She would need to cross an invisible but very real river to get from one to the other.
“Thank you,” Daniel said. “You’ve done what you can. Tell Ellison I received his…message. I will look into Pell. And Caine.”
Cobb’s eyes widened. “You’ll…you’ll go yourself?”
“Who else should I send?” Daniel asked dryly. “My butler? My brother’s gamekeeper?”
“I just thought…” Cobb squinted. “Beggin’ your pardon, sir, but I thought you were…that you had…business. Clubs. Cards. That sort of thing.”
“Alas,” Daniel said, “my vices have left me a little short on virtue. It will do me good to indulge in at least one honorable act this year. Who knows? It might even prove…profitable.”
That last word, he knew, would be the more persuasive to Cobb and Ellison both. Charity was an indulgence men like Daniel could not afford. But a venture—one that might, in some convoluted fashion, recover something of Godwin’s vanished fortune—*that* could be justified.
“Tell Mr. Gilbert,” Daniel added, “that I will do what I can to keep his sister-in-law from being eaten alive.”
Cobb let out a breath like a man surfacing from deep water. “Thank you, sir. Mrs. Godwin don’t know about me coming, mind. So maybe don’t mention it.”
Daniel’s mouth curved. “I shall try not to start our acquaintance by betraying your confidence, Mr. Cobb.”
Cobb flushed, ducked his head, and made his escape back into the noisy warmth of the coffee-room.
Daniel stood where he was for a long moment, listening to the clatter of cups, the murmur of conversation, the shuffle of cards.
“What are you doing, Ferris?” he murmured to himself.
He had sworn, after the last debacle with Pell, that he would not involve himself in Thomas Godwin’s affairs again. The partnership had ended in confusion and anger. Godwin had taken Pell’s side on an ill-advised investment; Daniel had argued against it. Harsh words. Harsh silence. Then illness. Then death.
No reconciliation. No explanation.
The neat resolution of “a man taken by a chest ailment” had never sat right with Daniel. Nor had the abrupt collapse of the accounts. Too much coincidence; too few answers.
He had consoled himself with the thought that it was no longer his concern.
Now a widow he had never met was coming to London with fire in her eyes, if Cobb’s awkward admiration was any indication, and Daniel’s name had been dragged back into the story like a footnote he thought he had burned.
He reached for his pocket, feeling the remaining coins there. Not enough for comfort. Barely enough for dinner.
He smiled without humor.
“Well then,” he said to the empty corner. “If I am to starve, I may as well starve doing something inconveniently decent.”
***
The first place he went was not the docks, as a man with sense might have. It was instead a counting-house off Bishopsgate, where a brass plate bearing the name *Harcourt & Sons* gleamed faintly beneath the grime of the city.
Inside, the air smelled of ink and the peculiar tension that comes from too many men sitting too close together with too many numbers between them.
A clerk looked up, his quill pausing in mid-scratch. “Yes, sir?”
“I’m here to see Mr. Harcourt,” Daniel said. “Tell him Daniel Ferris has a question about the *Anthea*.”
The clerk blinked. “The *Anthea*?” He looked like a rabbit, startled and inclined to bolt.
“Yes,” Daniel confirmed. “She was docked at Blackwall three months ago. She was also carrying, if my memory serves, a consignment of cotton belonging to a…ah…Mr. Lysander Pell.”
The clerk swallowed. Ink blotted his page. “Mr. Harcourt is very busy, sir.”
“He will be less so,” Daniel said pleasantly, “when he hears that someone remembers his bargain with Pell.”
The clerk hesitated, then fled through a door at the back.
Daniel strolled around the outer office while he waited, scanning the shelves of ledgers. Neat. Too neat. Trade was not neat. It was messy; it oozed delays and compromises. When a man’s shelves looked like a catalogue of saintly deeds, he was either extraordinarily efficient or extraordinarily good at hiding things.
Harcourt, Daniel knew, was a shrewd bastard. Efficient and deceptive both.
“Ferris.”
