"I beg your pardon?" was all Darwin could manage at first.
The woman addressed Benedict with a complacent demeanor. "I have asked you more than enough times to stop calling me your aunt in public."
Benedict protested mildly. "Come now, technically this isn't public, not to mention the sun has already gone down."
Darwin looked between them, the corner of his mouth lifting despite himself, and allowed the exchange to pass without comment.
Still, the nature of their relation surprised him. 'Surely not by blood. Adopted, then… after what Benedict said, and the distinctness in their features. Ha… I would not have anticipated this,' he thought.
Marian had already turned her attention to a familiar thin metal tin from her coat. With an unreadable, half-lidded gaze, she shook out two cheroots. She struck a match and lit them both, placing one between her lips.
Her dark eyes drifted from Darwin's sweat-damp hair to the exposed skin at his open collar.
She took a slow draw and exhaled a plume of smoke before flicking away a bit of ash.
"He's quite bony. Are you certain he can handle your work?"
The blunt assessment had him glance toward Benedict, who appeared equally unsure how to answer.
"Ah—well," Benedict mumbled tentatively, "I was rather like this myself when I first joined."
Marian hummed with the cheroot between her lips. "Hmm. And you still are. Shall I assume you don't get too physical in your duties? Or do they not feed their registry clerks enough?"
'Registry clerks?' Darwin echoed inwardly.
Benedict pressed two fingers to the bridge of his nose and stifled a groan. "Maybe we could find a more relevant line of inquiry," he suggested.
Marian laughed in response, as she leaned further back against the brick wall.
After a moment, she leveled the glowing tip toward Darwin. "Tell me, Mr. Gabriel," she asked airily, "is shedding your clothes your usual method for escaping an unpleasant situation?"
Heat crept up the back of Darwin's neck.
Now that he was no longer being pursued, the audacity of his ruse struck him with full force.
Darwin cleared his throat. "To keep Marian from rushing me, I thought surprise might give me a moment. I can run, though not always the fastest, and loose clothing fares better in alleys."
As he spoke, he began to realize how truly absurd he must have appeared, like a wayward drunk tumbled from a brawl.
Marian arched a thin eyebrow.
Darwin met her gaze for a moment, then looked away.
Foolish or not, he'd done what he had to, given what he knew then.
Benedict stepped in with a reassuring pat on Darwin's back. "In fairness, I've seen worse plans. I'd rather someone attempt to escape a bind than lie down and surrender," he said charismatically.
Marian gave a noncommittal sniff and rubbed her temple with two fingers.
"Would you, truly?" she allowed, with little assurance.
Pushing away from the wall, the heel of her boot scraping against the cobbles, she added, "In any case, it's done. We've wasted enough time tonight."
Darwin passed a hand over his face and turned to go, only to falter after a few steps.
After a brief reconsideration, he addressed her again, "Before we officially part… would one of you mind explaining, just what I've been put through? Who are you, really, Miss Prentiss? Was this entire affair a fabrication?"
Marian exchanged a glance with Benedict.
Under the moonlight, Darwin caught a hint of weariness in her eyes, as though even she were tired of the pretense.
"This ought to spare us the longer explanation," she said jovially. "Though I imagine you don't require me to articulate what you've already deduced."
She sent it toward him, and Darwin set a foot forward, clasping it between his hands.
As he turned it over in his palms, Benedict appeared at his shoulder.
The matte silver insignia was circular, face engraved with a curved hemlock branch, buds set sparingly along it.
At the center, a shallow indentation was impressed into the metal like an empty socket.
On its back, there was only a tiny serial number, with a date beneath it.
The lack of any name or designation left him with little sense of who it might have belonged to in the first place.
"This wasn't… originally yours, I hope?" he ventured, glancing toward Marian.
The notion seemed unlikely. Marian hardly struck him as the probationary sort. Still, the absence of any inscription made him wonder whose hands it had last passed through.
Gabriel came most readily to mind, though even that was tenuous.
Surely each person would be issued their own insignia.
It might have made more sense had Gabriel been the one standing beside him instead of Benedict, though Gabriel, by all accounts, was presently occupied with the agency.
"Nonsense," Marian replied.
Smoke drifted from her lips. "Benedict had passed it to me. Thus, he likely hadn't planned on us all meeting again tonight."
Darwin frowned, giving the matter a second thought.
Benedict had given Marian this badge in advance, not knowing if he'd see Darwin at the end of the night himself.
