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S ydney flung his overcoat over his arm and picked up his silk hat from the bed. Looking forward to his evening, he was whistling to himself, and when the knock sounded at his door, he cheerily called, “Come in!”

His mother entered. “Oh, you’re going out,” she said. She did not sound disapproving, though she did, annoyingly, close the door as though she intended to stay.

“I’m meeting Ben Devine,” he said. “I don’t want to keep him waiting.”

“Of course not. Are you meeting him to keep him away from Jemimah? Or because you still have anything in common?”

“Dash it, Mama, he’s a friend. Why should it have anything to do with Jemimah?”

“I thought you might want to please your father.”

“Why on earth would I want to do that?”

“Because you have a guilty conscience?”

Sydney scowled. He began to tap his hat against his thigh. “What are you accusing me of, Mama?”

“Nothing. I am merely asking if you are responsible for the switching of the treasure.”

He gazed at her, amused and yet not a little uneasy. If she had spoken her suspicion to his father… “Why would I do anything so crass? I was to get a quarter share of the treasure. The word is, that would amount to far more than I’d get selling the whole lot to some greasy fence.”

“Then you did think about it,” she pounced.

“Contrary to popular opinion, I do think occasionally. Sometimes, I even daydream. Does my father, having insisted I accompany him on the damned treasure hunt—which was utterly laughable right up until the moment we found it—actually accuse me of stealing from him now?”

“Of course not! But I am your mother, and I well know the mischief in you, Sydney Lloyd. And I know your temper, which is not so unlike your father’s. I know you must have irked each other over the months of forced proximity on the voyage.”

He stopped tapping the hat and plonked it on his head instead, as a signal that the conversation was over. “Mama, you are barking quite up the wrong tree.”

“I hope so. You can still fix things if I’m not, but it has to be quick. One thing more.”

He paused, his hand already on the door. “Yes, Mama?” he said with exaggerated patience.

“Did you know any of the crew on the Queen of the Sea ? Had you seen any of them before?”

It was not a question he had expected. His erratic curiosity surged, along with a fleck of the mischief she had just accused him of.

“No. But I believe Papa did.”

He didn’t like that look of fear in her eyes. He had seen it before, usually in the company of Papa, or in conversations about Papa. So he did what he always did. He ran away from it.

“I have to dash, Mama,” he said, sparing her a swift kiss on the cheek before he swept out of the room. “Goodnight!”

*

When Constance arrived back at her establishment, the regular evening party was in full swing. She entered by the front door, made sure with the large footmen on duty that all was well, and gave them her outerwear to dispose of before entering the main salon.

She was hailed from all over the room, by the women and by the regular clients who took their ease there, sipping wine, nibbling from the delicacies on the buffet table, and flirting. She could see at a glance who had retired to privacy, and that all was as it should be.

She began to mingle, pausing to talk to all the guests, particularly the influential and the wealthy on whom the rest of her work depended.

She had long ago developed the professional hostess face she showed the world, and she knew how to sparkle, how to lift a party and endow it with life and enjoyment.

Tonight, she had no need to pretend. She was sparkling inside with Solomon’s love and understanding.

Stephen, the young footman bearing a tray of wine, touched her elbow and she stepped aside, inclining her head to hear his murmur.

“Bit of trouble in the hall, ma’am. Lord Rawleigh has brought a couple of friends who refuse to pay till they’ve—er…sampled the wares.”

“How very rude,” Constance said. “Thank you, Stephen. Excuse me,” she added to the group beside her, and flitted through the throng to the hall to calm whatever situation had developed.

Two of her long-standing footmen—or guards—looked particularly stony-faced as they stood blocking the way of three young gentlemen. One was Lord Rawleigh, looking rather sheepish.

“Not the rules of the game, old fellows,” he was saying to his companions as she approached. “Happy to lend you the blunt.”

“That’s not the point,” said a voice that was only too familiar. Feeling slightly sick, she took in the identities of her difficult guests, just as they looked round and saw her.

Sydney Lloyd and Ben Devine.

