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ain’t it? Peelers in Whitechapel are tremendously friendly fellows. I reckon it’s because I respect them so. I make sure Neddie never charges a single one for his pints. But that’s business sense for you!
    *    *   *
    â€œThis one’s beyond repair, I fear.”
    â€œDon’t tell me that.” Catherine stood at a worktable in the basement of Everleigh’s, where she had spent the last hour gently chafing mastic resin across a begrimed canvas—a fine way to work out the frustration she felt. Or was it panic? The letter from Mr. O’Shea had left her livid and shaken at once.
    What had she been thinking, to correspond with such a ruffian? She knew him only through his niece, Lilah, who had served as Catherine’s assistant before her unexpected marriage to Lord Palmer. O’Shea was a notorious figure, a crime lord who controlled the roughest parts of the East End. What passing fit of lunacy hadcompelled her to look to him for help? She prayed he had burned her letters. If circulated, they could ruin her.
    Then again, ruin was already rushing in upon her. Her brother had dismissed the accounting services of Wattier & Company; there was nobody to watch what he did with the company finances now. He continued to press Mr. Pilcher’s suit upon her, and last night, he had been waiting at home with the family solicitor, who had explained that she had no grounds on which to contest Peter’s plan of sale unless she married very quickly and thereby came into the directorship.
    So, she had looked into Mr. Pilcher. He was a landlord of middling rank, whose family was too undistinguished to promote Peter’s political interests. The cause of Peter’s fondness must lie elsewhere. If she married Pilcher, she had no doubt that he would oppose her right to work here, and find some way to prevent her from overruling Peter’s decisions, as well as his own.
    She released a slow breath, then surveyed the painting. The original varnish had crumbled now. She picked up her badger-hair brush, brushing away a spot in the center of the painting to reveal the wonder beneath. It lightened her mood a little. “Look here, Batten. Do you mean to give up on that ?”
    Batten grunted. “Three centuries of being mopped with soap and water—”
    â€œWe can fix it.” The painting was Italianate in style—not in fashion, at present, but what did she care for fashion? Truecollectors would recognize genius when they saw it. Her responsibility was to make them look. “Do you see her face?” In the center of the dark tableau, Saint Teresa was being pierced by the angel’s spear. She cast her eyesskyward, her expression balanced between the great agony of torture, and the desperate hope of heavenly respite.
    Frowning, Batten adjusted his wire spectacles. Some of the other employees, particularly the ignorant girls whom Peter employed as hostesses to flatter the clientele, called him “The Gnome.” He was, indeed, unusually squat and boxy, with a tangle of gray curls that resisted even the thickest pomade.
    But Catherine had known him since her girlhood. When she looked at him now, she barely noticed the misshapen hump of his shoulders, or the fierce jut of his brow. Instead she beheld a man of great knowledge, able to restore paintings from centuries of abuse—and to answer with endless patience all the silly questions she had posed him as a child, when other employees had only waited until her father’s back was turned to roll their eyes and dismiss her.
    She held her breath now for his verdict. She must not contaminate it with her own hopes. Business did not allow for foolish romanticism.
    â€œI need more light,” he told her.
    She went to fetch a candle from the shelf. The basement was a stupid place to have moved Batten’s workshop, but Peter had insisted on expanding the public rooms. He did not consider restoration to be