Móirín’s levity had given way to concern. “I asked you this morning, but I’m asking again—are you in too much danger to be in that area?”

She didn’t have a sure answer. Daylight hours were safer, generally. The right eyes on a place helped too. “Does that bobby chum of yours, Parkington, patrol that area every day, or was seeing him today an oddity?”

“I don’t know where he usually patrols,” Brogan said.

“I’m glad I don’t,” Móirín added.

In a whisper clearly meant to be overheard, Brogan said to the rest of the table, “Methinks she doth protest too much, yeah?”

Móirín shook her head firmly. “That constable’s like a dog at a bone when he smells anything questionable. Some of us’d rather our particular bones be left in peace.”

Weren’t that the truth.

Baz took Gemma’s hand, quite unexpectedly offering the comfort she desperately needed. But her heart couldn’t survive breaking again.

She stood, knowing her anxiousness made her about as graceful as a cow in a field full of badger holes. “I’m needing just a few minutes to myself. I’ll come back to help wash up, though.”

She’d reached the sitting room door when the sound of footsteps stopped her. Baz had followed her.

“Tell me to take myself off if you want me to,” he said, “but you’ve seemed upset since spotting me here. Have I done something to upset you, Gemma?”

“You ain’t.”

He closed the distance between them, standing directly in front of her. “Something has upset you.”

“I’ve too many thoughts rattling around. I needed a bit of quiet to sort them out.”

“Are any of those thoughts ones I could address?”

There were several, but she couldn’t ask some of them. “Do you trust Parkington? You seemed to be keeping a distance between him and me at the CALL effort.”

He leaned against the doorframe. “I wasn’t certain if he would recognize you or what he’d say if he did. But if I didn’t trust him at all, I’d either have found a means of sending him away or would’ve begged you to cry off that day.” A tiny hint of East End flavor had snuck back into his words.

“If you told him the Kincaids had done something on Welbeck Street, and if you told him to keep his peepers peeled for ash markings on buildings, do you think he’d watch that area?”

“I’m certain he would.”

Some of the worry on her heart eased. A blue-bottle stomping the street would make it safer.