From The Ashes (The Ministry of Curiosities #6)(70)

"I have," Lincoln said, sounding bored.

Seacombe gave him an appreciative look. "Shoot anything?"

"Yes."

"Lion? Elephant?"

"Englishman."

Seacombe lowered his glass. Some of the contents tipped onto the floor.

"He talked a lot," Lincoln went on. His face was as hard and blank as ever, but I knew he was mocking the fellow. "I found it annoying." He strolled away only to be hailed by Andrew Buchanan.

"Odd company you keep these days, Vickers," Seacombe muttered into his glass, his gaze following Lincoln.

"Not as odd as it used to be," Seth replied.

The dinner gong sounded and I silently thanked the staff for their excellent timing, freeing me from any more of Seacombe's banal chat. Or so I thought.

I ended up sitting next to him. Lady Vickers bent to my level as I sat. "I asked Mrs. Overton to put you beside Seacombe," she whispered. "I saw you two talking and I knew instantly that you ought to be seated together."

"I don't like him," I whispered back.

"Oh, I don't expect you to. He's an arrogant peacock. No, I sat you next to him to make Fitzroy jealous." She tapper my shoulder with her closed fan. "No need to thank me."

"So you're old Lady Vickers' companion, eh?" Seacombe said to me. "Quite an entertaining woman, that one. Careful you don't follow in her footsteps, though." He laughed. "Wouldn't want to find yourself the object of scandal and gossip."

"Mr. Seacombe, how much do you know about me?"

"I know your name."

I smiled and lifted my glass in a toast. "To scandal and gossip, then."

He shrugged and toasted too. "Tell me about yourself. What's your story? How did you get to become Lady Vickers' companion?"

"My mother died, my father disowned me, and I lived in the slums for five years until Mr. Fitzroy kidnapped me. Seth was already working for him, so when his mother returned to England, she came to live with us." I thanked the footman for placing my soup in front of me.

"Well then," Seacombe said with a sniff, "if you don't want to tell me, you only had to say. No need for sarcasm." He presented me with his back and fell into conversation with the woman on his other side.

The question came up again, however. Mrs. Overton, sitting all the way down at the other end of the table, called for silence to ask me. "Who are your parents, child?"

"They're dead." My blunt answer caused Lady Vickers to cough into her napkin, but it didn't put off Mrs. Overton.

"When did they die?"

I decided to tell her about my adopted parents, not my real ones. That real story was too complicated to go into. "My father only a few weeks ago, and my mother when I was thirteen."

She frowned. "Only a few weeks ago? But you've been at Lichfield Towers for months, have you not?"

"I have."

"Why not with your father?"

"Because he threw me out of the house when my mother died."

The collective intake of breath made the ensuing silence seem even louder.

"It's a complicated situation," Lady Vickers said, giving me a hard glare.

"But where did you live before Lichfield and after your father threw you out?"

"Here and there," I said.

"Where?"

"She was passed around between family and friends," Lady Vickers said quickly. "No one you know. All reputable people, of course, but not like us."

"In London?" Mrs. Overton asked.

"Yes," I said at the same time that Lady Vickers said, "No."

"Well, if they're in London, perhaps I have heard of them. Where do they live, these family and friends?"

Lady Vickers shot me another fierce glare that had me shutting my mouth before I rattled off the numerous slums I'd lived in before coming to Lichfield. It wasn't fair of me to thwart her efforts like this. It was important to her that I be accepted, and it would reflect badly on her if my true story got out. Her own reputation hung by a thread, and that thread could be chopped off if her peers knew she was championing a street rat who'd lived with boys for five years.

"Down south," Seth said. "Charlie has distant cousins in Cornwall."

Mrs. Overton eyeed me warily. "She doesn't have a Cornish accent."

"That's because she also has cousins up north," Lady Vickers said, "and in the east. Not the west, though, thank God. Her accent has been smoothed out with all the to-ing and fro-ing, going between cousins. It was no life for her, so when my own dear cousin told me of her plight, I decided to have her sent to Lichfield where I knew Seth would see that she settled."

Miss Yardly sniggered into her wine glass. One of the other girls colored. No doubt they were imagining all the ways Seth had helped me settle.

"She became my ward," Lincoln told them, his cold-as-ice voice stopping all giggles and blushes. "Seth asked me to take her in, so I did. If anyone thinks there's anything unseemly in that arrangement, feel free to discuss it with me outside."

Oh, Lincoln, resolving things with brute force again. To be fair, there was no way to avoid scandal. I was steeped in it. We all were. Lady Vickers was a fool to believe she could steer us clear of it. I hoped she wasn't too upset with how the evening was turning out. Seth had a female admirer on either side of him, and he seemed to be enjoying himself. She might salvage something from the disaster after all.