“Are you all right, Professor?”

“Yes, quite.” Except that his face was at least a few shades paler than usual, and his eyes did not see her at all. He thrust a hand forward almost blindly, clutching a haphazardly assembled sheaf of papers. “Here are my notes from this morning. The section on Abyssinian relics might be a bit tricky. Let me know if you have difficulties. I’ll be upstairs.”

With the motion, the cuff of his jacket fell back a little, revealing a wide silver band around his wrist. Mina glimpsed strange, angular shapes running down the middle. Then, as Mina took the papers, the professor dropped his hand, somewhat hurriedly, and cloth fell over the bracelet again.

He’d never been a man for much adornment. Not as long as Mina had known him. And she thought she would have remembered the bracelet. “Sir,” she asked, “what’s troubling you?”

The urge to speak showed itself plainly on his face for a moment, as bright and wide as the bracelet—and as swiftly concealed. “An abundance of questions,” he said gruffly, then cleared his throat and patted her shoulder. “You mustn’t concern yourself about me, Miss Seymour. I’ve weathered more storms in my life than you’ve, er, typed notes on Abyssinia.”

Mina smiled, as the professor clearly wanted her to, but shook her head. “If there’s anything I can do—”

“Nothing anyone can do just now, much less a young lady.” He was back to gruff. “Get on with your work, Miss Seymour. The day grows late.”

Before she could reply, the professor turned away. The door closed behind him with a neat click, leaving Mina with unanswered questions and a pile of paper.

At least she could do something about the latter.

* * *

Sunday dinners were always a jolt these days. Scrubbed and starched, still with the better part of a week’s pay in her purse, Mina squeezed into her old place at the parlor table on the Sunday after MacAlasdair had entered the office. With Florrie’s gold curls to one side and Bert’s tousled brown mop on her other, she ate beef and Yorkshire pudding under the gaze of her mother, her father, and, from the mantel, a much younger Queen.

It was a world away from either Professor Carter’s book-lined office in Gordon Square or Mina’s own whitewashed, bare-floored room on Bulstrode Street. It was also a world she entered back into easily after the first few moments, all the more rewarding now because she knew things could be different.

At least, her return was usually easy.

Mina ate with as good an appetite as ever. She laughed at her father’s jokes and Bert’s stories, and listened as her mother read a letter from George, whose ship had docked in Shanghai a month ago. It was Sunday, Mina was with her family, and these both were excellent things. Still, the memory of Professor Carter’s troubles weighed on her mind, and so did Lord MacAlasdair’s contribution to those troubles, whatever it might have been.

When the conversation settled for a moment, Mina looked across the table at Alice, another of the Seymour daughters who only came home on Sundays. Alice was a housemaid up in Mayfair and frequently brought home stories that the other servants told, circulating the tales in a web of gossip that reached from one great house to another.

Someone like Lord MacAlasdair would certainly have servants.

“There was a gentleman throwing his weight around in the office the other day,” Mina began, “and I was wondering if you’d heard anything about him. MacAlasdair?”

Alice put down her fork and considered the question. Only for a moment, though. Then she grinned, and her green eyes lit up with the joy of knowing Something Interesting. “The Scottish bloke? New?”

“I don’t know how new. But Scottish, yes.”

“Well, if he’s the same one, he took a house in Mayfair a month ago. Came with just a valet and a housekeeper.” Alice leaned forward. “And do you know what?”

Mina grinned back at her sister. “Yes,” she said, as she’d been saying on these occasions for twenty-three years, ever since she’d started talking well enough to tease her sister, “which is why I asked you. I love hearing answers I already know.”

Alice stuck out her tongue and went on. Around them, the family was listening. Gossip from the city was always interesting.

“Ethel”—another of Lady Wrentham’s housemaids—“walks out with a policeman who knows the cook at MacAlasdair’s.”

“I thought he didn’t have a cook,” said Bert.

“He’d have hired one after he came, wouldn’t he?” Florrie shot back, leaning across Mina to do so. “Stupid.”

“I’m not—” Bert was beginning to raise his voice when a glance from Mr. Seymour stopped the incipient fight. Mina, whose best dress would have been much the worse for intercepting flung peas, sent her father a grateful smile.

“Go on, Alice,” said Mrs. Seymour. “Does he still need servants? Your Aunt Rose knows a girl who’s looking for a place in a kitchen.”

