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Just after three o’clock in the afternoon, male voices in the hallway caught his attention, and Peregrine closed the ledger with a thud, looking up just as the knock sounded at the door. “Come,” he called, sitting back. Quinn opened the door to let Hodges in.

Peregrine, not caring to stand on ceremony when it was just the two of them, waved at one of the dowdy fabric-covered chairs. But Hodges shook his head. “Covered in horse, still. ”

“Like I care if you ruin it,” Peregrine muttered. Truly, he didn’t. His mother’s touch permeated every room. It would take a great deal of redecorating—or perhaps fire—to purge her influence.

Hodges stayed standing anyway. “Got news. Took time to chase it all down, bits here and there. Twenty men arrested. Bloody mess gettin’ hold of ’em. The Regent and magistrate’ve been in a state. Sent some runners after the flyer printer, rest’ve been busy crackin’ heads among the rioters.”

Perry nodded.

“Plenty o’ regular folk. Workers, tradesmen, riled up with ale and sweet talk. But some were brought in special, just to stir it proper.”

“Paid instigators.” Much as he accused Selina of the Order having done, because the timing and organisation was oddly suspicious. “Probably the ones who brought the flyers too.”

“Aye. Managed a word with one o’ the hired lot,” Hodges continued. “Quiet sort — soft-spoken, looked harmless, so the runners passed him over. I asked who paid him to stir the rest. Didn’t ask nice.”

“And?”

“Name he gave was Matthew Harrison. Said he worked at the Home Office.” Hodges paused to see if the name sparked any recognition, and Peregrine frowned. There was something vaguely familiar about the name, but he couldn’t place it.

“So I assume you went looking for Mr Harrison?” Peregrine asked. “With or without Bow Street in tow?”

“Without, o’course. Let ’em do their own bloody work; they’ve got the tools. Took long enough as it was. By the time I got there, his lot were sayin’ he’d put a gun to his own head.”

“What timing. A crisis of conscience?” Peregrine was deeply suspicious .

“Or someone gave him a nudge. But who the hell knows? Because I missed the body by twenty bloody minutes.”

Peregrine got up from his chair, pacing. “What else? Was there a note?”

“Aye, taken to the palace by the butler himself, or so they say. Bow Street didn’t even bother showin’. Called it guilt and justice all tied up neat with a ribbon.”

Frissons traveled along Peregrine’s spine as he realised he was finally in possession of an actual clue. “Harrison worked for Home Secretary Viscount Sidmouth?”

And then he realised why Matthew Harrison’s name was troublingly familiar.

Harrison had been one of Selina’s creatures, and he knew that because Sidmouth and Harrison had been one of the strings she had pulled upon to avoid a public trial for Peregrine.

In his thoughts, his mother smiled.

Crossing the room, Peregrine steered Hodges towards the doorway. “We have to go to the marchioness at once.”

Quinn sent Sammy running to get the carriage while Peregrine donned his coat and hat.

Swiftly, swiftly. Peregrine attempted to quell a rising sense of urgency and a sense of impending doom. But nothing untoward greeted them when they finally arrived at her home, and Selina’s butler looked only mildly surprised to find Hodges arriving with him.

They were escorted to her parlour where Selina was already waiting for callers, dressed in a rich mulberry silk dress with gold braid. “Perry,” the marchioness greeted him, flicking a nervous look in Hodges’s direction. “I was not expecting you. Is something amiss?”

“I was wondering. Did you, Marchioness, by any chance enjoin a certain young secretary by the name of Matthew Harrison to cause a riot last night? ”

“ Matthew ? Do you jest?” Lady Normanby’s eyes were wide with surprise. But they quickly narrowed in thought. “Has he been arrested?”

“No, my lady. He is dead,” Hodges answered for Peregrine. “Took his own life this afternoon, by what his staff say.”

“That rings of falsehood,” she said, her voice growing low and angry. "Both that he had anything to do with the riot, and that he killed himself for it.”

“Dead men don’t argue with the lies folks shove in their mouths,” Hodges said succinctly, putting his hands in his pockets. “Or in their letters.”

