Page 9 of A Silence in Belgrave Square (Below Stairs #8)

The fellow after me was sharp. He slowed outside the passage I’d slipped into and peered around its corner, perhaps making certain he was not walking into an ambush.

I left the shadows and stepped into his path.

“It’s rare that I catch you out,” I told the towering youth. “Why are you following me, James? Couldn’t you simply walk with me?”

James McAdam, Daniel’s son, grinned down at me.

He was several inches taller than Daniel now, his voice deep, his handsome face guaranteeing many ladies would break their hearts over him.

At nineteen, he was fully a man now, and who knew how long it would be before he announced he’d marry a lady he’d charmed?

“Sorry, Mrs.H.” James leaned his lanky frame against the wall where I’d hidden. “Dad’s asked me to look after you while he’s away. I’ve taken over much of his delivery route for him, so I have to watch you when I can.”

“Oh, did he just?” I asked in indignation, but I could not be surprised. Daniel was as concerned about me as I was about him, though I considered his danger to be far greater than mine. “I have been looking after myself for many years, thank you.”

James flushed but was not defeated. “It’s all my life’s worth to tell him I won’t do it. Besides, I want to make certain you’re well too.”

It was kind of him, and I climbed down from my pridefulness. “You are good to me, James, but you can call on me in the usual way, you know.”

“True, but when you wander through the metropolis on your own, who knows how many cutpurses and ruffians might mean you harm? I already warned one pickpocket away.”

My face heated in some embarrassment. I was usually keen-eyed, but I’d been distracted by worry for Daniel and these odd letters, plus eager to get on to see Grace, and hadn’t noticed.

“I am grateful,” I said with sincerity. “I am hardly wandering about the metropolis, though perhaps not paying as much attention as I ought. It is Monday, so you know I am walking with purpose to Cheapside.”

“I’ll go with you then, all right?”

I clasped James’s offered arm, which I noted had changed from a bony boy’s to a man’s solid limb in the few years I’d known him. He made me feel quite aged.

“I do welcome your company, James,” I told him. “And not only to keep the ruffians away.”

“Always my pleasure, Mrs.H.” He meant it, the good lad.

We returned to Oxford Street and strolled companionably toward Holborn. People pressed around us, everyone hurrying to be someplace different.

“Do you hear anything from your father?” I asked as we went.

James bent to catch my words, then shook his head. “Not since he started his mission. He had a chat with me before he went and told me he’d be having one with you too. Said I wasn’t to come nigh, that it would be too dangerous for me, and for him,” he finished in frustration.

“He told me the same.” I debated whether to confess to James about Hannah, but though I trusted him, I decided I could help Hannah best by keeping my knowledge of her secret, at least for now.

“I do not like it, I am not ashamed to say,” I continued.

“Daniel closeted with someone who might be the devil himself, and he uncertain which person is the fiend.”

“That’s not to say I haven’t gone.” James flashed me a defiant look. “No one notices me when I don’t want them to.” His grin returned. “Except you.”

“Because I’m wise to your ways.” I tightened my hold on his arm. “What have you found out?”

James glanced cautiously around us. While I doubted the harried wives and housekeepers, grooms and valets, who rushed about on their own business, planned to overthrow the queen and her cabinet, one never knew with spies.

Many at Scotland Yard were aware that Daniel and I had a close friendship, and some villains must have that information as well.

Likewise, most of London knew James was Daniel’s son.

We’d reached High Holborn, and I tugged James to the side of the road. “Let us find a hansom, and you can regale me as we ride.”

James agreed. I prepared to make for the nearest hansom stand, but James stepped into the street and let out a shrill whistle.

The blast cut through the din of traffic, making people stop and turn.

Some scowled at him, but others smiled at the handsome James, who waved at the nearest cabbie.

He was so like his father that tears briefly stung my eyes.

A hansom with a black-coated, high-stepping horse made its way to us. Daniel often used a cabbie called Lewis to help him move about town—and had told him to transport me several times—but this driver was not he. Still, he recognized James.

“How are you, lad?” the man called from his perch behind the seats. “Where to?”

“Cheapside,” James said. “I’ll signal ye where to stop.”

“Right you are.”

Before I could offer the fare, James tossed a coin to the cabbie, then assisted me into the hansom as though I were a highborn lady and he my footman.

