Chapter Two
Mordecai Black reached London as the clocks were striking noon. The streets were dusty and the traffic sluggish. The air trapped between the buildings had a fetid undertone. He drew the curricle to a halt outside the Golden Cross Inn, thrust the reins at his groom, and jumped down.
The inn’s yard thronged with porters and passengers, all of them hot and sweaty and irritable, but Mordecai had no difficulty traversing the crowd. People looked at him and prudently stepped aside.
The taproom was busy, the coffee room slightly less so. “Your master?” he asked a serving-man.
Mordecai followed the man’s directions and found the innkeeper in a stuffy back office, bent over a ledger, tallying rows of numbers.
“The stagecoach from Bath that arrived this morning . . . are any of the
