There were clay pots everywhere. A big, glass-fronted case filled half the room, full of dark brown pots, mud-colored pots, pots with designs scraped on the sides, old Greek pots with people, pots in three-legged stands, and pots lolling on their side showing their bellies, pots stacked up four and five high. Regular armies of pots, with the auxiliaries called up.

An old man and old woman sat at an oval table in front of the window with the light spilling all over them. They were ordinary people. The man was untidy in his brown wool jacket and limp neckcloth. He had a craggy face and wild black hair, getting gray at the temples. The woman was neatly dressed. Nothing fashionable about her. Behind them, the window showed a vivid, bright garden, overgrown with green. The Sheridan sideboard next to the wall held silver dishes, covered, keeping breakfast warm.

The man laid down a book. The woman looked up from a newspaper.

This had to be Kennett’s uncle and aunt, Standish and Eunice Ashton. It was all in the files on her desk back in the warehouse. They’d raised Kennett when his father didn’t show any inclination to do it. Word was, the old earl wasn’t best pleased to have his little mistake brought up in plain sight by his brother and his sister-in-law. Word was, Eunice Ashton never gave tuppence what the earl thought.

The old earl was dying, nastily and at length, in Italy. One of those just retributions, that particular disease.

Everyone in Whitechapel had heard of Eunice Ashton. She gave refuge to women in trouble. Any woman. Whores, too, and it didn’t matter who owned them. She’d face up to the devil himself, they said. Even Lazarus let her pass unmolested in his territory.

And here they were . . . decent folks, eating a civilized breakfast. If Sebastian Kennett was Cinq, she was going to smash this pretty, comfortable world into a thousand bits.

“Good heavens, child. You’re awake.” Eunice Ashton held out her hand. “Come in. Come in.” She was no carefully preserved beauty. Her face was wrinkles and deep lines, honestly old, like a countrywoman who’d been out in all weathers and never coddled herself. The steady eyes were bright as jewels. It was a warm hearth on a freezing day, the kindness in that woman’s face.

I’m going to hang Cinq, and he’s probably your nephew. No matter what you are—decent, kind, wise, loving—it won’t make any difference.

She didn’t want to talk to them. Didn’t want to be in this house at all. She groped behind her for the doorknob.

Eunice Ashton was already on her feet. “You must sit down. You don’t look at all steady. I’m sorry not to have been with you when you woke up. I looked in earlier and decided you’d sleep for a good long while yet. There now. Standish will pour tea.” The old woman was beside her, taking her hands, both of them, inside her own. “I don’t know if tea really helps when one feels precarious, but it does give one something warm to hold on to. A kitten would work just as well, but we don’t have one at the moment. They will grow into cats. Sit, dear.”

Jess found herself guided into a chair. It was like when the pilot takes the wheel in some tricky port. All of a sudden the ship, even a big, wallowing three-master, goes smooth and easy and glides past the breakwater and the sand bars, through the rip currents, tame and docile, up to the dock. It was a magic pilots had. Maybe they signed an agreement with the ocean.

One minute she was at the door, trying to think of a way to leave without being rude. The next she was sitting at the table.

The old man looked at her over a beak of a nose—that was the same nose Kennett had—and smiled vaguely and found the teapot. He poured tea, and added milk and sugar, and stirred, all without looking at what he was doing, and set the cup in front of her.

She saw no guile in the old man. No meanness in the old woman. She might not be the steel-trap judge of people Papa was, but she would have built houses on that assessment. Whatever it took to send Englishmen to their deaths for money, it wasn’t in them. If Kennett was Cinq, they had no part in it. That made it worse, knowing she’d be bringing shame and disaster on them, and they’d have no warning.

The man nudged the cup toward her.

Tea. Yes. She could drink tea.

It was South China, good enough in its way. She was used to Russian tea, smoky from being heated over charcoal and blunt-flavored from a caravan trip across half the world. She had a taste for it after living in St. Petersburg so long. Papa always kept a supply.

Her stomach would stop being sick and cold if she put tea into it. Maybe her head would stop aching. She’d take a few sips of tea, and thank them, and leave. And there was something polite she should be saying. Lord, all the money Papa’d spent on governesses, she should know her manners.

