Page 66 of An Honorable Deception
Why? Why hadn’t Mother liked him? Because he mucked stalls so that the stable-boys he called friends would havetime to play with him? Because he soaked up the lessons the Caesars had to teach? Because he’d never been constrained by what people told him he should or shouldn’t want?
Realization hit like a punch to her gut. “She didn’t like him because he wouldn’t be controlled. He never cared what anyone thought. She couldn’t use him—and worse, he was unpredictable. He didn’t follow conventions.”
Zelda’s grin made crow’s feet fan out from her eyes. “And you wanted her approval—because we always want the approval of those who refuse to give it.” She released Lavinia’s hand, but only so that she could rub a hand over her back. “You ruined nothing, sweet girl. You only needed time to grow up. To become who God in His goodness wanted you to be—rather than whoshedid. Who anyone else did. And now here you are.”
“Here I am.” Broken and disillusioned and jaded. No wonder Yates had run the other way. Her eyes fell shut. “He doesn’t want me.”
Zelda only chuckled low in her throat.
Lavinia forced a swallow. “Alethia will make him happy. She deserves the love he can give her. And she fits so well here. With you.”
Zelda hummed, gave her back one more pat, and stood. “Strange, yes? How something can be so true ... and yet not be real?”
Lavinia frowned. “Haven’t you seen them together? It’s real.”
“Is it? Or does he want it to be because it isn’t so big a risk to his heart?” Zelda shrugged, picked up the cup and saucer, and handed them to Lavinia. “Go outside for a while, sweet one. Soak up a bit of sunshine. Be reminded of how the God who created such an intricate world is at work here and now too.” She lifted a challenging brow. “Talk to your friends.”
She took the cup. She might even seek out a few minutes of sunshine after her tea. But she didn’t know, anymore, what to say to her friends.
Zelda let herself out, and Lavinia did her best to push the conversation from her mind and think about the information Barclay had sent instead as she sipped at her tea.
It hadn’t been completely disastrous that Yates had first had Barclay following Lord Barremore more closely, rather than Lord Babcock. They’d had Babcock starred anyway, since he was listed as a founding member of the board, and even noted in that initial article as one of the three men who’d devised the idea. They simply hadn’t realized he was Jane Barremore’s brother. Thathewas the one who had grabbed Samira when he saw her in Hackney—not knowing, it seemed, that Mrs. Rheams had seen him do so.
Did he even realize that she’d confronted her husband about it? That it was why she was “randomly mugged” while he was away? Had it been his suggestion or Mr. Rheams’s? And then poor Saanvi ... another victim punished for what she’d seen. Marked for removal from the Ayahs’ Home because she’d seen him force Samira into his automobile too.
Lavinia’s fault. Her failure. All her work in the files, drawing out and writing down connections, and she’d missed that one.
So obvious in retrospect.
But they’d pieced it together. Barclay’s crew had picked up the trails of both Barremore and Babcock within hours and had been watching them closely ever since. The problem was that the two had extensive holdings throughout Town—throughout England. They visited all the locations frequently, but not in any given order. That’s where Barremore had gone off to the morning they told his wife what he was involved in. A property in Herefordshire. Then one inOxford. And those two were barely scratching the surface of what he owned. Then add in the equally long list of places Babcock owned...
Samira could be at any one of them if the men were working together, as Lady Barremore assumed. The businesses could be fronts. The houses could be branch locations of the Empire House. The buildings of flats could be clever ways to get around the legal definition of a brothel, with no two women sharing a living space. Or they could be exactly what they appeared, and they could bring harm to innocents if they interfered.
Zelda was right, though—Lavinia had spent too many hours poring over the files. A headache was starting behind her eyes, and the tightness of her neck wasn’t helping. She finished the tea, palmed the cake, and turned toward the opposite side of the house from the football match.
September had always been one of her favorite months, a month of apples and leaves beginning to turn to brilliant reds and oranges and yellows. She breathed in as she stepped outside, tilting her face to receive the sunshine. Papa would be home soon. He’d sent a wire yesterday saying he expected to wrap up his London business in the next week or ten days. It would be good to see him. She missed him.
And yet ... even the thought of her father made her chest feel heavy and tight. She’d stayed the second two nights in London at home with him, and instead of it feeling like he was happy to see her, it had felt as though she were causing him new anxiety. He’d looked almost disappointed when she’d stepped into his study, his “You’re supposed to be with the Fairfaxes” ringing like an accusation in her ears.
He loved her. She knew he loved her. She also knew he worried about her, about how hard Mother’s deception had struck her. But only when he frowned at her unexpected appearancedid she realize that the worry had eclipsed everything else again, that she’d become a burden once more. That he saw her reappearance not as a pleasant surprise, but as a sign that something was wrong, something he didn’t know how to fix. First the illness, now this. Always there was something to put shadows under his eyes when he looked at her.
Even with the house between them, she could hear the shouts of laughter from the pitch. Lavinia sank to a seat on a bench in the courtyard. Last year, she had been part of the laughter. This year, it was Alethia.
Fitting. Right. Alethia needed the laughter. Yates needed that gentle spirit she exuded. Marigold needed to know that the woman her brother chose wouldn’t turn around and stomp on his heart.
Sitting wasn’t going to suffice. She stood again, pacing around the edge of the sand beneath the trapeze, rubbing at her sore muscle. It didn’t hurt as it had that morning, so it must not betooserious. She tried not to think about what she was missing out on, how she felt she had to watch the trapeze practice from her window, unseen, rather than out on the balcony. About how she wished that Zelda was right, and he loved her still.
Her mind went back to the list of properties. Other members of the board had plenty of such things too—it was nothing unusual, really. The aristocracy owned a huge percentage of the land and buildings in England. Her own father had extensive holdings, in and out of Northumberland.
Even with Barclay, his family, his crew, and his friends looking into everything they could, it was still too big a haystack for the one needle they needed to find.
Samira. Before they brought down the Empire House, they needed to find Samira. Otherwise, they might never find her.She could be one more face that vanished from the streets and never resurfaced.
She couldn’t be. Not on Lavinia’s first case. Not when she dared to claim as a friend the young woman who had come to them for help.
Wind gusted, drawing her gaze to the leaves—most still green, but the impatient sentinels near the gates were already decked out in their autumn finery, and their color soothed a jagged edge of her soul. From the stables, Franco whistled, and seconds later, the standoffish peacocks and their hens strutted and fluttered his way, eager for the feed he’d scatter.
She stopped. Blinked.