He turned. Mr. Harcourt filled the doorway with the sort of bulk that came from sitting more than moving and eating well while others went hungry. His hair, once black, was now mostly grey, but his eyes were as sharp as backed knives.
“To what do I owe this…unexpected pleasure?” Harcourt asked. His gaze flicked briefly to Daniel’s coat, taking in the wear at the cuffs, the careful mending at one elbow. “You aren’t here to invest, I take it.”
“I’ve invested enough in poor decisions this year,” Daniel said. “I’m here about Pell.”
Harcourt’s expression did not change, but something in the room seemed to tighten, like a rope drawn on a windlass.
“Pell,” he repeated. “I do not care for that name under my roof.”
“And yet you did business with him,” Daniel said. “The *Anthea*, three months ago.”
Harcourt’s mouth narrowed. “You always were too inquisitive for your own good.”
“I take that as a compliment.” Daniel leaned against a desk as if the conversation bored him. “I am told Pell has struck up an acquaintance with a man called Caine.”
“I am not in the habit of discussing my associates,” Harcourt said stiffly.
“Good,” Daniel said. “Neither am I. Otherwise I would mention to anyone who asked that I once saw Caine coming out of your warehouse in Limehouse, looking very satisfied indeed.”
Harcourt’s gaze iced over. “Careful, Ferris.”
“Always,” Daniel said lightly.
They stared at each other across the ink-stained desks, two men who had once been on relatively cordial terms and now found themselves on opposite sides of an invisible line.
At last, Harcourt sighed, as though the effort of pretending he was not involved in anything unsavory had exhausted him.
“What do you want?”
“Information,” Daniel said. “Where is Pell keeping himself these days? What does he fear? Who does he owe?”
“You think I know.”
“You always know,” Daniel said. “If a ship leaves port with a suspiciously light cargo, you know. If a man suddenly starts tossing gold in a dockside tavern, you know. I would wager my last coin on it.”
“Happily, you don’t have a last coin to wager,” Harcourt said dryly.
Daniel smiled. “You wound me.”
Harcourt hesitated, then moved toward the door, closing it with a soft but decisive click. The clerk looked up nervously and then, at a gesture from Harcourt, bent his head studiously over his book again.
“Pell,” Harcourt said quietly, returning to stand opposite Daniel. “Is a fool who thinks himself clever. He came to me, as you know, with an offer to divert certain consignments. Cloth. Sugar. Rum. He had a client with ready money and a disregard for tariff law.”
“Caine,” Daniel said.
“I do not name names,” Harcourt said. “Especially not those. In any case, Pell overreached. He promised more than he could deliver. Men like that…do not forgive.”
“So Pell is in debt,” Daniel said. “To men who like their interest collected in blood.”
“Yes.” Harcourt’s gaze sharpened. “Why are you interested, Ferris? Have you forgiven him his betrayal?”
“No,” Daniel said flatly. “But Thomas Godwin’s widow is coming to London to demand an explanation for her husband’s ruin. If Pell is as desperate as you suggest, he may see her as an opportunity.”
Harcourt’s brows rose. “You think he would take money from a widow?”
“I think he would take money from a dying priest,” Daniel said. “If the man had a coin in his hand. But that is not what I fear most.”
“Oh?”
“I fear he will see in Mrs. Godwin a shield,” Daniel said. “If she is sniffing around his affairs, asking pointed questions…men like Caine may take an interest. They may think she knows more than she does. They may try to teach her a lesson.”
Harcourt’s mouth flattened. For all his sins—and Daniel was sure there were many—Harcourt was no friend to the sort of men who liked to leave bodies in the river as messages.
“I did not know Godwin had a widow,” Harcourt said, surprising himself, perhaps, with the admission. “He spoke of his wife often. Fondly. I assumed…”
“That she died with him?” Daniel said. “No. She sounds very much alive. And very determined.”
Harcourt grunted. “God help us all.”
“Unlikely,” Daniel said. “But perhaps you might do instead.”
Harcourt’s eyes narrowed. “You ask too much.”
