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ignored it as she would have an audible belch in Church. All of Lord Halfdene’s daughters – Lydia’s mother included, Lydia recalled – gave the impression of living solely on moonbeams and wild strawberries, and regarded their brother’s stout wife and her pottery-manufacturing family as unmentionably gross. ‘One regrets seeing the spectacle matchmaking society mamas make, scrambling after a title, no matter what sort of man it’s pasted to.’
    Isobel turned bright pink.
    Grippen is wealthy.
Jamie had told her that master vampires would create fledglings in part to gain control of their estates … of the hidey-holes and safety that money would bring. And even the most modest of investments, he had once remarked, would accrue a startling amount of interest if left to mature for three hundred and fifty years …
    That kind of wealth could buy a guard for a woman and child, and no questions asked. Even as it would buy herself – with luck – the addresses of total strangers who’d brought large trunks into England last December.
    Oh, Miranda, I’m sorry
.
    She thought of her child …
Where? In an attic? In a cellar?
Nan would never abandon her tiny charge, but Lydia could easily imagine Nan trying to figure out a way to escape with the child, and the possibility turned her cold inside.
    Down a drainpipe, across a roof, carrying Miranda in her arms
…
    STOP IT THIS MINUTE! They’re all right. They’ll be all right
…
    â€˜â€¦ won’t you, Lydia dearest?’
    Aunt Isobel was regarding her expectantly.
    â€˜I’ll certainly try.’ Lydia wondered what she’d just let herself in for.
    â€˜Excellent!’ Isobel beamed. ‘I’ll let your Aunt Lavinnia know. Now you’d best be going, if you’re to be at Worth’s by two.’
    Somehow, Lydia made it through the day. When she returned to the hotel in Blomfield Street to change clothes (‘What your mother would say,’ deplored Aunt Harriet in parting, ‘if she knew any daughter of hers was riding in a common hack …’) she crossed to the nearby Commercial Hotel in Finsbury Circus that was one of her three accommodation addresses, thanking James for everything he’d taught her about what the Department politely called ‘tradecraft’. Two telegrams from Ellen awaited her, sent at noon, and at three.
    No communication from James. Nothing from Rome.
    She telegraphed back that she would be staying in London for the night, and would Ellen please send to this address a parcel with clean linen, her plum-colored walking-suit (
Is it too late in the season for plum?
), her black-and-apricot Paquin suit (
Let’s be on the safe side
), the apricot velvet hat with the heron feathers, the black straw hat with the white flowers (
Does that really go with the plum?
), the black suede Gibson shoes, the Cuban-heeled pumps, the black-and-ivory pumps, another bottle of rosewater and glycerin, four pairs of white silk stockings and her white kid gloves. (
Oh, dear, that looks like rather a lot
…)
    At the Christian Railway Hotel on the opposite side of the Circus, she picked up Mr Teazle’s first installment of shipping notes, and Mr McClennan’s information about which vampire nests had changed hands since 1907. Slender packets enough, but she guessed she wouldn’t be sleeping tonight.
    Dinner at Aunt Lavinnia’s – known as Lady Peasehall to London society at large – and then the Opera, in ostentatious celebration of the engagement of Lord Colwich to his American heiress (Lady Crossford had been to school with Aunt Lavinnia and they were still bosom-bows). That meant having to borrow a dress from Emily, which entailed a long argument with Aunt Isobel (‘You can’t borrow that one, it’s for the Crossfords’ ball next week … Oh, not the rose silk either; Lady Varvel is sure to be at the Opera –