Page 5 of Dominating the Duke

Daedalus made an awkward attempt to clasp his brother around his shoulders and then gave up and dropped his arm when he apparently realized his brother's shoulders were too mammoth to discreetly wrap around.

Percy grinned suddenly and punched Daedalus playfully. "Don't worry. I won't hurt her. She just needs a bit of guidance to steer her business interests back onto a more respectable pathway."

Daedalus didn't react, but merely rolled his eyes. "Good luck with that."

* * *

Fatigue swirledaround Percy after arguing with his brother, but he decided to push himself a bit more and had his coachman thread their way back through London's carriage throngs to Lincoln's Inn again. This time he sought out one of England's most respected, and successful, barristers, Stephen Forsythe. Surely the man would see reason and recommend a good private investigator he could hire to penetrate the questionable practices of Captain Goodrum's empire.

An hour later he stood in front of the elegant offices of Stephen Forsythe's law practice. A clerk answered his brisk knock and led him through a maze of hallways carpeted with Aubusson carpets so fine over thick padding, he could barely hear the echoing of his own footsteps.

He was ushered through a door at the end of one of the meandering hallways. The man behind the desk gave him an odd look out of intense gray-green eyes and pulled out his pocket watch, rudely checking the time. He brusquely swept a hand toward the chair in front of his desk.

"I have to meet my wife tonight for a performance at the Royal Opera. She's a very exacting task master and does not suffer lateness by anyone, least of all me. If it were anyone but you, Chelmsford, I wouldn't give you a by your leave." He paused a second, during which Percy could think of nothing more intelligent than to simply stare stupidly as if Dr. Forsythe could read his mind. The barrister finally said, "Well? What is it, man? What brings you out at this late afternoon hour that couldn't wait until tomorrow?"

"I...I need help."

The expression on Forsythe's face immediately changed to one of concern. "What's happened? What can I do?"

"My brother, Daedalus Whitcombe, is my heir, and he's entangled himself with a horribly unsuitable business partner in a venture that I hesitate even to name."

If Forsythe had an inkling of what he was talking about, he didn't give away any clue of what he was thinking on his face. But then he was good, so damned good before the bar that every criminal in England no doubt had his address memorized.

Forsythe leaned back into his leather chair and steepled his hands in front of his face. "Since we're pressed for time, let me explain, if you will, what's going on."

"How could you possibly know?"

"Trust me on this. Iknowthings."

At the skeptical look on Percy's face, he continued. "Your brother is the proprietor of the vastly popular, and lucrative, um, publishing business. He took on a partner to invest in the new steam presses with which he publishes his own volumes of some of the most popular erotica in all of England. My wife buys everything The Insatiable Lady writes, the minute the tomes are available."

"His business partner, as you obviously have discovered, is a very talented, powerful woman who is the owner of Goodrum's House of Pleasure. Knowing you as I do, Chelmsford, you've no doubt tried to buy her off so that your 'heir' is not sullied with such a sordid business. Am I missing anything so far?"

Percy raised an eyebrow but shook his head and said, "No."

"She probably gave you your conge', and here you are trying to find a way you can use me or one of my investigators to destroy her."

"But you don't know what a dangerous woman she is." Percy narrowed his eyes and leaned forward.

"On the contrary, I know better than most how dangerous she is. She had occasion to, um, send me on a private mission to her old village..."

"Combe Down," Percy filled in for him.

A strange light came into Forsythe's eyes. "I hope you weren't one of her childhood tormentors, because I can't begin to tell you how she used me to wreak vengeance on three of them. And by the way, none of them has been heard from since the day she rounded them up and put them on a ship sailing out of Bristol for the Mediterranean."

Percy had an overwhelming urge to race to Forsythe's open window and cast up his accounts out into the street below. However, he managed to maintain a calm exterior and keep his revulsion in check.

"I understand how powerful she is. When I was leaving her office a week ago, I saw Greer in her waiting room. God knows how she uses her shipping empire. How does a woman accumulate all that power?"

Forsythe gave him an odd look and then suddenly said, "That's all the time I have tonight, I'm afraid." He began quickly scrawling a note on a bit of paper. "I have a carriage waiting outside as well as a very volatile, beautiful woman waiting at the opera. If I'm late, she'll make me pay...later." A smile quirked on the barrister's face as he charged around his desk and snatched an overcoat from his clerk before clattering down the stairs to keep his rendezvous with his wife. Percy shook his head. How a man as intelligent as Forsythe could become that brow-beaten by a mere woman was beyond him

Once Forsythe had gone, the clerk handed Percy the note the barrister had dashed off before he'd fled for the opera: "Bow Street Runner Archer Colwyn can be found at twenty-eight Great Queen Street near Covent Garden. If you insist on courting disaster by intriguing against Captain Goodrum, perhaps he can explain a bit more about her empire and keep you from ending up floating face-down in the Thames, as many of her other enemies have."

* * *

Archer Colwyn was not expectinga visitor at the door to his rooms at such a late afternoon hour, so when the pounding started, he motioned for George, his valet and man of all talents, to follow him down to the street-level door. He and George had been catching up on some quiet reading since his precocious daughter Dee was spending a few days with his fiancee Charlotte in St. John's Wood.

In spite of still wearing his slippers, George brought along his service pistol and was at the ready when Col opened the door a crack, wedging his boot against the bottom so as not to have one of his many enemies barge in and get the best of them.