Contrary to the myth at Wentworth and Penrose, Ellie could not ingest facts and figures without limit. She was sharpest and most efficient when she alternated careful work with periods of quiet reflection. If the weather was pleasant, she left the bank for a time at midday.

The excuse of record was to tend to errands, but her real agenda was to clear her head. She would sit watching pigeons in a public square or wander market stalls at the nearest fashionable arcade. Polite society provided an endless, fascinating pageant to a woman who’d come of age intimately acquainted with life in the slums.

An entire afternoon spent with His Grace of Elsmore had exceeded Ellie’s tolerance for new information, and thus she was pre-occupied on her way home.

His Grace wore the fiction of a heedless aristocrat well. The elegantly whimsical nosegay on his lapel, the gold pin in his lacy cravat—not a rearing stallion, but a rearing unicorn. The small talk strewn about during what should have been a purely business meeting.

He was not an idle, stupid bore, more’s the pity.

“Have you missed me, long lost dearest Eleanora?”

Ellie marched on without stumbling, barely, despite the tall young man who’d appropriated the place at her elbow. Jack was a clerk today, blending seamlessly with all the other clerks and shopgirls hurrying home to their suppers. He wore a lanky, slightly rumpled mien, his signature good nature beaming from his blue eyes. His dark hair was longish, but clean and recently combed.

“Throughout all of creation,” Ellie replied, “down through the mists of antiquity and forward into the dimly perceivable future of the race, I have not nor will I ever miss you.”

“What a gift you have for the understated endearment.” Jack tipped his hat to a lady in a fancy bonnet, and of course, she smiled back at him.

“What a gift you have for showing up where you’re not welcome.”

He kept up with her easily. Ellie could not outrun him, could not scold him into slinking off to the back alleys and stews where he belonged. Jack knew well how to appear respectable, usually the better to behave with complete disregard for the law.

“Some thanks I get for my tender concern, Eleanora. One would think we were strangers.”

“One wishes we were strangers. What do you want, Jack?” Other than to remind Ellie that she would never be free of the past. Jack and Mick left her in peace just long enough that she began to hope, and then they pounced.

“I seek only to brighten my day with the merest glimpse of your countenance, dear cousin. To reassure myself that the object of my concern yet thrives, despite the distance between us.”