“I thought perhaps you were not coming, Miss Bellamy,” he said. “I was very sorry to hear of your father.”

“Thank you, Émile.” She retrieved the key and unlocked the door to the sanctuary. “It just makes our meeting all the more urgent, I’m afraid.”

He followed her light down the winding stairs, the skitter of St. Just’s claws moving ahead of them. Émile said, “I find Bellamy House fascinating, Mademoiselle. Pieces of the Time Before are everywhere. It is remarkable. And I have just discovered something else remarkable. My elder brother has confided his identity to you.”

“Yes. I was a bit peeved with your nephew for not telling me that himself.”

“Ah. I would never discourage you from being cross with René, Mademoiselle. It is good for him. But the fact that Benoit has told you is …”

He waited so long to complete his sentence that Sophia turned around on the stairs. Émile was grinning at her. Oh, dear. Daughter stealer. “I am impressed,” he said, “that is all.”

“And why is that?”

“Because it is a mark of particular trust. Benoit considers you one of the family.”

She smiled as she continued down the stairs. “Your sister doesn’t agree.”

“Adèle will not give up her place easily.”

“Her place?”

“I am meaning her son, Mademoiselle.”

“Well. I am going to outplay her, Émile. If I can.”

“And how will you do that?”

“By giving René the marriage fee, which he can then pay to me, and we can pay our debts and keep my brother from going to prison.” She glanced back over her shoulder again. “She has already signed.”

Émile was grinning from both sides of his mouth now. “So she has. Forgive me, Miss Bellamy, but if the fee is even more than your father’s debt, how do you propose to raise such a sum on short notice, when you could not do so before?”

They entered the sanctuary, and Émile’s eyes widened. “That is why I wanted to meet with you. I’m beginning to wonder what the Bellamy family has that might have been previously … undervalued. So, as an honorary member of your family, Uncle Émile …” Sophia crossed the patched floor to Tom’s display shelf. “What sort of price do you think these things could fetch?”

Sophia sank down into the warm bath in front of her bedroom fire, aching inside and out, but incredibly grateful for the hot water she’d discovered. And the cinnamon in her soap. Orla was a heroine.

There had been very little time during the day, but she’d taken some of it to be with Orla. Orla had only ever once been moved to tears in Sophia’s memory, and that had been when she was very small, when they lost her mother. And now they had lost her father. And Spear. Seeing Orla cry had made her do the same again, but when she’d tried to explain to her about René, the woman had only waved a hand. “There’s no great surprise in wanting to marry your own fiancé, child,” Orla said, wiping her eyes, sending her off to bed with a light smack. What had come as a surprise was who she hadn’t found when she got there. Jennifer Bonnard had disappeared, and Sophia would have gambled a marriage fee that there was another horse missing from their stables, and an extra one stabled at the Hammond farm. Not that she had a fee to gamble.

Uncle Émile had given her hope for some money from Tom’s collection, but not near enough to fund a marriage. She’d taken him to the ballroom gallery to see the statue of the Looking Man as well, a piece that made him say things like, “Ah, extraordinary!” and “I am amazed!” But he did not think the statue would bring actual money. Or not very quickly. Even with his connections.

“A collector wishes for small things, things he can put discreetly on a shelf and move when needed. With this … the transportation alone would be dangerous and difficult. A museum might risk it, but not for a tenth of its worth, Mademoiselle.”

But he was taking René and Enzo and Andre up to the west fields to dig the next day, to see what could be found. Even one plastic bottle with its label on, he’d said, especially the ones with the mysterious word DIET, could bring what she needed with the right buyers, though finding one surviving in that kind of condition was rare. Very rare. It was a nebulous hope to be sure, and much less concrete than her offer from Mrs. Rathbone.

Mrs. Rathbone had come calling in what should have been their after-dinner time, though nothing was regular at Bellamy House at the moment. Sophia had just set off to find René when she spotted a flowered hat in the drawing room.

“Mrs. Rathbone?” Sophia inquired, backtracking to the door. She’d had her head wrapped up and was still in her filthy breeches, face streaked with dirt and tears. “I thought you were in the Midlands.”

Mrs. Rathbone sat herself straighter in the chair before Sophia could say more. “I haven’t come to chat, Miss Bellamy, though it looks to me as if we could chat all night. You seem to have been doing things I would find interesting. But as I was saying, that isn’t what I came for. I have come to remind you about my offer to buy Bellamy House.”

Sophia came and sat down heavily in her father’s chair, and only then did she notice that Madame was also in the room, legs crossed and with a cup of something hot in her hand. Giving her what Sophia had come to think of as the Hasard eyebrow.

“I wouldn’t be able to offer what it’s worth, mind,” Mrs. Rathbone continued. “Who could?”

Who indeed, Sophia thought. She seemed to be flush with valuable items that could do her absolutely no monetary good.

“But you could come close to the debt. I know you’re two days from Bellamy’s arrest …”

“Actually, Mrs. Rathbone …”

“… and I thought this way you could at least keep the sheriff away. You might prefer it to jail and the house going to Parliament …”

“Mrs. Rathbone, Bellamy … my father has just … died.”

“What?”

Sophia saw Madame again raise the one brow. It made her unreasonably indignant, that eyebrow. Was the woman incapable of lifting the other one? Or maybe it was just heartache that made her so irritable. Or Mrs. Rathbone.

“I’m also sorry to tell you that Spear is gone as well, Mrs. Rathbone.” The woman sat still in her chair. “He was buried in the Sunken City.”

“What?” Mrs. Rathbone repeated. She seemed truly taken aback. “Buried in the city? Whatever happened to him?”

Sophia stared down at the worn place her father’s shoes had made in the carpet, started feeling tearful, and with that, her journey to anger was complete. She was not going to talk about what had happened to Spear. She pressed her lips together.

“Well!” said Mrs. Rathbone. “This is not what I was expecting to hear, my dear. Not at all. Then it all falls to you, doesn’t it? I am so terribly sorry for you.”

“If you mean the debt, Mrs. Rathbone, that falls to my brother, actually.”

“Tom? But I thought …”

“News is a bit slow coming out of the city right now …” There was no telling what the papers would say when they did come. That was probably dependent on who ended up in power as much as the truth. “Tom is free. They had the wrong man.”

“So they did,” commented Madame Hasard.

Mrs. Rathbone shook her flowered hat. “This visit has taken me by surprise, and no mistake. Not to be crass, Miss Bellamy, but it’s getting hard to keep up with which Bellamys are alive and which aren’t, who’s jailed and who isn’t. And what about Monsieur, then? Not to get too personal, Miss Bellamy.”

Sophia narrowed her eyes. Perhaps Mrs. Rathbone would also like to know the amount of money in her purse. Madame Hasard tilted her head to one side. “Mrs….?”