Page 77 of Speculations in Sin

“We will have to find out.” Daniel’s energy, like mine, returned. “Lewis—turn us around and head for the Strand. We are going to Belgravia.”

22

Belgravia lay south of Hyde Park, reached by turning from Knightsbridge to one of the streets that led toward Belgrave Square.

Wilton Crescent, a semicircle filled with a row of town houses, lay beyond a large church called St. Paul’s. Near the middle of Wilton Crescent was the house where the doorman’s assistant had indicated Mr. Kearny dwelled.

We reached the town house to see several maids carrying a stream of parcels from a landau down the stairs to the kitchen level. Not an unusual sight in a wealthy neighborhood. The lady of the house had obviously been shopping.

I opened the cab and hopped down, approaching a maid who was struggling to hold on to several knobby, brown paper–wrapped packages. Her fellow maids had already disappeared downstairs, and the footman I spied hovering behind the glass-fronted doorway only watched disdainfully. Unloading a landau was beneath him, presumably.

“Let me help you, love.” I slid from the careful speech I’d cultivated to the natural tones of my girlhood. “You look all in, and it’s a blustery day.”

The maid started, but I gave her a warm smile and relieved her of two of the largest parcels.

“Thank ye, miss,” she said. “Do I know you?”

“I’m a cook,” I said. “At a house in Mayfair. It’s me day out, and I was taking a stroll, looking at all the green. Such a lovely place. Wilton Crescent.” I paused to dreamily glance about me. “Like a name in a story.”

The maid eyed me doubtfully but didn’t object to my assistance. I tucked the packages under my arm and followed her down the stairs, still gabbing about how pretty was the neighborhood.

Daniel, across the road, pulled his cap down over his eyes and hunkered into the shadows of the cab. Lewis contrived to look blank-faced and bored as any cabbie would while waiting for his charge to make up his mind. The horse cocked a nonchalant back hoof and shifted his weight with a sigh.

I clattered across the threshold and into the scullery behind the maid and so on into the kitchen.

The cook jerked her head up from the stove where she was basting a whole hen in the oven. Greens and fresh potatoes littered the work table, and several crisp-crusted loaves of bread sat cooling on a rack.

“Who’s this, then?” the cook, a red-faced, middle-aged woman, barked. “What’s she want?”

“Don’t be so cross, Mrs. Gibbons,” my maid said. “She’s only helping with the parcels. She’s a cook, like yourself.”

“Oh aye? Who are you, then, love?”

“Mrs…. McAdam.” I had no idea why that name leapt to my lips. I’d not wanted to give the name “Holloway” in caseMr. Kearny—or, heaven help me, Mrs. Bywater—learned of my visit. McAdam was the first name that came to me. “I saw this lass struggling and thought I’d help.” I set my armload on a bench next to the packages the maid had set down. The other maids had piled theirs onto the bench as well. “Your mistress certainly has done much shopping,” I said, observing the heap.

The maid laughed. “Oh, she’s a fine one for shopping.”

“Mind your impertinence, Jane,” the cook snapped. She faced me, butter from the basting brush dripping to the floor. “But she isn’t wrong, Mrs. McAdam. Can’t go a day without rushing about buying this and that either for the house or to drape on her body. Though I can’t complain—I can purchase what I like for the kitchen without argument.”

“Your mistress is Mrs. Kearny?” I asked. “I have a friend who is acquainted with Mr. Kearny,” I added at their surprised expressions, staying as close to the truth as possible. I left it vague whether I referred to Mrs. Kearny as Mr. Kearny’s wife or his mother.

“Mrs. Kearny.”The maid, Jane, snorted. Jane might or might not be her true name, as ladies of the house gave their downstairs maids names they could remember. “That’s what the young lady calls herself, innit?”

“They ain’t married,” the cook admitted. “Shameful it is, but it’s a good place.” The mistress obviously hadn’t engendered loyalty in her servants.

“Oh dear,” I said. I did not have to pretend to be shocked—I was.

Mr. Kearny had sat determinedly in Joanna’s parlor, gazing at her with barely disguised longing. It was obvious he planned to woo her if Sam was convicted, and all this time, he’d had a lady tucked into a fine house in Belgravia.

Anger quickly replaced my shock. Had Mr. Kearny beenstealing money from Daalman’s, allowing Sam to take the blame for it? All the while he’d been bleating about how much he’d help Sam, hadhebeen the cause of Sam’s misery?

Perhaps this had been Mr. Kearny’s plan from the start. To find a post for Sam at the bank, so he could have a scapegoat in place if he needed it.

“How long has she lived here?” I demanded.

The maid and cook started at my abrupt question, but again, they did not tell me to mind my own business. They were eager to gossip.

“Five years now, ain’t it?” Jane asked the cook.

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