“I ask for a direction,” Daniel said. “Harcourt—if Pell falls, he may tear others down with him. If you have any interest in preserving your own skin, you will want to know which way he will run when he bolts. A woman of quality marching down Wapping High Street demanding answers…that will not go unnoticed.”
“Where is she staying?” Harcourt asked at once.
“Hanover Square. With a Mrs. Willoughby.”
Harcourt swore, a soft, vicious word. “Of course. The ton. Socialites and gossipmongers. Pell will hear of her within a day.”
“So will Caine, if Pell has cause to complain about a nosy widow.” Daniel spread his hands. “I cannot protect Mrs. Godwin from either of them if I do not know where they drink, where they gamble, where they meet.”
“You?” Harcourt said skeptically. “Protect her?”
“I am capable of more than losing at cards,” Daniel said, just a shade too evenly. “I know these streets. These men. Their habits. You know their ledgers. Between us, we might manage something resembling foresight.”
Harcourt stared at him a long moment. Then, grudgingly, he said, “Pell has been seen at the Albany of late. He lodges there with some relation by marriage. A cousin. He thinks he is safe because he can walk from a polished corridor into a polished carriage and never smell the river. He forgets,” Harcourt added, “that the river flows beneath all of us, one way or another.”
“The Albany,” Daniel repeated. “Of course he would. Nothing like a set of chambers with discreet servants to make a scoundrel feel respectable.”
“And at night,” Harcourt added, “he goes to a place called the Mariner’s Rest. A tavern near the docks. Not one of mine,” he added quickly, as if Daniel might be taking notes for the Crown. “You’ll know it by the painted sign. A mermaid with very little tail.”
“How charming,” Daniel said. “And Caine?”
“Caine does not drink in public,” Harcourt said. “He does not gamble in public. He barely *exists* in public. If you wish to find him, you do not. You stand in one place and wait until he finds you, and then it is too late.”
“Thank you for the cheery image,” Daniel said. “Still, if Pell is dancing on a rope, the man holding the other end may tug harder once he sees someone watching. We must keep Mrs. Godwin far away from that rope.”
“And yet she is the one climbing it,” Harcourt said.
“Yes.” Daniel sighed. “I shall have to catch her when she falls.”
Harcourt studied him. “You are not her relation. Not her guardian. Why risk your neck?”
Daniel considered lying. It would be easy to say something glib about boredom, about curiosity. But some stubborn scrap of honesty he had not yet lost refused.
“Because I owe Thomas Godwin,” he said. “I owe him a better ending than this.”
Harcourt’s gaze flickered. For a moment, something like respect crossed his features.
“Godwin was a fool,” he said softly. “But a…good-hearted one.”
“Yes,” Daniel said. “And I am a cynical bastard. That does not mean I do not feel the weight of what my introduction to Pell cost him.”
Harcourt grunted, as if flushing out an unwelcome emotion. “Very well. Go to the Albany. Knock on Pell’s polished door. See what you can read in his polished face.” His eyes narrowed again. “But if you bring Caine sniffing to *my* door…”
“I would not be so impolite,” Daniel said.
Harcourt snorted, turned away. “Get out of my office, Ferris. Some of us have respectable work to do.”
Daniel inclined his head as if he had been invited to a ball. “Always a pleasure, Harcourt.”
As he stepped out into Bishopsgate again, the sky had sunk lower, pressing upon the city. Rain threatened. The sort of rain that turned the Thames into a sullen, swollen thing.
He drew his coat tighter around him.
Tomorrow, a stubborn widow would arrive in London, trailing black silk and questions.
Tonight, he would pay a visit to the Albany.
***
The Albany’s courtyard was a different world from Bishopsgate. Quiet. Ordered. Carriages waited with polished wheels and patient horses; bowing servants moved like discreet shadows. The air smelled less of coal smoke and more of expensive soap.
Daniel drew a few curious glances as he crossed the yard—his coat, though brushed and mended, marked him as a man who haunted middling places. The Albany liked its men smooth, its boots new, its coats cut in Bond Street.
