Read Chapter 5: First Night in the City

The hackney cab stank of coal smoke and wet wool, but Nell scarcely noticed. She pressed her gloved palm against the ticking of her borrowed coat—a clerk’s coat, too long in the sleeves, borrowed from a costermonger’s stall near the docks for a shilling and a promise—and felt the flat weight of her column folded against her ribs. She had written it by candlelight while Aunt Prudence snored in the next room, scratching out her thoughts on the nature of railway speculation with a confidence she did not feel.

The cab lurched to a halt at the mouth of an alley too narrow for its wheels. Nell paid the driver, stepped down, and pulled the brim of her cap low over her brow. The streets of Cheapside were quieter than the West End, but not silent. A few stragglers hurried past carrying lanterns. A woman laughed somewhere above, behind a half-drawn curtain. The smell of tallow and spoiled fish hung in the air.

She found the shop by its sign—a faded griffin painted over with peeling gold letters: SILAS GRUBB, FINE MONEY & EXCHANGE. The windows were dark, but a sliver of light bled through the blinds.

Nell knocked twice, then once more, as Lord Wexham had instructed. A bolt scraped. The door opened a crack, revealing a rheumy eye.

“Grubb’s closed,” a voice croaked.

“I’m here on behalf of Lord Wexham,” Nell said, keeping her voice low and flat. “I’ve come to collect a letter.”

The eye narrowed. The door opened wider. Silas Grubb was a thin, stooped man with a face like a crumpled ledger. He gestured her inside, locking the door behind her. The shop was cluttered with ledgers, boxes of stock certificates, and a single gas lamp that hissed and flickered over a cluttered desk.

“Wexham, eh?” Grubb shuffled behind the desk. “You’re younger than I expected. Who are you?”

“A clerk,” Nell said. “Mr. Wexham sends his regards and requires the letter without delay.”

Grubb grunted. He unlocked a drawer in his desk and drew out a thick envelope, yellowed at the edges, sealed with a smear of red wax. Nell’s heart quickened. Her father’s seal—a broken W encircled by a laurel—was pressed into the wax.

“Sign for it,” Grubb said, sliding a ledger toward her.

Nell picked up the pen. The ink was thick, the nib sharp. She hesitated. The ledger demanded a name. She wrote *J. Ellery* in a cramped, neat hand. The letters looked foreign even to her—her own alias, her own mask. She had signed her column that way for two years, but she had never written it in ink before, in public, in a room where someone might connect it to anything other than a fictional clerk.

Grubb squinted at the signature. “Ellery, is it? You’re new. Where did Wexham find you?”

“The counting house,” Nell said, improvising. “I’ve been with him a week.”

Grubb tilted his head. His eyes traveled from her face to her shoulders to her boots. Nell fought the urge to cross her arms.

“Bit delicate, aren’t you?” He smirked. “For a counting clerk.”

“I’ve been ill,” she said curtly. “Is that all?”

Grubb scratched his chin. For a long moment, he said nothing. The gas lamp hissed. Nell could feel the seconds stretching, each one a thread pulled taut. If he noticed her hands were too small, her jaw too soft—

“There’s the matter of the fee,” Grubb said at last.

“Wexham said the fee was settled.”

“Wexham said a great many things.” Grubb leaned forward. “Five pounds for storage. You don’t get the letter without it.”

Nell’s stomach dropped. She had three pounds, four shillings, and a handful of pennies in her pocket. Barely enough for cab fare back to Mayfair, let alone a bribe.

“I wasn’t informed—” she started.

Grubb shrugged and pocketed the envelope. “Then inform him. Come back tomorrow with the coin.”

He turned toward the desk, dismissing her. Nell’s mind raced. She couldn’t come back. Tomorrow, Clara was due to arrive with Lady Pennington’s dressmaker, and the day after was the Fentons’ ball. And every day she delayed, Wexham could press the debt higher, could expose her father’s name to ruin—

She thought of the pearls she had hidden beneath her mattress. Small, but real. Worth five pounds, maybe. Could she pawn them before dawn?

No. The shops wouldn’t open until morning, and she couldn’t risk being seen at a pawnbroker’s.

“Mr. Grubb,” she said, her voice steady despite her pulse hammering. “I have something of value in my coat. It’s not money, but I believe you’ll find it worth more than five pounds.”

Grubb turned, his eyebrows raised. Nell reached into her coat and withdrew a folded copy of the *Financial Weekly—*the most recent issue, containing Mr. Ellery’s column on railway speculation. She had brought it as a decoy, something to make her look like a genuine clerk. Now she pressed it forward.

