Page 10 of The Lady and the Secret Lord (The Duke’s Men #3)

A thick fog muffled the cries of the coal heavers and the rumble of their carts. Their lamps flickered dimly at the river’s edge as Robin crossed the Yard. On the steps of the office, a darker shadow stirred. A dog barked and was silenced by a woman’s voice, a voice Robin was coming to know, a voice that had disturbed his sleep, and sent him out early.

He halted, and the dark shadow separated into the dog’s black-and-white body and Mrs. Kendall’s skirts. “What are you doing here?”

“Good morning to you, too,” came the reply. “I have new evidence.”

He came up the stairs. “I thought we agreed to send messengers.”

“It couldn’t wait.”

“You must be ice.” He unlocked the door and held it open. At least it was too early for Lumley or any of the others to be about. She commanded the dog to stay and entered the room in a swish of skirts and purpose.

He let her go ahead. He now knew, thanks to Ned Bartling’s ale-loosened tongue, that somewhere under the veil and the layers of silk and padding, was Lady Phoebe Marchmont, the daughter of the deceased Earl of Grafton, sister of the missing boy. Her real identity made sense of her nose-in-the-air assumption that she could take charge of the investigation. As a lady, not a lowly governess in a rich lord’s employ, she had gone to Mayne. As a lady, she expected Robin to do her bidding as those around her had done in her brief pampered life. She had no idea of the thinness of her disguise. She imagined that layers of black silk and the padded fiction of middle-aged widowhood allowed her to move about among people who didn’t look closely, and allowed her to be alone with a man. He should send her running back into her safe life. Only it wasn’t a safe life. A person or persons had reached into that life and taken away her brother. And if he still lived, a threat hung over the boy.

“Who knows you’re here?” He lit the lamp on his desk. He would think of her as a source, and no matter how irksome her superior airs, Robin would play by Mayne’s rules. She would be Mrs. Kendall to Robin.

“A trusted person.” She lifted her veil, her face pale, blue eyes almost black in the dim light. Her gaze shifted to the evidence they collected the day before. “Did you go to the Chequers?”

“I did.” Her mind was on the case, as if that would protect her. He stepped away to stir the fire to life, adding coals. Until their office could be known to the public, the detectives were on their own in the small matters of upkeep.

“Where’s the red tie?” Her voice made him turn. Her fingers picked at the pieces of evidence on his desk, moving them around. “I don’t see it.”

“What are you doing?” He moved to face her across the desk and brought his hands down over hers, stopping their movement. Her hands, small and icy cold, stilled under his.

“I am rearranging the evidence.” She gave him a look that said he’d missed the obvious.

“Disturbing it, more like. I had it arranged.”

“But you arranged it in the order in which we found it, right?”

He lifted his hands from hers and stepped back.

“So, there’s another order.” She lifted a brow, and he nodded. “The order in which the evidence was created. So, the red tie belongs… here.” She pointed to a place on the desk between Boyle’s gray coat and the old Roman coin.

He fished the red tie out of his pocket and put it in the spot to which she pointed. “I wore it to the Chequers. And yes, the landlord did pass letters between Boyle and someone else.”

Her face beamed approval. “Did the landlord say who that someone was?”

“Not yet. What’s your new evidence?”

“Shattuck was part of a scheme to discredit and sack my employer’s previous footman, Ned Bartling. The thing is that a ragman like Shattuck makes his rounds, but he’s never admitted to the house. Someone must have put Shattuck up to it, someone who wanted to open the position for John Boyle.”

She was clever, a thing her disguise tended to conceal. What she’d uncovered confirmed Ned Bartling’s story. “And you learned this how?”

“Not important. We’ve established that someone wanted Boyle employed inside Marchmont House. But the question is why .” For a moment she stared blankly at the items on his desk.

“Did you sleep?” he asked.

“Very little.”

That made two of them. “Sit.” He pulled out the chair for her. “There’s something else, isn’t there?”

She sank into the offered chair. “My employer’s desk lock was picked, his papers rifled, and some pages taken. It happened after Bartling was sacked while Boyle was footman, which only confirms that there was some kind of plan.”

