Three hours and at least a pint of tea later, Miriam stepped down from a hackney carriage outside the imposing revolving doors of the Brighton Hotel. Behind her, the driver grunted as he heaved her small trunk down from the luggage rack—“if you’re going to try to pass in polite society you’ll need one, no lady of quality would travel without at least a change of day wear and her dinner dress,” Burgeson had told her as he gave her the trunk—“and you need to be at least respectable enough to book a room.” Even if the trunk had been pawned by a penniless refugee and cluttered up a pawnbroker’s cellar for a couple of years, it looked like luggage.

“Thank you,” Miriam said as graciously as she could, and tipped the driver a sixpence. She turned back to the door to see a bellhop already lifting her trunk on his handcart. “I say! You there.”

The concierge at the front desk didn’t turn his nose up at a single woman traveling alone. The funereal outfit Burgeson had scared up for her seemed to forbid all questions, especially after she had added a severe black cap and a net veil in place of her previous hat. “What does milady require?” he asked politely.

“I’d like to take one of your first-class suites. For myself. I travel with no servants, so room service will be required. I will be staying for at least a week, and possibly longer while I seek to buy a house and put the affairs of my late husband in order.” I hope Erasmus wasn’t stringing me along about getting hold of a new identity, she thought.

“Ah, by all means. I believe room fourteen is available, m’lady. Perhaps you would like to view it? If it is to your satisfaction…”

“I’m sure it will be,” she said easily. “And if it isn’t you’ll see to it, I’m sure, won’t you? How much will it be?”

He stiffened slightly. “A charge of two pounds and eleven shillings a night applies for room and board, ma’am,” he said severely.

“Hmm.” She sucked on her lower lip. “And for a week? Or longer?”

“I believe we could come down from that a little,” he said, less aggressively. “Especially if provision was made in advance.”

“Two a night.” Miriam palmed a huge, gorgeously colored ten-pound note onto the front desk and paused. “Six shillings on top for the service.”

The concierge smiled and nodded at her. “Then it will be an initial four nights?” he asked.

“I will pay in advance, if I choose to renew it,” she replied tonelessly. Bastard, she thought angrily. Erasmus had primed her with the hotel’s rates. Two pounds flat was the norm for a luxury suite: This man was trying to soak her. “If it’s satisfactory,” she emphasized.