“It is really not necessary for you to pay,” I said as we settled in and the cab jolted forward. “I have enough to take us to Clover Lane.”

“Dad would skin me if I fobbed a fare from you, Mrs.H.” James settled the cab’s lap robe over my skirt. “This way is better. I get to keep my hide.”

“You know your father would never hurt you,” I admonished. “Not even in anger.”

I’d realized this soon after I’d met James and seen him and Daniel together. Daniel not only would never harm James, but he’d never harm me. He was vastly different from my not-husband, Joe Bristow, in so many ways.

“Tell me everything,” I commanded James as the cab bounced onto the Holborn Viaduct and descended toward Newgate. “Leave nothing out.”

“There’s not much to tell, unfortunately.

” James removed his cap and rumpled his hair, which was dark red.

Daniel’s was deep brown, so James’s mother’s must have been flaming red.

“The house is plenty luxurious, as you’d expect, but not many come and go.

I thought I’d try making deliveries there, but there’s only one van stops by every third day, with two men.

One drives the horses, and the other unloads the goods and takes them down to the kitchen.

He don’t stay more than enough time to set down the boxes and sacks, and up he comes again, and they’re off.

No one but they are allowed down. That’s what the scullery maid said when I tried to offer my services to fetch whatever the kitchen needed. ”

Instead of admonishing him to leave well enough alone, I went through other possible ways of getting him into the house. “Perhaps these deliverymen could employ you,” I suggested. “What is the name of their company?”

I pulled out my notebook, the lovely one Joanna had given me last Christmas, extracted the stub of a pencil, and prepared to write.

“Mercer and Son,” James said, and I scribbled it down. “But I’ve already tried. They only deliver to dukes and the like. Even the royal kitchens sometimes. Weren’t looking for casual labor, they said.”

“Put on airs, did they?” I’d met such merchants, who held themselves in high regard because they did business with the aristocracy. No one who didn’t have a listing in Debrett’s could so much as speak to them.

“They did. Sent me off with a flea in my ear. Other than them, a kitchen maid goes in and out to shop for whatever can’t be delivered, or to nab something the cook wants at the last minute.”

“As you do for me sometimes,” I confirmed, continuing to write.

“Exactly. Valet to the viscount—a big chap—also comes and goes on errands, but he don’t leave the house for long. Everyone else stays put.”

“Including Daniel?”

“Including Dad, yeah. Who would pull me limb from limb if he saw me, so I don’t get too close, no matter what you say.”

I paused in my note-taking. “Do you think he might have spied you talking to the scullery maid?”

“Nah, because the kitchens are well to the back of the house, which opens into the mews. The windows above don’t overlook the door, which you come to through a little side passageway. I don’t like that passageway, because anyone could sneak down it without those in the house knowing.”

I decided I didn’t like it either. If James had found a hidden back way in, a villain could as well. “I am glad you are keeping an eye on the house, then.”

“When I can. Dad has me doing his routes, I suspect not only so I can earn some coin and keep his clients from turning to others, but to keep me out of his business.”

“Yes, I imagine he thought of that,” I said in commiseration.

“There is one change in the household,” James said as Newgate Street merged into Cheapside. “They have a new maid. She started on Saturday afternoon. Never seen her before, not there or in any of the other houses Dad delivers to.”

He wouldn’t have, of course. “Tell me about her.” I dutifully made a note of this new maid.

James shrugged. “Ordinary. Quiet-looking, dark hair, a bit lofty, I think. I’ve watched her talk to the scullery maid who was scrubbing the front step. Stern and la-di-da.”

James was an observant lad, but Hannah projected what she wanted everyone to see.

“Does she look like an anarchist at all?” I asked.

James chortled. “Not her. Probably they need more help since the viscount is stuck in his wheeled chair. He’s gone out a few times, carried into his carriage by the big valet.

Comes home soon, drooping as he’s taken back inside.

” He let out an exasperated sigh. “If not for Dad being there for police business, I’d say it was an ordinary toff’s house, same as any other in Belgravia. ”

I had no doubt James’s description was apt. Why, then, was Mr.Monaghan so certain there were bad goings-on in the viscount’s home? I itched to talk to Hannah but knew I’d have to wait.