“What was taken?” He didn’t like her new evidence. She was right that it pointed to planning and a criminal objective from the start. Marchmont House had been targeted.

Her shoulders slumped. “Some pages of a scholarly paper about Roman antiquities on a farm in Sussex. The thing was a sort of draft, really. It makes no sense.”

“Unless those pages describe a treasure,” he said. He was half-joking, but not entirely. Treasure rumors regularly inspired enthusiasts with picks and shovels to tear up some farmer’s field. There were those who believed that the English coast was littered with buried Viking and pirate treasure. There was even speculation that wealthy Romans left treasure behind when the Empire fell and they fled to Rome.

“Treasure?” She tilted her head, still staring at the bits of evidence on his desk. “I hadn’t thought of that. But what does treasure have to do with Andrew? And how would anyone know those pages were in the desk?”

It was a fair question, but she didn’t know how thieves operated. The gangs that trained boys gave them small tasks at first and groomed them for bigger, riskier thefts. “Probably no one knew what was in that drawer. It was a test set for Boyle by whoever gave him his orders.”

“A test?” She turned her face up to his, her very young face. She had no business wandering around alone even swathed in yards of twilled black silk and worsted.

“Yes. Remember the letter we found said that Boyle had completed an earlier task?”

She nodded.

“Whoever is behind this wanted to know what Boyle was willing to do. Could Boyle be trusted? If he was willing to steal from a locked desk, he was ready to steal something more. Boyle had to prove he’d done the job, so he gave them papers from the drawer.”

“But what bigger thing would a thief want from Marchmont House? I’m sure there are neighbors with more jewels. The Countess of Blessington lives around the corner. And there is no Marchmont treasure that I know of.”

“You said the paper was about the discovery of Roman artifacts on a farm?” It would help if he could see the remaining pages of the draft. Robin thought her quick, but she failed to see the obvious. Perhaps being a lady made her feel untouchable by fate.

“Yes, but the usual Roman artifacts are bottles and pots and mosaic floors, and small things, like this coin.” She picked up the coin with the leather loop through it that had belonged to her brother. Her eyes closed, and for a brief moment, he lost her to some memory. “Once in a while there’s a silver spice container because the Romans loved their pepper. Hardly a treasure-hunter’s dream.”

He had to agree. Maybe there was a different angle they should pursue. “Let’s think about Boyle for a moment. He was hungry, capable, not likely in service before. He claimed to have younger nephews. What else?”

“He can read, both the letters and the draft. He didn’t have honest papers, so he must not have references.”

Robin came around the desk to the map and tapped the corner where the hiring agency was. “Let’s say that Boyle, not likely his real name, is desperate and possibly known to the police. He goes to the agency, but without references he can’t get hired.” Robin dragged his finger across the map to Shattuck’s shop. “Boyle leaves discouraged. Shattuck in his red tie sees Boyle and offers sympathy. Tells him there might be a position for him, offers to talk to someone, and urges Boyle to come back.”

“To whom does Shattuck talk?” she asked.

Robin turned to her. He could easily point to the office of the Benevolent Assistance League, but he let his hand drop. He didn’t want her showing up there. “Our mystery middleman, the writer of those letters who claims to represent Boyle’s benefactor .”

“Why does our mystery middleman have his eye on Marchmont House? Surely not for the pages of some obscure paper?”

Robin shook his head. “The only thing missing from Marchmont House is… the boy.”

Her expression changed. He’d hit some nerve with his comment. “If Andrew does not succeed his father, who becomes earl?”

Abruptly, she came to her feet. “I don’t think you understand family honor or duty. You imagine someone in the Marchmont family set out to murder Andrew, to benefit from his death. The family has spared no effort or expense to help in the search.” Her voice was at its haughtiest.

Robin pointed to the note on his desk. boy safe. stop serch.

“A detective considers all possibilities. What’s missing from Marchmont House? The heir to a title and presumably the estates that go with it. And you think those things are not inducement for a person in”—he almost said your —“the family who cares more for his own wealth and rank than…”

“…than the life of a child who has never harmed a soul.”