Selina’s head turned to Peregrine, who added, “Hodges says they found a confession addressed to Sidmouth, but he does not know the contents of the letter.”

“That poor man!” Selina exclaimed, putting a hand to her lips. But her thoughts were clearly running ahead, no longer sparing any tender sympathies for the dead secretary. “Murder to cover up… what? Coercion? Blackmail?”

Suddenly, it seemed very much likely that that infiltrator might be making a play for the marchioness. Either to bind her ability to see and interfere with his work, or to remove her from the chessboard entirely for vengeance’s sake, and kill two birds with one stone.

He knew the Duchess Atholl’s mother, Lady Cresswell, was willing to come after him.

But he doubted Lady Cresswell knew much of anything about Selina besides her name.

The lady had practically crowed in his face about him being sent to the front.

No, this was beyond Charity’s mother’s capacity in spite and subtlety.

Beyond hers… but not his own mother’s. Nor the leaders of the Order, who would likely know exactly which people were in Selina’s pocket .

“Selina,” Peregrine said, striving for patience. “I am rather concerned this bodes ill for you.”

She gave that the moment of consideration it was due.

“No, I cannot possibly be the target of this scheme. Or at least… if it poses danger to me, I would not be the only one to fall. This is too elaborate, to foment a riot to bring me down with a whisper when there are a hundred simpler ways to do it. Not when a man could have been hired at the riot to push me down the stairs or stab me with a knife.”

Her gaze flicked apologetically to his wounded middle.

“If not you… Sidmouth?” Peregrine asked.

No sooner had he asked the question, however, than a great racket sounded in the front hall of the marchioness’s home. An urgent fist, upon the main entrance, and a muffled shout for admittance.

Peregrine and Hodges strode swiftly towards the door of the parlour, standing in the entryway to listen as Selina’s butler hurried to open the front door.

The tromping of boots indicated the presence of a goodly number of men, and an imperious voice announced, "We come by order of the Crown for the Marchioness of Normanby. She is required to attend at St James’s. Immediately."

Required, not invited.

Selina lay a hand upon Peregrine’s shoulder, gently moving him from her path. “I will be fine,” she murmured to him. “But this is starting to have the smell of a planned scandal. And like a brush fire, it may burn wild, heedless of what is in its path.”

Stepping past him, she looked over the balcony rail to the men below.

Three men stood on the threshold, cloaked in the crisp navy of the Royal Guard.

No flamboyant parade gear—just the cut of authority and the sheen of polished boots.

One stepped forward and removed his hat with stiff formality, holding a letter sealed with red wax .

She glanced at it and gave a faint smile. “Well then, I suppose I should not keep His Highness or Her Majesty waiting.”

Descending the staircase, she did not look back as she passed through the front door, her skirts whispering over the marble. Two of the guards fell in around her, not touching her, not rushing her—only escorting her, as though the threat lay not in her defiance, but in her compliance.

The third leveled a very sour, very suspicious look upwards at Peregrine Fitzroy from below.

“Lord Fitzroy,” the guard greeted him, his voice only a shade below civil. “Imagine my surprise to find you here.”

Of course, it would happen to be the same guard who had arrested him at his townhouse. Of course it would.

“Is it a surprise? I was here about the Queen’s business, after all,” he responded coolly, leaning over the bannister.

“Is that so, my lord? You should be careful. I suspect that a man in your position already stands in a precarious situation without deliberately consorting with people complicit in encouraging seditious assembly.”

“She is standing accused of the riot?”

The head of the guard gave a thin, professional smile. “She is to be questioned about her associations with it, yes. For now. Good evening, Lord Fitzroy.”

Hodges, who had been waiting out of sight behind the doorway, crept forward as the door shut behind the guard. “Bloody hells,” the man grumbled. “What now, then?”

Peregrine took a breath, letting it out in a slow exhale. He hadn’t found his mother’s trail in time; Marian Fitzroy had reached out and torn away yet another of his dwindling list of allies first.

And his mother chuckled softly in agreement.

“We visit the Duchess Atholl. It seems I am badly in need of her help.”