so..."
She held up her hand to silence him. "I know," she said quickly. She looked at the guard and permitted him to hold the door open for her. "Good-bye, Saville, at least for the moment." She went out without looking back. She heard the sound of steel on steel as the door closed and the heavy tumblers of the lock fell into place.
She was crossing the entrance on her way to the outside doors when she saw a discreetly clad dark-skinned man walk almost silently past her in the opposite direction, his eyes averted. He was holding a small, soft-sided bag in his hand. Presumably, this was Ayesha Zakhari's house servant, taking her clean linen and whatever else she required. He was so self-effacing as to have mastered the art of being almost invisible, and she would not have recognized him were she to see him again in different clothes. She was forcibly reminded that he belonged to a very different culture. Then she realized with a sense of amazement that she had not actually seen Ayesha Zakhari, as far as she could recall. Surely if she had met her anywhere, she would have remembered?
And yet she was the center of this storm which was going to destroy Ryerson, and possibly Stephen Garrick as well.
Vespasia went out into the street where her carriage was waiting, and allowed her footman to assist her up the step and to be seated comfortably, her mind still absorbed in thought.
GRACIE WAS ALONE in the house when she heard the knock on the scullery door. It was late on a wet and gusty night. Charlotte and Pitt were both out briefly to visit Charlotte's mother, whom they had not seen in some time.
The knock came again, urgent and persistent.
She picked up the rolling pin, then put it down and chose the carving knife instead. Keeping it hidden in the folds of her skirt, she tiptoed to the back door and opened it sharply.
Tellman stood on the step with his hand raised to knock again. He looked cold and worried.
"You should have asked who it was before you opened," he said immediately.
The criticism stung her. "You stop telling me wot ter do, Samuel Tellman!" she retorted. "You in't got no right. This is my 'ouse, not yours." She realized as soon as the words were out that her heart was pounding with suppressed fear, and she knew he was right. It would have been so simple to ask who it was, and she had not thought of it because she had been so preoccupied with thoughts about Martin Garvie, and people taken against their will and shut up in Bedlam, and the fact that they had not been able to solve the case of a man shot to death in a woman's garden at night. What was he there for? No good, skulking in the bushes.
Tellman came inside. He was pale and his face was drawn with lines of tension.
"Somebody's got to tell you what to do," he said, closing the door hard. "You haven't got the sense you were born with. What's that?"
She put the knife down on the kitchen table. "A carvin' knife. Wot does it look like?" she snapped back.
"It looks like something a burglar would take off you and hold to your throat," he replied. "If you were lucky."
"Is that wot yer came 'ere ter tell me?" she demanded, swinging around to face him. "It in't me 'as got no wits."
"Of course I didn't come to tell you that!" He stood near the table, his whole body too tight to sit down. "But you've got to act with more sense."
If anyone else had said that, she would have brushed it aside, but from him it stung unaccountably. He was at once too far and too close. She hated that it mattered so much because it confused her, it stirred up feelings over which she had no control, and she was not used to that.
"Don't you tell me off like I belonged to yer," she said, gulping back a surge of emotion, almost a loneliness, that threatened to swamp her.
He looked startled for a moment, then he frowned very slightly. "Don't you want to belong to anyone, Gracie?" he asked.
She was stunned. It was the last thing she had expected him to say, and she had no answer for it. No, that was not true, she did have an answer, but she was not ready to admit it to him yet. She needed