Helpless with excitement, Mosca wriggled to the edge of her seat, leaning out through the window for a better view. To the east and the west rose two spires, the city stretched between them. Behind a long piecrust of crumbling wall clustered a mosaic of roofs, and a great dome that seemed in the dull light to be as glossy and ethereal as a soap bubble. To the west along the waterside unfinished ships bared rib cages of stripped wood to the sky. The creak and crack of the shipyard was as faint as a cricket orchestra.

The wind roared with an estuary freshness. It carried the smell of sand flats and sea poppies, and the pale wails of wading birds, and the clammy, silver-eyed dreams of fish. Although she had never known the coastlands, Mosca felt with a thrill that somewhere beyond the edge of sight the ocean hugged its unthinkable deeps and dragged its tides in shrug after monumental shrug.

The carriage reached the end of the bridge, and now the tallest buildings Mosca had ever seen flanked the road. Evening had swallowed their black timbers and left their white plaster faces floating in the air like flags. To Mosca it seemed that they must in some fashion belong to the lady in the white dress, for they too were white. The gleaming white sails on the river had to belong to the lady. The fat white moon, sitting on a sliver of cloud like a clot of cream on the blade of a knife, had to belong to the lady.

“Tell the driver where you would like to be set down, Mr. Clent,” remarked Lady Tamarind.

“I believe our, ah, friends reside in East Straddle Street, my lady.” The carriage steered around a squabble of hansoms and took a riverside road, the gleam of water occasionally visible between the buildings.

At last it drew up alongside a shuttered shop. Unwillingly Mosca let Clent guide her out onto the street.

“Your Ladyship, the, ah, the, ah, letter . . .”

“. . . will be sent to you at these lodgings shortly.” There was a chill finality in the childlike tones as the porcelain face faded behind the curtain. The carriage lurched back into motion. Clent, hiding his disappointment, turned to knock at the door of the shop.

Mosca stared up at the hanging sign above the door. It depicted a man’s hand clasping that of a woman.

“Mr. Clent . . . why we stoppin’ at a marriage house?”

Before Clent could answer, the door was opened by a man as squat as a pepper pot, wearing the broad-brimmed hat of a chaplain and an expression that seemed to be a compromise between piety and a suppressed sneeze. A few whispered words from Clent, however, and the man’s face broke into a broad badger’s grin, revealing a fine array of caramel-colored teeth.