Alice shook her head. “No. Well, maybe. He has already hired maids, though, and”—a significant pause—“Mrs. Hennings, the cook, she says he gives all of them two hours off every night!”

Few Drury Lane actresses could have given a statement more dramatic flair than Alice did with her announcement, and the Seymours, at least, were an appreciative audience. Even Bert, who knew little of domestic service but had heard stories from his sister, whistled—and got a glare from his mother for it.

“Any two hours?” Mrs. Seymour asked, her son’s table manners safely corrected.

“No, just at dusk.” Alice lowered her voice again. “He doesn’t want any of them in the house then. Only he lets Mrs. Hennings stay in the kitchen, as she’s got rheumatism, and any who want can stay there with her. But they’re not to go into the house proper.”

“I bet he’s got a mad wife,” said Florrie, who had been spending her pocket money on penny dreadfuls lately. “And he has to take her out sometimes to…to feed her, I guess, or let her walk around the place, and he can’t let anyone else be around or she’ll tear them to shreds.”

“That’s silly,” said Bert. “Why wouldn’t he just keep her in the attic? Or tie her up?”

“Because…” Florrie hesitated, buttered a roll, and then saw a way out of the problem. “Because he’s still passionately in love with her. Even though she’s mad. And he wants to be kind to her.”

“He didn’t seem the sort to be madly in love with anybody,” said Mina, remembering being called Cerberus and MacAlasdair’s demand that she stop being ridiculous. “And he certainly didn’t seem very kind.”

“His maids probably don’t agree with you there, my girl,” said Mr. Seymour, chuckling. “Still, he sounds like a strange sort.”

“That’s for certain,” Mina said. “Alice, could you talk to Ethel for me? I think I’d like to have a cup of tea with Mrs. Hennings when she has a moment.”

Two

Contrary to all general wisdom about cooks, Mrs. Hennings was neither short nor stout nor elderly, but rather a tall woman of handsome middle age, with the sort of black eyes that novels inevitably called “flashing” and glossy black hair that made Mina touch her own brown curls with envy. Her own figure was undoubtedly voluptuous, but that was as close as she came to the stereotype.

The kitchen of MacAlasdair’s house was far more conventional than the cook. It included a black stove like a mountain of ironwork, shelves of stoppered jars, racks of pots and pans, and smoke-stained walls ascending toward rafters that Mina could barely see. Even though it was only dusk, the stars not yet out, the shadows were deep in the corners of the room. Sitting at the long oak table in the center of the room, she felt dwarfed and mouse-like.

Tea helped. She added three lumps of sugar to her cup, stirred, and sipped.

“You haven’t been here long, Alice says,” she began.

“Well, not here,” said Mrs. Hennings, gesturing around the room. The light caught a gold ring on her hand. Mrs. was more than a courtesy title, then, at least for her. “I’ve been in London for some years now. Worked at Bailey’s before his lordship hired me.”

“The hotel?” Mina grinned. “When I was small, we used to watch the people going in, some nights. My brother and sister and I. Saw all kinds of lords and ladies. George used to swear he spotted a sultan or a rajah or the like once, but Alice and I never credited it.”

Mrs. Hennings joined Mina in laughing. The atmosphere in the room lightened a little, although when Mina glanced toward the corner of the room, the shadows seemed even deeper.

Well, it was getting on toward night.

“He might have been telling the truth, at that,” said Mrs. Hennings. “We had a few.” She set down her teacup. “But that isn’t why you wanted to talk to me.”

“No,” Mina said. “Actually, I was hoping you could tell me something about his lordship. What kind of a man he is.”

Mrs. Hennings’s eyebrows lifted. “I see,” she said. “Made you an offer, has he?”

“Lord, no!” Mina’s face burned. The topic was embarrassing enough, but a sudden, treacherous memory of MacAlasdair’s powerful body leaning over her desk suggested that such an offer might have its attractions.

She couldn’t meet Mrs. Hennings’s eyes for a moment. She looked off into the corner again, and this time she thought she saw something move.

Well, rats showed up in the best-kept kitchens, Mina had heard. She didn’t want to call anything of the kind to the cook’s attention, though.

“He’s…he came to visit my employer the other day,” she said, “and he seemed cross. I was hoping to find out—”