I sat back against the silk cushioning. “A bit too whispery for my liking,” I finally said. The genuine madness I had encountered at the Bothwell House asylum had been heartbreakingly loud and in no part pretty.

I had instructed John Driver to take the long way around Covent Garden, and before long we were progressing up Bow Street. As we waited to turn into Hart Street, Julia leaned forward in her seat to look at the street behind us, her gaze intense. I twisted back to see what had caught her attention. Ah, the Bow Street Magistrates’ Court, its colonnaded portico abuzz with all types entering and exiting. Bow Street was always open.

“I wonder if he is in there,” I said blandly.

“I am sure I do not know what you mean,” she returned primly.

I did not follow up on my comment. It seemed Julia was not open to discussing either her health or Mr. Kent.

Before long we turned into King Street. The dwellings and shop fronts were small and the pavements busy with gentlemen on their way, no doubt, to the nearby pleasures of Covent Garden and the ladies from Harris’s List who worked there. On one corner, a balladeer sang for pennies, a small group clustered around him, and the patrons of a gin shop had spilled out onto the road, yelling their own raucous songs. We turned into the wider part of Bedford Street and I rapped upon the wall for John Driver to slow our momentum.

“What are we looking for?” Julia asked, peering out her window at the passing frontages.

A good question. The street was ill-lit and I did not want to draw attention by ordering Samuel to walk alongside with a lamp. “I’m not sure. Something that looks like a gentlemen’s club.”

Julia looked back at me with eyebrows raised. “And what exactly would that look like?”

I had no answer, of course—neither of us had ever been near St. James’s Street to view the elite gentlemen’s clubs. To do so would have been social death.

John Driver kept the horses at walking pace as we progressed down the street. On my side of the carriage, some establishments had light in the windows, some did not, but none of them gave any clue as to whether they housed a club of dubious activities.

“Anything on your side?” I asked Julia.

“I have no idea,” Julia said.

I rapped on the wall and called out, “Stop!” The carriage drew to a halt near the corner of Maiden Lane.

“Perhaps it is up ahead,” I said, peering into the final section of the street, which looked too narrow for our town carriage to pass.