“Thank you for taking me in.” She put both hands around the cup. They were right. Hot tea was good to hold on to. “I’m sorry to impose myself on you this way. It’s . . . I’m not sure what happened, exactly. There were men after me, I think. And I fell. I was standing in the rain, thinking I might get myself hurt . . . And then I did. Get hurt. I’m not sure how.” It occurred to her she was babbling. “Sorry. This isn’t coming out right. My head’s not working well.”

“Of course it isn’t.” A capable hand, thin-skinned, marked with brown spots from age, closed over hers. “You will stop hurting soon. I’m Eunice Ashton. You are not to worry about anything.”

“I don’t remember it all, you see.”

“Of course not. One doesn’t, I believe, after a blow to the head. You met with some accident by the docks, and you weren’t in any state to tell us where to take you. Where can we send word you’re safe? They must be frantic, looking for you. What’s your name, child?”

But no one was looking for her. Not a soul. If she didn’t show up at Meeks Street, Papa would just think his jailers were keeping her away. Pitney knew she’d gone hunting Cinq and where, but he wouldn’t expect her at the warehouse today. Kedger would worry when she didn’t bring him his piece of kipper this morning, but a ferret couldn’t precisely raise the alarm, now could he? Nobody else would notice if she dropped off the face of the earth. Gave her a chill, knowing that.

She swallowed. “I’m Jess. Jessamyn Whitby. There’s nobody looking for me.”

The old woman’s eyes were wise and unreservedly kind and very practical. “Well then, Jess, you shall drink your tea, and we will decide what is best to do about this.”

“Lady Ashton . . .” Or is it Lady Eunice? Or something else? Lady Standish? Sometimes it’s nothing at all. They don’t make it easy.

“Eunice, dear. Just Eunice. Or Mrs. Ashton, if that makes you feel more comfortable. And I will call you Jess, if I may. Really, the most useless and unpleasant people seem to have titles. So much simpler to discard titles altogether and be just a Jess and a Eunice, don’t you think? Have you read Lalumière’s Ten Questions?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Or An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice by Godwin? Well, I suppose not. I’ll lend you a copy when you’re feeling better. So eloquent and lucid.”

That sounded like books on philosophy, and one of them by a Frenchman. It was probably a mistake to read too many books like that. You believe what they put in books, and who knows what you’ll do.

Kennett probably read philosophy if his aunt was fond of it.

Lady Ashton . . . Eunice . . . poured tea and started after the milk jug, murmuring, “Rousseau, perhaps.” Strange as three-toed snakes, some of the gentry. What an odd conversation she was having. “Well. Yes. All right.”

The old man gave a shy, rather sweet smile. “She won’t make you read today. Or do anything else you don’t want to.” The book propped in front of him had a German title that translated to A Study of Striation Patterning in the Milo-Archaic Pottery of Bavaria, which explained the pots cluttering the place. Over the top of the book, his gaze focused on her with a startling intelligence. “You don’t have to be worried. Eunice will take care of everything.”

“Of course, Standish.” Eunice tapped the plate beside his book. “You have toast.”

Jess could feel herself relaxing, muscle by muscle. Even her sinews and bones knew these were good folks. No wonder Kennett made houseroom for thirty thousand pots and a battalion of rescued harlots. If she’d had an uncle and aunt like this, she’d have let them keep elephants.

Before Standish got a bite of toast, the door of the parlor slammed back to the wall, shaking every pot in the room. A skinny, untidy maid stood in the doorway. “That professor fellow’s brung a bunch of them bleeding great boxes. You want ’em put upstairs?”

Crikey. She’d forgot. The foyer could be three-deep in crates for all the use she was. She clattered cup into saucer. “Oh Lord. My fault. I opened the door. I was supposed to tell you—”

“Excellent. That’ll be Percy at last.” Standish used the toast to mark his place in the book. “Pots from Glamorgan. Excuse me.” He kissed his wife neatly on top of her head and stalked out like a long-legged wading bird in search of fish.

“More pots,” Eunice said. “And not another square inch to put them in.” She rose as she spoke. Lightly, she put her arm around Jess. “We’ll manage somehow. Now, tell me what has happened to you and why there’s no one who knows or cares where you are. That seems a very melancholy state of affairs, if true.”

Being held by Eunice Ashton was like having sunlight wrapped around you. She closed her eyes. “It’s not like that. My father’s careful of me, generally. It’s not his fault.”