He squared his shoulders and mounted the stone steps as if he owned the building.
At the porter’s lodge, a clerk looked up, expression politely blank. “Yes, sir?”
“Mr. Lysander Pell,” Daniel said. “Tell him Mr. Daniel Ferris wishes to speak with him.”
The clerk’s brows twitched, just slightly. “Mr. Pell is not at home.”
“Then you will not mind if I wait,” Daniel said pleasantly, stepping past. “I promise not to steal the silver.”
“Sir—”
Daniel ignored him. Somewhere down the corridor, boots clicked. A door opened, voices murmured. He selected a chair in an antechamber where he could see both the main entrance and one of the inner staircases, then settled himself like a man with all the time in the world.
He did not, in fact, have all the time in the world. His landlord expected his rent by the end of the week. His stomach expected dinner by the end of the hour. But patience was a poor man’s weapon, and he had learned to wield it.
He waited.
After only twenty minutes—better than he’d expected—the door at the far end opened and Lysander Pell stepped in, shrugging off an expensive-looking greatcoat as he spoke to a man beside him.
“—tell Caine I won’t be bullied. He needs me as much as I need him. Godwin may be dead, but there are other men dying for profit in this town.”
The other man, short and wiry, murmured something Daniel could not catch. Pell laughed.
It was a pleasant sound. It always had been.
Daniel rose.
“Pell,” he said.
Lysander Pell stopped.
He had changed very little. The same medium height, the same neat brown hair, the same handsome, unremarkable features that allowed him to blend into any room until he chose to draw attention with that laugh, those eyes, that easy charm.
“Ferris,” he said, after a fractional pause. “I thought you’d drunk yourself into the river.”
“Alas, no,” Daniel said. “The river finds my company dull.”
Pell dismissed his companion with a flick of his fingers. The man hesitated, eyes darting between them, then disappeared down the corridor.
“To what do I owe the distinction?” Pell asked, drawing off his gloves one finger at a time. His gaze took in Daniel’s clothes, the set of his shoulders, the faint shadows beneath his eyes. “Looking a little…weathered, my friend.”
“I suspect I always looked this way to you,” Daniel said. “Men who believe in something tend to.”
Pell’s smile flashed, disarming as ever. “Still nursing that grudge? I’m wounded. What was it you called me, back when Godwin chose my proposal over your dreary caution? A goat in silk? No, no—”
“A fox in the henhouse,” Daniel supplied.
“Yes, that was it.” Pell chuckled. “And yet, for all your dire predictions, I’m still here, and your Mr. Godwin is not.”
The words hung for a moment, heavy and ugly.
Daniel’s jaw tightened. “Thomas Godwin was never *my* anything. He was his own man. A generous one. A trusting one. You used that.”
Pell’s expression cooled, just a little. “Is this a eulogy or a lecture, Ferris? I confess I’ve no appetite for either.”
“Then perhaps you’ll have an appetite for something else,” Daniel said. “Information. You might like to know that Mrs. Godwin is coming to town.”
Pell’s fingers stilled on his gloves.
“His widow?” he said, the words almost idle.
“Yes.”
“What of it?”
“She means to ask you some very pointed questions,” Daniel said. “About ledgers. About missing consignments. About why her husband died with nothing but debts and a good name to leave her, when his partner seems to be living very comfortably indeed.”
Pell’s eyes flicked around them, measuring the space, the distance to the door, the proximity of ears. He stepped closer to Daniel, lowering his voice.
“Careful what you imply, Ferris,” he said. “This is not Wapping. The walls here are thinner, even if the carpets are thicker.”
Daniel leaned in as well. “You and I both know what I imply. You stuffed your pockets while Godwin coughed his lungs out. You took consignments meant for his partnerships and diverted them for your own. And when the whole edifice collapsed, you walked away whistling.”
Pell’s hand twitched, as if he fought the urge to strike him. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t I?” Daniel murmured. “I’ve seen the bills of lading. Harcourt was surprisingly talkative.”