'A contingency,' He realized. 'Better, in their minds, if it came from her. They truly hadn't left anything to chance.
But why the need for reassurance at all, if she served under the same authority?'
He turned the insignia over a few times between his fingers. "I hope I won't overstep by asking now—what is your place in all this, Miss Prentiss?"
"Marian Prentiss is exactly who I said I was," she answered with a shrug. "Beyond that, I fear the truth is rather dull. I teach the arts. Everything else you were told was close enough to the truth."
Benedict folded his arms before offering Darwin a clearer explanation. "Marian's connection to us is… indirect. She and Gabriel grew up in the same household, as he's her foster brother."
"I suspected as much when you called her 'Aunt'. You mentioned that Gabriel has no blood siblings."
'Albeit, she must have picked up something from Gabriel,'he mused,'if only by proximity.'
He was on the verge of inquiring why a civilian had been drawn into matters of such an irregular nature at all when Marian joined again, as if the question had already occurred to her.
Yes, but our having grown up together was not why I was asked to take part.
Two months ago, Gabriel wrote to me and asked for my assistance with what he called an 'artistic analysis,' saying he required a painter's eye for a matter he found rather unusual."
Marian waved a hand in idle dismissal, "At first, I took it for one of his customary academic pursuits. Until the same paintings began to appear in the newspapers, mentioned in connection with a series of killings; you may recall the university that sent its students away last month."
"It was not something the town was inclined to let rest," Benedict remarked, shaking his head.
Darwin frowned slightly, lowering his gaze.
Paintings did not come to mind. Instead, there were the reports he had read and reread in the course of his work.
Murders of that sort were uncommon in his part of the city; thus, when they occurred, they seldom vanished after a single printing.
There had been one such report that concerned a university exhibition hall, where three professors were found deceased, but whoever had written it offered little beyond their academic credentials.
Darwin made a doubtful expression before responding tentatively, "I do remember hearing about those murders."
Marian flicked the spent cheroot into the gutter, leaned against the wall, and released a long sigh. "Once I made the connection, I went to Gabriel," she explained. "He admitted he'd been approached to assist a private investigative bureau that dealt mostly among the gentry. They wanted a second opinion for their own, which, I imagine, is why I was instructed to keep the matter to myself."
"Not long after, he came back with another request," Marian smirked as she assessed Darwin. "He needed someone to stand in for a recruitment."
She gestured idly toward the surrounding buildings, offering it in lieu of words.
Benedict inclined his head, continuing where she left off. "Gabriel was reluctant to involve our colleagues or to draw attention beyond the agency. Either would have made matters more difficult."
He paused for a moment, then said, "Marian was the least likely to cause trouble, as she knew how to press a matter without trying to tilt it to her own ends."
As Darwin listened, the questions that had been stirring in his mind gradually receded.
His attention settled instead on a single, lingering detail: Marian had known more about him than she did of her own relatives' professions, which had been the first indication that she was not merely guessing.
Darwin let out a humorless sound and finally spoke, "So you know even less of the situation than I do."
"Quite," Marian hummed. "I know what I've told you, and I'm content to leave it there. I agreed to help Gabriel with this, not to entangle myself further."
Darwin stilled the silver seal in his palm and closed his fingers around it. "And your remark about Gabriel's gloves—am I to take that as another half-truth?"
Marian wiped a corner of her eye. "Meh, he takes them off at home, most often because they're a nuisance when he eats or writes. Though I've merely noticed a few times in public that he avoids direct contact."
"I can attest to that," Benedict agreed. "We once had business at a rather lively establishment. Gabriel spent the better part of the evening sidestepping familiar hands. By the end of it, he seemed equally prepared to faint or to strike someone."
'How ironic is that?' Darwin inwardly scoffed at his comment.
He had never been particularly inclined toward such familiarity, and it had never carried him so far.
Marian hummed again and, without warning, reached into her coat.
For a moment, Darwin assumed she meant to retrieve yet another smoke.
Instead, she drew out a scarf, a pair of gloves, and a folded coat. She crossed the short distance to him with unhurried steps and laid them across his arm.
He had nearly forgotten where he'd left them, propped against the wall of an abandoned building, and regarded the items with slight surprise.
He had not expected her to leave her hand there; Marian leaned closer until her hair grazed his neck, and she murmured in his ear.
"If concealment were to be your foremost concern, you would have been wiser to mind it before Gabriel ever took notice of you."