“Her name is Bliss Stafford McKenna,” Peony corrected, perhaps a bit petulantly. She wanted more than anything to see Jamie happy—he deserved it, after all he’d been through—but she had her reservations, too. He’d been besotted with another woman—Eleanor Kilgore, her name was—and look where that had gotten him.

“Is something wrong, Mrs. Ryan?” Michael asked presently.

Peony shook her head and then pulled off her bonnet, hanging it on a coat tree behind the counter. “There is an errand I’d like you to run, though. You don’t mind venturing down near the docks, do you?”

Michael swallowed visibly. “No, ma’am,” he lied.

Peony gave him her most dazzling smile. “Wonderful,” she replied. And then she told him who to find and what to say to them.

The end of the tram route was a dismal-looking place consisting of dim little shops, shoddy pubs, and old frame houses leaning against one another for support.

“You’ll have to pay again if you ain’t gettin’ off, lady,” the conductor said.

Bliss reached into her pocket for a ha’penny and paid the fare. It was very cold, and the tram was open to the frigid weather. “When will we be going back?” she asked.

“In an hour,” was the desultory reply.

Bliss shivered. “An hour?”

The conductor sighed. “Yes, miss,” he replied. “Must keep to the schedules, you know. There’s a tearoom over there, if you want to warm up and get a bite to eat.”

Mentally, Bliss counted what remained of the small amount of money she’d taken—borrowed—from Jamie. There wasn’t much, but she was hungry and, if she was any judge, far from Macomber Street.

She stood up and left the trolley. Following the conductor’s directions, Bliss found the tearoom and stepped gratefully in from the cold.

The small establishment was utterly plain in decor, but it looked clean. Bliss was relieved, having deduced from the condition of the neighborhood that this was not one of the better parts of the city.

Other customers crowded the place, and Bliss had to take an unladylike place at the end of the counter. A heavy woman huffed out of the kitchen and barked, “Name your poison, sweetie, I ain’t got all day.”

Bliss blinked. Apparently, she wasn’t going to get a chance to look at a menu. “H-how much is the soup?” she asked, after risking a sidelong glance at the bowl steaming in front of the man beside her. If it wasn’t too dear, she would have tea as well.

The woman named what Bliss thought was a reasonable price, and a bargain was struck. The soup, along with a cup of hot tea, appeared on the counter before her.

While Bliss ate, she listened in amazement to the good-natured abuse being exchanged by the cook and her customers. They called her Flossy, and beneath their barbs and her own was an undercurrent of coarse affection. Unprepossessing as that place was, Bliss felt strangely at home there.

The soup was good—spicy and brimming with fresh vegetables and bits of stewed chicken—and Bliss hardly noticed when the crowd began to thin out.