Rage flared, brief and hot, in Pell’s eyes. “That old bastard.”
“Indeed,” Daniel said. “The question is, what will you do when Mrs. Godwin begins sniffing around Harcourt’s again? Around the docks? Around your new friends?”
Pell’s lips thinned. “I will tell her the truth, of course. That I did my best to salvage a failing business. That her husband was too blind with pride to see that his ventures had soured, and that his own poor health prevented him from making the difficult decisions. Widows,” he added lightly, “are inclined to look for villains. They dislike the notion that their idol had feet of clay.”
“You’re a poet now,” Daniel said. “Do you expect her to swoon at your words? Or merely sign something you put in front of her without reading it thoroughly?”
Pell’s eyes sharpened. “If you think to play knight-errant to a grieving widow, Ferris, you are more foolish than I thought.”
“I think to prevent you from using her,” Daniel said. “You’ve done enough damage to that family.”
“Godwin made his own choices,” Pell snapped. “No one forced him to invest. No one forced him to borrow. He gambled. He lost. That is trade. That is life. You cannot spend your days weeping for every man who miscalculates.”
“No,” Daniel agreed softly. “Just the ones who trusted you.”
Pell smiled again suddenly, the anger vanishing as if it had never been. His face rearranged itself into something warm, amused, utterly plausible.
“You overestimate my power,” he said. “And Mrs. Godwin’s stupidity. Do you truly think a woman of her standing will go skulking around taverns, waving ledgers at dockworkers? She will go to tea. She will dab her eyes. She will perhaps do a little mild flirting with a man like you, enjoy the thrill of talking about money, and then she will retire to the country to grow roses on her husband’s grave.”
Daniel’s belly clenched at the image, vivid despite his best efforts.
“I think,” he said slowly, “you underestimate widowhood.”
Pell’s brows lifted. “Do I?”
“A woman whose life has been neatly arranged may be content to sit in a pretty parlor and pour tea,” Daniel went on. “A woman whose life has been upended, whose accounts have been emptied, whose security has been yanked away like a rug beneath her feet…that woman might be inclined to grip whatever is left. Including questions. Including anger.”
Pell regarded him. “You speak as if you’ve met the lady.”
“I haven’t,” Daniel said. “But Cobb has. And he says she smiles at shopkeepers.”
Pell’s mouth twitched. “Sainted creature.”
“Hardly,” Daniel said. “Saints do not go in search of villains. They pray for their souls from a safe distance. Mrs. Godwin, I suspect, prefers a more direct approach.”
Pell’s gaze slid past him, out toward the courtyard, as if he could already see the approaching storm of black silk.
“I appreciate your warning,” he said politely. “But you needn’t concern yourself. I am more than capable of handling an irate widow.”
“Are you,” Daniel said. “And what of Caine?”
Pell’s jaw flickered. Only once, but Daniel saw it.
“Caine,” Pell said lightly, “is very far from Hanover Square. Widows and dukes’ daughters do not cross his path. That is one comfort in this ugly city.”
“You hope,” Daniel said.
Pell stepped back. “If that is all, Ferris, I have engagements. Clients. Unlike you, I do not spend my days loitering in coffee-houses.”
“And yet you seem to know where I spend them,” Daniel observed.
Pell’s smile flashed. “I make it my business to know where everyone spends everything.”
“Money,” Daniel said. “Time. Trust.”
Pell’s eyes glinted. “Precisely.”
He turned away, tossing his gloves to a waiting servant with careless grace.
“Good evening, Ferris,” he said over his shoulder. “Do give Mrs. Godwin my regards when you see her. Tell her I look forward to making her acquaintance at last.”
Daniel watched him ascend the stairs, his step light, his back straight, his confidence apparently unshaken.
“He’s lying,” Daniel muttered to himself, though there was no one to hear. “He’s terrified.”
He should be.
Because when a desperate man like Pell met a determined woman like Mrs. Godwin, something was bound to catch fire.
Daniel just hoped it would not be everything.
---