They were face-to-face, squared off like pugilists in the ring, throwing words instead of punches. He wanted to tell her that innocent children did not fare well in London when someone decided they were inconvenient or members of the surplus population. He wanted to say they got left behind, sent away, abandoned. They died by the hundreds for want of a few pence or because a parent spent their earnings on gin. He knew. A boy could be jailed for the smallest crime. He could be imprisoned with his family for debt. He could be sold and shipped out for the pleasure or profit of men elsewhere on the planet. He could be used in a factory until his limbs or his lungs were ruined. He could be left in the street next to the body of his dead mother while the beadles argued over which parish was to bear the expense of a pauper burial.

Her gaze was fixed on his face. He tightened his jaw and said none of what was in his head. She was a lady. She did not see London as he saw London.

From outside, came the voices of men approaching. He lunged past her to open the door. The dog bounded inside. Turning back, he ordered, “Lower your veil,” and grabbed her hand.

“Let’s not meet Lumley,” he whispered. He yanked her through the office out a back door and into a long inner hall lined with cabinets housing the detective force’s growing collection of files. They passed swiftly through the darkness, her skirts rustling and the dog padding after. At the far end, Robin opened another door onto a set of sagging wooden steps. The dog clambered down, and Robin followed. He turned to lift her over the treacherous steps. He gripped her middle but could get no secure hold of the padding that encased her. Down she came into his arms.

Her brow collided with his chin. His arms slid around her, enclosing her middle, and stopping her slide down his body. Her form against him under the layers of bombazine and padding was unmistakably female. The woodsy, floral scent of her was dizzying. She jerked in his hold, and her veil caught on a coat button, keeping her head tethered to his chest. Her mouth through the netting was trapped against his throat. Her breath came in quick, agitated pants.

He swallowed and made himself think logically. His body said she was an armful of warm woman, and not the stout widow she appeared to be. His head reminded him that she was an earl’s daughter, a lady. She was a source. She squirmed in his arms, her hands pushing against his shoulders.

“Hold still. Your veil is caught.”

“Oh.”

He loosened his hold, setting her down, her veil still snagged on his coat button. He reached down and parted one of the honeycomb-like openings in the pattern of the lace. She jerked free, tearing a hole in the veil. She straightened her hat, and gave a little shake to her skirts as if she could throw off their contact. “Thank you for arresting my fall. What do we do next?”

She sounded cool and collected, but her gaze was fixed on the bit of black lace still hooked round his button. His body registered the feel of her against him. He drew in a breath and reminded himself that patience was a virtue. He plucked the scrap of lace free of his button and tucked it in his pocket. “You return to Marchmont House. I go to the watch dealer as we agreed.”

He couldn’t see her face clearly. She didn’t answer at once. “We did not agree. You want to cut me out of the investigation.”

She wanted to take charge again, which for a dozen reasons he could think of, she was ill-equipped to do. “You forget, I’m the detective. You’re the source.”

“The source?”

“The source,” he repeated. “And female, and… in spite of yards of black cloth, you are not very convincing as a stout, middle-aged widow. If you want the boy found, go back to Marchmont House. Stay out of the way and don’t interfere with police procedures.”

“Interfere!” She took a step toward him, her fists clenched. The dog sprang to her side, ready to defend his mistress. “This case starts with me. I initiated it. I went to Mayne, and he gave it to you. If you want to solve it, you need my help. Already I’ve found valuable evidence.” Her words stirred the black veil like tiny gusts of wind.

Robin knew ruffled feathers when he saw them. The smart thing was to agree, to calm the angry female in front of him. She was half his size and about as intimidating as a baby chick. She was interfering. She disrupted his way of doing things. He worked alone. He arranged evidence his way. He thought things through before he spoke. She rushed to deductions as she had rushed to his office this morning. He made himself think now. She’d come early to avoid being seen, and she had the dog with her, which meant she planned to return to Marchmont House.

He took a chance. “Can you come with me now to the watch dealer?”

It took a long moment for her to answer. “No.”

“Then go home. I will send you a message when I find Boyle.” He tried to keep the satisfaction of winning out of his voice.