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Nate grinned. Now he knew why he’d come to Bread Street. He’d needed a fight, needed a foe, but a tougher one than Tom had proved to be.

In the old days Nate had been one of Bredsell’s boys. He’d lived at the school and followed gentlemen and reported to Bredsell on their doings and been paid for it. And if he’d chanced to land before the Bow Street magistrate, Bredsell had arranged his release. At the time, Nate’s great ambition had been to return to Bread Street one day as a High Mobsman with a purple silk waistcoat, rings on his fingers, and a gold watch as big as a turnip. He could laugh at those ambitions now. He had an account in Hammersley’s Bank and shares in the East London Gas Company and more besides.

The fight he needed was not against the likes of Tom, but against a real foe, England’s foe in the great game she played with Russia. Nate would go back to the club and rattle Goldsworthy’s cage and get the old man to put him back on a case. Nate thought Captain Clare still had a case, and that would do for him.

As the husband hunter begins in earnest to seek her happiness, she assumes a new position of authority in her life. From childhood she has been guided in her choices by the wisdom of parents and guardians. But only she can be mistress of her heart. No one else can command its affections or inclinations. The husband she seeks will be that man who admires and respects her for her independence of spirit and habit of self-command.

—The Husband Hunter’s Guide to London

Chapter 4

As long as Lucy could remember, Mrs. Winifred Vell ruled the Tooth and Nail’s kitchen. She was a stout woman with a voice like a bagpipe and an appreciation for all things brown. She had two dutiful assistants in her twin children, Samson and Delilah, and was a great admirer of Vicar Rudd’s stern wife.

Today Mrs. Vell wore a checked gown under her pinny as brown and white as her menu. A roast shoulder of mutton invariably followed a round of beef. Her whole desire for color was satisfied by the bright threads of the biblical scenes she embroidered for the altar cushions of the church. If culinary imagination was not her strong point, she did produce a great deal of food with clockwork predictability. Every morning a breakfast for the passengers arriving on the Rocket’s night run, and later a dinner for the passengers on the afternoon stage.

She looked up with a frown at Lucy’s request for fish for the gentleman guest. “Fish can’t be had today. Too dear. And can’t get a proper supper on for the stage folk by time and satisfy some gentleman’s nice taste.”

“Well then. I’ll manage myself,” said Lucy.

“Beggin’ yer pardon, Miz ʼolbrook, but this be my kitchen. Seven years I’ve put supper on for the stage passengers. Never missed. Never got it to ’em late. Yer papa and I, we had a bargain. ‘Hear the horn; serve the corn.’”

“Just so, Mrs. Vell. Carry on. A plate for one guest need not interrupt the regular flow of beef from the inn kitchen to the table.”

“Ye don’t fool me, miss. Ye’ve no respect for the old ways. Yer papa not two weeks gone and ye be talkin’ with gentlemen that be walkin’ ruin in a red coat and wantin’ to change things that ought not to be changed. If ye’ve no respect for gravy and biscuit and beef, then ye’ve no respect for Winifred Vell.” She dusted the flour off her hands, shed her apron, and gathered up a straw bonnet, short brown cape, and her bag of needlework.

The usual fare for the stage passengers was headed for the door. Samson and Delilah left their posts and followed their mother.

“Not you, too?” Lucy had a foolish impulse to block their way.

“Where Mum goes, we go.” Delilah bobbed a curtsy and followed Mrs. Vell. Samson shrugged and brought up the rear of the little procession of deserters. They marched out of the kitchen, Lucy trailing behind, past Adam’s bench and the tap and into the common room. Lucy tried to think how to avoid a disaster.

Mrs. Vell sniffed and stopped to tie an elaborate russet bonnet over her cap. “Driven from my own kitchen, I am.”

Lucy resisted an impulse to laugh. “Really, Mrs. Vell, I’m merely asking that you serve one guest a bit of fish. But if you cannot stray from the righteous path of beef, then thank you for your past service to the inn. You may expect a reckoning in the morning.”

Mrs. Vell’s cheeks shook, and she pointed a finger at Lucy. “Beware, miss. This is a respectable house. A girl in yer place to be wearing silks and talking with gentlemen in the private room—it be unseemly.” She looked around. “And Pharaoh’s lean kine et up seven years o’ plenty.” She strode toward the inn door, Samson and Delilah marching along behind her.

Lucy refused to glance at the bench sitters, witnesses to the little drama. Mrs. Vell’s leaving would be the talk of the high street before supper. She crossed the room to the slate and wiped out Beef Pork Lamb with the palm of her hand and turned back to the kitchen.

By the fire, Adam sat polishing a boot, the cat curled against his thigh.

“Thank you, Adam.”

“Geoffrey ran away.” He repeated the sentence that so agitated him the day before.

Lucy put a hand on his shoulder. “No, Adam, only Mrs. Vell and her children.”

“Adam must stay,” he said, nodding his white head.

Lucy passed on to the kitchen. Without Mrs. Vell and her assistants, the room looked empty and vast, but there was soup simmering and fresh bread cooling. She rolled up her sleeves, wrapped her apron around her, and took a quick inventory of the larder. Her gentleman guest first. Stage passengers next. As long as she had Hannah and Ariel, they would manage.

* * * *

In the end Lucy decided that fish must do for both the afternoon stage passengers and the gentleman guest. The inn’s benches were filled when she emerged from the kitchen at the sound of the stage arriving. No doubt news of Winifred Vell’s leaving her post had spread up and down St. Botolph’s high street, and anyone who could leave his business to run itself for half an hour had come to see how Miss Holbrook would manage by herself. Only Will Wittering was absent after their unexpected morning conversation.

Eight travelers filed into the inn and gathered round the table set for them with its spotless linen and gleaming flatware. A white-haired gentleman in clerical black and his thin, sharp-looking wife led the way, followed by a ginger-haired man with a yellow-dotted neckerchief, who smirked at Lucy. A pair who looked like farmers, and a sober, plain family, possibly Quakers, went straight to the table.

Lucy squared her shoulders and brought the soup round. Her guests prayed or began eating at once, as was their preference, except for the traveler with the ginger hair and loud neckcloth. He appeared to be in spirits and kept trying to snake an arm around Lucy’s person at every opportunity.