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Grace and I count the minutes until we can see you again.

Your loving friend,

Joanna

“Thank heavens for Mr. Fielding,” I said with some relief as I folded the paper again. “Though I admit when I first met him, my sentiments about him were somewhat different.”

“Uncle Errol’s all right,” James pronounced. “As long as you don’t trust him too much. Any answering word, Mrs. H.?”

I had much to say but no time for a written reply. “Tell Mrs. Millburn I will see her tomorrow and assure her of my affection. All of her family as well.”

I did not name Grace out loud, as the kitchen and downstairs were much too busy. I believed I could count on Mr. Davis’s discretion, but no more of the staff needed to know of my private life.

“Right you are.” James prepared to dash away with his usual speed, but I stopped him and handed him a cruller leftover from this morning.

He thanked me warmly, cramming the thing in his mouth as he raced out the door.

“Everything all right?” Tess asked me anxiously.

“Not really, but no new calamities,” I answered. “Just the police ransacking Joanna’s house looking for evidence, as Daniel predicted. He sent Mr. Fielding to safeguard her.”

I wondered if Joanna had seen through Mr. Fielding’s guise as the ingenuous vicar. She’d claimed she knew a former villain when she saw one. Perhaps she had known but had chosen to say nothing.

I was impatient to find out what the police had taken away, if anything, but for the moment, I had to be a cook. A good domestic did her work without fuss and pushed any personal concern aside. Or so I’d been told.

Tess and I worked ever more furiously to prepare supper for twelve, the fish waiting to be cooked at the very last minute.

My restlessness was appeased somewhat when Mr. Fielding himself arrived, just as the sole was going into the pan, and asked to see me.

14

I could hardly leave the kitchen at this critical moment to speak to Mr. Fielding, but when I nearly dropped the filets on the floor, Tess grabbed the pan from me and shooed me out.

Mr. Fielding, who stood inside the back door watching our frantic preparations in some amusement, accepted my invitation to speak in the housekeeper’s parlor. Mrs. Redfern was upstairs, and I wanted to be within earshot in case Tess needed me. Mr. Fielding hung up his greatcoat and carefully set his short-crowned hat on a clean space of the dresser before following me down the hall.

As we passed the butler’s pantry, whose door stood open, Mr. Davis peered out, brightening when he saw Mr. Fielding.

“Good evening, Vicar,” Mr. Davis said warmly. “I have a nice port in, or perhaps a lighter white wine is more to your taste.”

“How kind.” Mr. Fielding, a slender man with trim dark hairand beard and lively eyes, oozed obsequiousness. “The port, if you don’t mind. God bless our neighbors on the Douro, eh?”

“Indeed, Mr. Fielding,” Mr. Davis said. “The reason Lord Wellington raced to Portugal in the war against Napoleon was to safeguard our stock of fine port. I will pour a glass.”

He did not offer any of this fine port to me—which I would have refused anyway, as I found fortified wine a little too strong—and disappeared into the recesses of his pantry. I opened the housekeeper’s parlor and ushered Mr. Fielding inside.

“If the pair of you were any more fawning, I’d be ill,” I told him as he gallantly gestured me to a seat.

Mr. Fielding took the Belter chair once I’d sat down, and settled his frock coat. His subdued dark suit that was well tailored for his frame and the ecclesiastical collar around his throat made him appear to be a sober, well-mannered man of the cloth.

I knew better. Mr. Fielding truly was a vicar—he had a divinity degree from Oxford and the living of Shadwell’s parish, and was now suffragan bishop for much of the East End. But he’d in his life been a thief and a swindler, and he had not left his trickster ways behind him.

“Mr. Davis enjoys it,” Mr. Fielding answered. “We are both playing roles.”

I wasn’t certain Mr. Davis would like that idea, but I supposed Mr. Fielding had a point.

“Regardless, I am grateful to you for staying with Mrs. Millburn today when the police came. She informed me that they were more civil to her because of your presence.”

“I made certain of it.” Mr. Fielding erased his rather vacant smile. “I had to be unctuous to the searching constables, andI suppose I haven’t dropped the habit of being the oh-so-anxious-to-please vicar today. My apologies for my fawning, as you put it.”