Finsbury, where Baz lived, was finer than where she’d laid her head in the years before marrying him and in the years since they’d parted ways. She was finally leaving behind those seedier streets.

“Do you think you’ll—think you’ll ever stop wandering the world?” he asked.

Her partial smile grew to an amused grin. “I’ve never left London and the surrounding area, let alone seen all the world.”

“But I suspect you’d like to.” He had the loveliest smile, but he so seldom let it out to play. Seeing it in that moment wrapped around her like a blanket.

“At the moment,” she said, “I’m happy as peaches to be here.”

“And I’m glad you came so quickly.”

“You are?” Could he see how much that meant to her? How much she’d needed to hear what he was finally ready to say? She found herself leaning toward him.

Instead of drawing closer to her, he rose and paced a bit away. “There was an oddity attached to a fire a few days ago, and I’m hopeful you can shed a little light on it.”

He meant to gab about a fire? Three years of waiting on the words she’d longed for, and he was leading off with gossip? Still, it was something. And something was a heap more than she’d had in a long time.

“I don’t know a thing about fires,” she warned, angling back into her chair.

He shook his head. “It’s not about the fire itself but the people who died in it.” So many doctors grew cold to death and dying, speaking of it as if it mattered little. Not Baz. “No one can sort the mystery of what happened to them after they were buried.”

After they were buried. Her stomach dropped to her toes. “You suspect they were resurrected?”

“I’m certain they were, but I can’t sort out why. What use or value would two badly burned bodies be to a resurrectionist?”

She took a calming breath, though her tension didn’t ease. “Talkin’ about the family trade don’t give me pleasure. I ain’t proud to be a Kincaid.”

“I would never ask you to offer detailed recountings.” He turned to look at her. “I—I am merely hopeful that you might have some insights into possible motivation.”

Gemma swallowed the bile that rose in her throat. She hated that this was her heritage. “All resurrection men are motivated by the same thing: profit.”

“Money?”

“Usually. Sometimes it’s making or filling a debt. But most times, it’s boodle, brass. Money talks louder than most anything to a resurrectionist. And they don’t do anything out of charity.” If her no-good father had taught her anything, it was that resurrection men like him never plied their trade for selfless reasons.