For an instant, the scene stood still. She felt totally exposed as her two worlds collided. She had lost the case for Solomon. She had probably lost Silver and Grey for them both.

The young men’s mouths had fallen open.

Lord Rawleigh hurried into speech. “Mrs. Silver! So sorry to be the cause of trouble. These gentlemen are my guests, and I am happy to make their contribution to the club.”

Constance pulled herself together. She had more important responsibilities right now, and allowing clearly drunk and contemptuous men into her establishment to “sample the wares” was against everything she had fought for.

“My lord, with your recommendation, of course your friends may apply in the usual way. They may then return when sober and I might reconsider. Good evening, gentlemen.”

Rawleigh, who was amiable and had never given her cause for concern, looked crestfallen. His companions still seemed too flabbergasted to object. As the footmen stepped forward, they all stepped back. The porter opened the front door and the three would-be guests stalked out into the cold.

“You’ll pay for this!” Sydney raged from the step. He even shook his fist from a safe distance.

“Probably,” Constance murmured ruefully, and returned to the salon.

*

Joshua Clarke was uneasy about his visitors this afternoon, and very glad it was time to go.

Everything was packed and ready. Almost.

Leaving his battered valise in his bedroom for the time being, he went downstairs with only a candle against the darkness, took the plate from his tiny larder, and sat down at the table to eat his final meal in the house he had called home for more than a decade.

Yet he was not sad to be going. Instead, he enjoyed the relative silence of the night, time alone to say a quiet goodbye to his old life, and welcome the new with soaring excitement and, if he were honest, not a little triumph.

He who laughs last…

Solitary footsteps sounded in the street outside his shuttered window. Through the cracks, he even saw the figure block the light from the streetlamp for an instance. Then the footsteps halted.

Clarke’s heart lurched. Staring at the open door of his kitchen, he laid down his fork and kept the knife in his hand as he rose.

He was being foolish, of course. Someone had stopped to tie their shoelace, or light a pipe, or just to have a rest. Any moment now, he would hear the footsteps continuing on their way and fading into the distance.

He didn’t.

Instead, he heard the sound of a key in the door, inserted surreptitiously and swiftly turned. His shoulders sagged with relief and he walked eagerly into the hall. The lamplight gleamed through the window above the front door, shining on the last face he expected to see.

“You!” he uttered in disbelief.

Pain exploded in his chest.

He who laughed last truly would laugh the longest.

*

I love this man. I would do anything to make him happy…

Her thought from the previous evening stayed with Constance through the night and was still there in the early morning. It burned more strongly even than the rejected visit of Sydney Lloyd and Ben Devine to her establishment.

Assuredly, Jemimah should not marry Ben, not for many years at least, though Constance suspected she was coming to that view on her own.

Not that a sheltered girl like Jemimah would know anything about such establishments as this…

No, the main outcome of last night’s disaster was the likelihood of Silver and Grey being dismissed from the Lloyd case. She should warn Solomon first thing…

Solomon . One of the subjects they had not discussed last night was David. She knew very little of the boy’s disappearance, only that Solomon had been looking for him for twenty years. And that there had been a report of a boy around the right age being forced onto a ship in Kingston.

If Johnny the sailor was indeed David Grey, what on earth had happened to him, and why would he not jump at the chance to be reunited with his twin?

Because there had been some quarrel between them?

Perhaps David believed Solomon was somehow responsible for whatever had happened.

There was even the uncomfortable possibility that he was.

Children did and said things from temper without always understanding the consequences.

Which could have led to a lifetime of trying to put it right.

Or Johnny might not be David at all.

Since she had first got to know Solomon, she had acknowledged a desire to make him happy, to take away his loneliness and somehow give him joy.

And surely the best way to do that was to give him David.

He needed to know one way or the other, be rid of the uncertainty that ate at him.

At the very least, he needed to be rid of the possibility that the brother he had sought for so long and missed so terribly had rejected him.

So she rose at once, early as it was and despite her lateness to bed the previous night—she never seemed to need a great deal of sleep. She wore her simple “working” dress.