Free Kitty Peck and the Child of Ill-Fortune by Kate Griffin Page B

winter during their first season in Paris and he introduced me to his friends. Akady is to his left, in the blue gown, Stefan to his right, in red, and directly opposite Akady, our friend Lucca is talking to Misha, who is the leader of the orchestra, not a dancer. He is a very clever man, a linguist – Misha is also The Moika’s fixer in chief.’
    ‘I wondered who that was. He doesn’t look like a dancer.’ I smiled. ‘Lucca’s hardly said a word to me all night.’
    Joey looked down the table to the midpoint where Lucca was engaged in deep conversation with a broad-shouldered man whose hair was so fair it was almost white in the candlelight. Lucca was sitting with his back to me, elbow on the table, resting the scarred half of his face in his hand. I knew he was trying to cover the worst of it, but it didn’t seem to matter to the intense young man with him. I remembered that Giacomo, Lucca’s great love, had been a musician too.
    ‘I . . . introduced them on the second day you were here, when you had a headache – or said you did.’ Joey adjusted one of his dangling earrings which had got twisted up in a ringlet. ‘You were right. There were things Lucca and I needed to say. It was clever of you.’ He paused. ‘You know, he told me a lot more about you, that afternoon – what you’d done, how you really saved those girls.’
    He smoothed a wrinkle in the starched white tablecloth, the gemstone bracelet at his wrist glittered in the candlelight. ‘She chose well.’ The words were almost a whisper.
    I covered his hand with mine. ‘From what I heard, I don’t think she had much choice.’
    He shook his head. ‘Our grandmother knew exactly what she was doing. She always does.’
    There was a shriek as a log burning in the depths of a huge marble fireplace halfway down the room spat out a shower of golden sparks. A man who was sitting with his back to the hearth erupted from the table and made a great show of flapping out the trailing skirts of his lacy dress. When he was satisfied he wasn’t incendiary, he stood to one side and fanned himself most energetically as the Monseigneur moved his chair to a safer place.
    I wondered if the old boy had come with the house, and if so I wondered what I was paying him. I watched as he ushered flustered Fanny back to a seat and discreetly arranged her skirts so they were folded away from any possibility of ignition. He was almost like part of the furniture. Perhaps he’d been in Lady Ginger’s employ here long before Joey came? The thought came to me then that he still might be. Perhaps the old cow had set a spy on my brother? I wouldn’t put it past her.
    ‘Do you know where she’s gone?’ It was the question I asked the Beetle every time he scratched up another legal piece for me to sign.
    Joey shook his head. ‘I didn’t even know she had gone until you came. I do know this – she had another place. My guess is that it was somewhere far away from Limehouse and Salmon Lane. She went there once when she was taken with the winter sickness and didn’t want people to know how frail she was. If the Barons . . .’ He paused and his fingers tightened round the stem of his glass. ‘She came through and she came back, but she never told me where she’d been. Lady Ginger doesn’t like to show weakness and she never makes mistakes.’
    He turned to look at me directly. His blue eyes darkened and his mouth twitched into a sort of smile. ‘And I don’t think you will either, Kitty.’
    Mistakes?
    For a moment another face swam into my head. James Verdin looked at me in just the way he’d done when he sat at the end of my bed after that first time, after that only time. Of a sudden I felt my cheeks burn up.
    ‘So, you’re running an establishment here?’ The question tumbled out of my mouth before I’d had time to phrase it more elegantly. Fact was, I didn’t want James in my thoughts and I said the first thing that came into my mind to replace him.
    Joey