“An early edition,” she said. “Containing market intelligence that hasn’t been published yet.”

Grubb’s eyes gleamed. He took the paper, unfolded it, and scanned the page. His lips moved as he read. When he looked up, there was something sharper in his gaze.

“You know Ellery’s correspondence?” He tapped the column. “This is arranged different. Cleaner. Reprint?”

“I know someone who works with him,” Nell said carefully. “This is the corrected draft.”

Grubb studied her for a long moment. Then, with a grunt, he reached into his coat and pulled out the envelope. “Fine. But if this is a fake, I’ll have Wexham’s hide.”

He handed it over. Nell tucked the envelope into her coat, beneath her column, her heart pounding so loudly she was certain he could hear it.

“Good evening,” she said, turning for the door.

“Ellery,” Grubb called out. She froze. “If you ever need work, come see me. Men who can read the market are worth their weight in gold.”

Nell nodded once, unlocked the door, and slipped out into the alley. The cold air hit her like a blow. She leaned against the wall, breathing hard, the envelope pressed against her heart. She had done it. She had the letter.

And then a familiar voice cut through the dark.

“Out late, aren’t you?”

Nell’s blood went cold. She turned, slowly.

The Duke of Ashworth stood at the mouth of the alley, cloaked in a heavy greatcoat, a scarf muffling the lower half of his face. His dark eyes glittered in the lamplight. He was dressed like a merchant—no signet ring, no silver-tipped cane—but there was no mistaking the arrogant tilt of his head.

“You don’t look like a moneylender’s usual clientele,” he said, stepping closer. “Not at this hour.”

Nell’s throat tightened. She couldn’t speak, couldn’t move. Her disguise would not hold—he had seen her at the soiree, studied her hands, her face. If he recognized her—

“You have the wrong man,” she said, deepening her voice, pitching it low and rough. She kept her face angled toward the shadows. “I’m just a clerk, on errand business. Grubb’s a difficult sort, but his rates are fair.”

Ashworth laughed. It was a short, humorless sound. “I know Grubb. And he doesn’t do errand business for anyone worth less than a hundred pounds.” He tilted his head, studying her. “A clerk, you say.”

“And what are you?” Nell shot back, desperate to deflect. “A gentleman thieving through Cheapside in the dark?”

Ashworth’s eyes narrowed. Something flickered across his face—interest, suspicion, perhaps a grudging amusement.

“A man investigating a fraud,” he said. “One I believe Grubb has a hand in. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

Nell’s pulse roared in her ears. If he was investigating Grubb, he might know about the letter. He might know about Wexham. And if he recognized her—

She took a step backward. “I know nothing,” she said. “I want no trouble.”

“Trouble finds you, in Cheapside, at night.” He took another step forward. “You say you’re a clerk. Which firm?”

“I’m new,” she said. “Seton & Grey, in Lombard Street.”

Ashworth’s face betrayed nothing. He reached out—she flinched—and grasped the collar of her coat. For one terrible moment, she thought he would tear it off, expose her entirely.

Instead, he tugged at the lapel, examining the fabric. “Good wool,” he murmured. “Oversized. Fits like a hand-me-down.” He let go. “New clerks usually wear their own threadbare coats.”

“I bought it secondhand.”

“From a coster?”

“Why do you care?”

For a long moment, Ashworth said nothing. His eyes swept over her—face, hands, boots. Nell cursed the delicate cut of her nails, the impractical satin slippers she had worn beneath the trousers rather than face the indignity of men’s footwear against bare skin.

“Your hands,” he said quietly. “Calluses on the thumb and forefinger. From writing, isn’t it?”

Nell’s blood turned to ice.

“And your mouth—,” he continued.

“I haven’t got time for riddles,” she interrupted, feeling the night closing in around her. She darted sideways, brushing past him. He turned, but she was already moving.

“I’ll find you,” he called after her. “If you lie to me again, clerk, I’ll dig deeper.”

Nell didn’t stop. She raced through the alley, out onto the broader street, not daring to look back. She hailed a cab, threw herself inside, and only when the driver had cracked his whip and the wheels began to turn did she allow herself to breathe.

She stared at her shaking hands—at the writer’s calluses Ashworth had so casually noted. He had nearly unmasked her in the space of a minute.

And he had promised to dig.

Eleanor pulled the letter from her coat but didn’t open it. She couldn’t, not yet. Her fingers traced her father’s seal, and the words of her mother’s final letter echoed in her memory.

*Trust no one in the City. Not even family.*

The cab rattled toward Mayfair, and Nell stared into the darkness, feeling the Duke of Ashworth’s eyes still on her skin like a brand.