“My son hasn’t been home for a long while,” the vicar said when he’d finished reading the parable. “I believe he’s come back due to your influence. For that, I can only thank you.” He looked at Alex over the rim of his wire-framed spectacles. “Do you have a family, sir?”

Alex returned the vicar’s gently enquiring gaze. “I did. A lifetime ago.”

“Are they still living?”

Were they? Alex had done his best not to find out. Nevertheless, there had been no avoiding the news that Justin Thornhill had wed the daughter of a wealthy nobleman last September. An earl’s daughter, if one could believe it. The announcement had been in the London papers for all to see. It had been the very incident that had sparked Alex’s own interest in finding a wealthy wife.

As for Tom Finchley and Neville Cross…

Alex didn’t know. He didn’t want to know.

The orphanage at Abbot’s Holcombe was a part of his past. The ache of hunger. The ice-cold dormitories. The ever-present fear of punishment. Of death. It had been a lifetime ago. So long ago that he could almost fancy it had happened to another person.

“Some of them,” he said. “I don’t know about the others. It’s been many years. Decades.”

The vicar nodded. “Then I shall pray that you will be reunited with them, as my son has been with me.”

Chapter 5

Laura stepped out of the crowded railway carriage onto the busy platform at London’s Waterloo Station, her valise clutched in her hand. Porters shouted over the blare of the whistle, and travelers hurried past her, striding every which way through the smoke and steam. They scarcely spared her a glance. It was a relief, really. She never felt entirely at ease venturing into the city, especially when unaccompanied.

She could think of only three occasions she’d done so in the past three years—once right after Papa’s death, and then twice more when Teddy’s health had necessitated that she appeal to Mr. Weatherwax for a larger allowance.

Harold P. Weatherwax was a distinguished solicitor in his middle forties. Their father had employed him to write contracts and other documents for the family business, as well as to draft his will. Weatherwax had been a young man then, with precious little legal experience. His services had come at a bargain. Now, however, he was a canny practitioner with a stable of clients far more important than the Hayes family—or so he claimed. It was the chief reason he was never at liberty to call on her in Lower Hawley.

She smoothed a hand over her dark blue traveling gown as she walked to the nearby cabstand. There, she hired a hansom to take her to Fleet Street. Mr. Weatherwax was expecting her at half past two. She had no time to spare.