Page 64 of Where the Heart Leads
Penelope looked around. “It’s a relief to know that Horry at least will be well protected—that we’ve done all we can, got every possible defense in place.”
She glanced at Barnaby as he guided her around the piles of crates, steadying her over the uneven cobbles as they headed for the yard’s entrance and the waiting hackney. “The Wills boys are trustworthy, don’t you think? They won’t…oh, go off on a drinking spree and forget about keeping watch over Mary?”
Barnaby shook his head. “Not a chance.”
“While I appreciate your certainty, how can you be so sure?”
“You heard them refer to her as ‘like a mum’ to them?”
“Ye-es. Oh, I see.”
“So I don’t think we need to worry about Mary or Horry.”
“You’ll get word to Stokes?”
“I’ll hunt him up immediately after I’ve seen you back to the house.”
The next morning, Penelope was working at her desk at the Foundling House, catching up with myriad details she’d let slide while she’d been searching for the missing boys, when, quite suddenly, a prickling sensation ran over her skin.
She looked up—and discovered her nemesis lounging against the archway frame, looking both impossibly elegant and undeniably dangerous.
Or so she saw him.
Pen poised above the list she’d been making, with hauteur befitting a duchess she raised both brows.
He smiled, not charmingly but intently, and amused with it, for all the world as if he could read the contradictory impulses careening through her.
She had absolutely no idea what she was to do with him, what to make of him and his apparent fixation on her. She was starting to realize that the “her” he saw wasn’t the same “her” the rest of her tonnish would-be suitors saw. Presumably that was the crux of her difficulty in dealing with him, but how to retreat to any formal distance—especially with the investigation constantly throwing them together—she had no clue.
All she understood, as she saw his lips quirk, then watched him push away from the archway and come prowling into the room, eventually to subside with his customary ineffable grace into the chair before her desk, was that she really needed to find a solution.
Keeping her expression as uninformative as she could, she stated, coolly, “Good morning. And what can we do for you?”
His untrustworthy smile deepened. “It’s more a matter of what I thought to do for you.”
“Oh?” Setting down her pen, she folded her hands before her. “And what might that be?”
“I’ve come to suggest that we circulate notices throughout the East End, with the names and descriptions of the five missing boys, and offering a reward for information on their whereabouts.”
Her reaction was immediate; there was no point trying to hide it. “That’s brilliant!” She beamed. Unable to contain her burgeoning enthusiasm, she asked, “How do we go about it?”
He smiled again, but the gesture wasn’t in any way threatening. “Simple. You give me a list of the names, with the best descriptions you can muster, and I’ll get the notices printed. I know a place that will do them overnight.”
A place that owed him no small favor, and would be happy to rebalance their account in however small a way.
Penelope was already pulling out a fresh sheet of paper. “Overnight? I thought there was usually a delay of days at least.”
When she glanced at him, he shrugged. “It won’t have all that much text, so won’t take long to set.”
She looked down at the sheet of paper, pen poised in her hand. “How should we word this?”
“List each name, with a description. Then at the bottom write…” He dictated the usual form of “Offer of a Reward.”
When he concluded with an instruction to contact Inspector Stokes at Scotland Yard, she paused, frowning. “Shouldn’t that be me, here, at the Foundling House?”
“No.” He was adamant about that, but couched his reply in a tone that suggested it was de rigueur to leave all contact to the police.
While Stokes would certainly prefer that, it was rarely done. However, the notion of a score of East Enders lining up to see Penelope and tell her all they knew—even if they knew nothing—wasn’t a scenario he had any wish to contemplate.
