She blinked rapidly and turned her head away.
“I’d never presume to know what it was like back then, but I’m here for you now.” He lifted her hands in his, caressing the skin softly with the pads of his thumbs. “You’re not alone.”
She did not respond aloud but leaned back into his chest and allowed him to embrace her for the remainder of the journey.
When they arrived at the Wynchester home, the others were disappointed but unsurprised to learn a bigot like Leisterdale had raised a son like Uppington.
“I’ll run him through with a sword,” said Elizabeth.
“We’llgo,” Faircliffe said firmly, exchanging a glance with his wife.
“You’re his father’s political enemy,” Stephen reminded him. “Why would he speak to you?”
“Because I’m a duke,” Faircliffe replied.
Chloe handed her sleeping baby to Kuni and took Faircliffe’s hand. “We’ll intercept him as soon as he returns home and need no longer posture in front of his friends. We’ll return posthaste.”
Jacob wished he could take Vivian’s hand. Kiss her, hold her, comfort her. But what she really needed was the safe return of her cousin. And a modicum of respect from the world around them.
Graham rushed through the door moments after Chloe and Faircliffe had left.
“Do you have Lord S’s identity?” Vivian asked breathlessly.
He shook his head. “Newt doesn’t know it. The club has apparently been trying to identify lords who abuse their power to squelch protests ever since the Peterloo Massacre. ‘Lord S’ stands for ‘suffrage.’”
Marjorie handed him a tall stack of missives. “These were delivered while you were gone.”
Graham scanned their contents eagerly, then sighed. “The messenger you two saw doesn’t work for Leisterdale, nor matches anyone employed at any lord’s London residence.”
“Maybe he was in disguise,” said Tommy.
“Or not related at all,” said Philippa. “Not sending one of his own footmen to deliver the blackmail message doesn’t prove Leisterdale’s innocence. It does mean our enemy is clever enough not to leave a line of obvious clues leading back to his door.”
Adrian nodded. “Blackmailing Olivebury to vote a certain way, abducting ‘Horace Wynchester’ to keep us from investigating…”
“What do you think?” Tommy asked Vivian. “How would you write it?”
“You don’t want to know how I’d edit this ending,” she said darkly.
“Iwant to know,” said Elizabeth. “I adore the sight of our enemies’ blood.”
Vivian sighed. “I just want to see Quentin again. Alive.”
Jacob wished he could hug her. Or pull her cousin’s precise location out of a hat. The truth was, an unsettling percentage of their open cases at the moment were going exactly like this: nowhere.
Back when they used to only have one case at a time, justice was served swiftly. But with more fame came more clients, and with more clients came more conundrums: Taking on everyone’s problems meant having time for no one’s. But how could they turn any of their deserving clients away?
Vivian trudged in silence to the chair he’d come to think of as hers at the siblings’ worktable. She shoved aside her growing pile of unread Ask Vivian correspondence, and sharpened a fresh quill.
“Time to pen the bait?” he asked.
She nodded grimly. “A worm for a worm.”
Jacob wished he could help. A glance at his pocket watch indicated a bit of time remained before his next mission. He remembered he hadn’t yet put Vivian’s jumbled plays back in order. This was his chance to start.
At first, it was like matching up the pieces of a puzzle. He liked to begin with the edge pieces. If the last line of dialogue at the bottom of a page said “I wish to—” then he knew the first word on the following page ought to be a verb. I wish togo, I wish tounmask, I wish torescue.
Once all the verbs were matched, he moved on to the next likely phrases, then the next, until only the trickiest matches were left: pages that began or ended with a complete sentence, thus leaving no obvious clue as to their mate.
