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Who had given him away?

He looked again for Nina. She’d drifted away from her corner, and he had an unobstructed view down a tunnel of giltwood chairs and sofas. A marmalade cat stirred from a nest of old lace on a sofa, sprang to the floor, and stalked to her, pushing at her skirts, insistent and familiar. She made an involuntary movement, a dip down to stroke the cat’s arched back, then froze. Her eyes brushed his as she straightened, but she couldn’t hold his gaze.

Alan removed his spectacles. He felt, suddenly, that he’d never seen her so clearly.

“Or don’t you want it?” asked Ladbrooke in a level tone.

“I want a word with Jack Reeve.” Alan swung around and gave him a frank stare. “I understand he works here.”

“Not anymore.” Ladbrooke picked a feather off his sleeve. “Rum cove. I’ll miss him. Went to New York. Or did he? Ruby!” He raised his voice. “Was it New York?”

“New York.” The young woman hopped down from the chair. Her thick coil of coppery hair looked heavier than the bronze upon which she rested her palm. “Definitely New York. If it wasn’t Dublin.”

“He’ll have taken his leave recently.” Alan’s eyes returned to Nina. Immediately after their conversation in the patisserie would be his guess.

She gave no sign she heard what they were saying. Perhaps she didn’t, standing there, halfway across the room. She picked up a shell and traced its spines with her finger. Was this her milieu? He’d thought her an unlikely maid when he’d met her. A clerk’s daughter was his supposition at the time.

A forger’s sister.

His spine tingled again. Pain began to saw around the ball of his hip. He needed to sit and think.

“He left me shorthanded,” said Ladbrooke with a shrug. “Feels like he’s been gone a century.”

Alan plucked at his side-whiskers, which he’d begun to cultivate the day he’d purchased his first pair of antique spectacles in a shop much like this one, in Oxford.

“Do you have a hand free for the razor?” he asked. “As it turns out, I’m a decade overdue for a shave. A penny, is it?”

Ladbrooke’s smile gleamed. “Sixpence.”

“Sixpence,” Alan repeated, and showed his own teeth.

“And a haircut,” he added. “While you’re at it.”

—

The instant Alan and Laddie disappeared behind the folding screen, Nina sidestepped a sofa, slipped behind the tapestry that concealed the door, and let herself into the narrow hallway. She shut the door behind her and stood, gripping her sides. She felt as though she were going to shake apart.

The door creaked open. Ruby flew to her, tugging her into a tight embrace. Mop circled around their skirts.

“Tell me he really left,” Nina managed. She’d written Jack with a warning, but, of course, he couldn’t send a reply. If he’d been too stiff-necked to listen . . . If he were still here, instead of in Hensthorpe . . .

“He went the other day.” Ruby stepped back. She grabbed Nina’s elbow and pulled her into the kitchen.

“I only have a moment.” Nina sagged against the sink. For years, this squalid little kitchen had been her refuge, the place she’d tried—and failed—to keep in order, while daydreaming about a kitchen all her own. It looked the same. But it offered nothing now, by way of peace or protection. She took a deep breath. Mop hopped up to the counter, drawing her eye to a pan of coffee. Jack’s, for tinting paper. Stupid. What else had he left behind? She seized the pan and dumped the liquid, jamming it lengthwise into the sink behind the crusted dishes.

“He emptied the studio?” She paced the kitchen, threw a lidded tin of charcoal in the dustbin, wiped out the mortar in which Jack had crushed rotted acorns for oak-gall ink.

Ruby nodded. “But I don’t think the coppers were his chief concern. Some rowdies came by, wanted their blunt. Laddie had to reason with them.”

Nina stopped pacing and pressed her middle, which was sick and quivery. She’d seen Laddie reason with plug-uglies before. “They won’t find him, not before he figures out where to go next.” She tried to smile at Ruby.

Ruby’s expression was fierce. “I’m worried for you.”

“Don’t be.” Nina shook herself. She needed to return to the Knack’s parlors and devote herself to her wifely shopping. “Alan doesn’t know I’ve anything to do with Jack.”

“Alan.” A line formed slowly between Ruby’s thin brows.

“De’Ath,” said Nina.