stretched over the entire city. No, the entire country. The weather was worse day by day, growing colder and hazier and wetter and darker.
She would not be here at all, except that it was the waning weeks of the House of Lords, making it her last opportunity to intercept the Duke of Faircliffe and beg for the return of the Wynchester family portrait.
Chloe would not be allowed to enter the sickroom triumphant to show Bean their painting had returned, but she would be the one who brought the heirloom back home.
Parliament ended anywhere between midnight and the wee hours of the morning. Chloe had been standing here, beneath a sodden umbrella, since eleven o’clock. The carriage was at the corner, with the driver asleep inside. She could have waited there, out of the rain, but she didn’t want to miss her chance to speak to Faircliffe.
Bean needed their painting to come home where it belonged. If they could hang it in his sickroom, it would give him strength. His beloved sprites would be there on his wall, even if they were barred from his chamber in person. If it was the closest Chloe could come, then she was determined Bean would have it.
The doors swung open and clumps of expensively tailored lords spilled out of the palace.
She waited in the shadows until she saw Faircliffe.
He walked alone.
This was her moment.
She rushed forward. “Your Grace! My apologies for the other day at Rotten Row. If you could give me just one moment of your time, my family will very much make it worth your—”
He stepped around her and continued walking.
Her mouth fell open.
Of all the—
“Who was that chit?” she heard another lord ask him.
“What?” the duke replied blankly. “Where?”
That arse!
He climbed into his waiting carriage without bothering to look behind him.
Chloe closed her jaw with an audible click and tried to ignore the heat pricking at the back of her eyes.
She’d been right in front of him. Talking to the blackguard. He’d had to physically move aside in order to brush past her and continue on.
And she had still left no memory of her presence behind.
Chloe hugged herself, fists clenched, as she trudged back to her waiting carriage.
“I cannot believe I thought delivering your vase would ruin my anonymity,” she muttered under her breath. “I could break it on your head, and you wouldn’t notice.”
She recognized the irony. Being wholly unremarkable was a skill she’d cultivated for decades. Invisibility gave her power.
Yet lately, all she felt was powerless.
After spending another fruitless day trying and failing to sneak into Miss Spranklin’s office with the headmistress unawares, the next evening Chloe met her siblings in the corridor leading to the empty wing with Bean’s sickroom.
The doctor was inside.
“Did you—” Elizabeth began.
Chloe shook her head. “I’ll try again tomorrow.”
“You don’t have to,” Jacob said. “Tell Miss Spranklin you need a few days, and you’ll return when Bean is better.”
“I do have to.” Chloe’s words came out wooden and hollow. “I’m not like you. I can’t visit Bean and read to him from his sickroom. Stopping Miss Spranklin is the only thing I can do.”
“But you’re not,” Marjorie said.
“I’m trying to!” Chloe burst out, her voice shaking. “You have no idea what it’s like to have two dozen frightened little girls clinging to your limbs whilst trying to dodge a headmistress whose favorite activities are ‘looming over one’s shoulder’ and ‘popping up out of nowhere’ and making me—”
“That is what Marjorie means,” Jacob said gently. “It’s an impossible task under the best of circumstances, and that is not where we find ourselves. ‘Chloe in top form’ can do anything, but ‘Chloe worried sick about Bean’ will not be able to concentrate properly. You can’t help the girls in this condition.”
“I can’t help Bean either,” Chloe said wretchedly. “I make it as far as the office door and I’m stopped. I place myself in front of Faircliffe, and I’m brushed aside. Even if it’s hopeless, shouldn’t I keep trying?”
“Not if it makes you sick, too.” Elizabeth leaned on her sword stick. “You’ll be of no help to anyone. You’re driving yourself mad, Chloe. When is the last time you slept? You spend all night copying papers, then long hours standing in the rain outside of Westminster. You look terrible. If you keep this up, you’ll be in a sickbed of your own. Do you think that’s what Bean wants?”
Chloe looked into the faces of one concerned sibling after another, then slumped her shoulders against the wall.