parasite that he is. He knew it would cost many men their jobs, but he was prepared to pay with his own life.” He looked up at her again, brilliant, urgent. “Then at the last moment his nerve failed him. He was not the hero he wanted to be, wished to be. And yes … I did kill him. It was clean, swift, without pain or fear. Only for an instant did he know what I was going to do, then it was over. But I left the note in his own hand that said it was suicide, and the Prince’s note of debt. The police must have concealed them. I cannot understand how that happened. We had our own man in place, on duty, who should have seen to it that suicide was recognized and no innocent person blamed.” Confusion shadowed his face, and unhappiness for fear and wrong.
Vespasia could not look at him. “He tried,” she acknowledged. “He came too late. Someone else found Sissons first, and knowing what riot it would cause, destroyed the note. Only, you see, it could not have been suicide because James Sissons did not have the use of the first fingers of his right hand, and the night watchman knew it.” She met his eyes again now. “And I saw the note of debt. It was not the prince’s signature. It was an excellent forgery, designed for just the purpose you tried to use it.”
He started to speak, then stopped. Understanding slowly filled his face, and grief, and then anger. He did not need to protest that he had been deceived; she could not have doubted it from his eyes and his mouth, and the ache that filled him.
Her throat hurt with the effort of control. She loved him so fiercely it consumed all of her but a tiny, white core in the heart. If she were to yield now, to say it did not matter, that either of them could walk away from this, she would lose him—and even more, she would lose herself.
She blinked, her eyes smarting.
“I have something to undo,” he whispered. “Good-bye, Vespasia … I say good-bye, but I shall take you with me in my heart, wherever I go.” He lifted her hand to his lips. Then he turned and walked out of the room without looking back, leaving her to find her way when she was ready, when she could master herself and go back to the footman, the carriage and the world.
The whole story of Prince Eddy and Annie Crook remained in Gracie’s mind. She imagined the ordinary girl, not so very much better off than many Gracie herself might have passed on the streets of her own childhood—a little cleaner, a little better-spoken perhaps, but at heart expecting only a pedestrian life of work and marriage, and more work.
And then one day a shy, handsome young man had been introduced to her. She must have realized quickly that he was a gentleman, even if not that he was a prince. But he was also different from the others, isolated by his deafness and all that it had done to him over the years. They had found something in each other, perhaps a companionship neither had known elsewhere. They had fallen in love.
And it was impossible. Nothing they could have imagined could ever have touched the horror of what would happen after that.
She still could not entirely rid herself of the memory of standing in Mitre Square, seeing Remus’s face in the gaslight, and realizing who it was he was after. Her throat still tightened at the thought of it, even sitting in the warm kitchen in Keppel Street, drinking tea at four o’clock in the afternoon, and trying to think what vegetables to prepare for dinner tonight.
Daniel and Jemima were out with Emily again. She had spent a lot of time with them since Pitt left for Spitalfields. Emily had climbed greatly in Gracie’s estimation. Gracie had actually been considering her a trifle spoiled lately. Since she was Charlotte’s sister, it was nice to be mistaken.
She was still staring at the rows of blue-and-white plates on the dresser when a knock on the back door startled her into reality again.
It was Tellman. He came in and closed the door behind him. He looked anxious and tired. His shirt collar was as tight and neat as usual, but his hair had fallen forward as if he had not bothered with its customary, careful brushing, and he was about a week overdue for the barber.
She did not bother to ask him if he wanted a cup of tea. She went to the dresser, fetched a cup and poured it.
He sat down at the table opposite her and drank. There was no cake this time, so she did not mention it. She felt no need to break the silence.
“I’ve been thinking,” he said at last, watching her over the top of his cup.
“Yeah?” She knew he was worried; it was in every line of him, the way he sat, the grip of his hands on the cup, the edge to his voice. He would tell her what was bothering him if she did not probe or interrupt.
“You know this factory owner who was killed in Spitalfields, Sissons?”
“I ’eard. They said mebbe all ’is factories would close, then the Prince o’ Wales an’ Lord Randolph Churchill an’ some o’ ’is friends put up enough money ter keep ’em goin’ a few weeks anyway.”
“Yes. They’re saying it was a Jew who did it … killed him, because he’d borrowed money from a whole collection of them and couldn’t pay it back.”
She nodded. She knew nothing about that.
“Well, I reckon that was meant to happen about the same time as Remus was supposed to find the last pieces of the Whitechapel murderer story. Only they didn’t tell him yet, because the sugar factory thing went wrong.” He was still watching her, waiting to see what she thought.
She was confused. She was not sure it made sense.
“I went to see Mr. Pitt again,” he went on. “But he wasn’t there. They’re trying to say it was Isaac Karansky, the man he lodges with, who killed Sissons.”
“D’yer reckon it was?” she asked, imagining how Pitt would feel, and hating it for him. She had seen before how it tore at Pitt’s emotions when someone he knew turned out to be guilty of something horrible.
“I don’t know,” he confessed. He looked confused. There was something else in his eyes, dark and troubled. She thought perhaps he was afraid—not with the passing ripple of momentary fear, but deep and abiding and of something he could not fight against.
Again she waited.
“It isn’t that.” He put the cup down at last, empty. He met her gaze unblinkingly. “It’s Remus. I’m scared for him, Gracie. What if he’s right, and it really is true? Those people didn’t think twice about butchering five women in
