Page 25 of The Lady and the Secret Lord (The Duke’s Men #3)

A sense of bustle filled the entry hall, as if walking out a door could not be accomplished without fanfare. Servants stood ready to supply coats and bundles. The duke and duchess presided with an air of calm beneficence. Aggie clung to Andrew at the center of the hall, once more looking fearful, as if she could not fathom where she was or how she came to be there, or take another step forward. Andrew chatted on, telling her of the wonders in store for her. It seemed to Phoebe that they were all simply bubbling, like one of Mrs. Trafford’s pots forgotten on the stove.

Then Jones strode into the scene. He had undergone a minor transformation, washed clean of the river, appearing in his usual brown coat and white shirt, a gray waistcoat and the black tie around his throat, the power and strength of him subdued under plain appearances. The children turned to him.

“Aggie says she won’t go,” Andrew reported. “Unless you come, too.”

“Won’t you, Aggie?” Jones asked. He lowered himself to meet the girl’s gaze. “If I promise to come soon?”

He offered Aggie a hand, and after a searching look at his face, she took it. Andrew spurted ahead of them for the door, which, the butler, himself, opened.

“Come on, Phoebe,” Andrew shouted. “We’re going home now.”

The open door admitted a current of cold air. Phoebe shivered once and turned to thank the duke and duchess.

“My dear,” the duchess said, “you are most welcome here. You must come again and bring the children. I have restrained mine this evening, but they are keen to meet Andrew and Agnes.”

Phoebe smiled and stepped out into the sharp, chill wind. Jones waited at the coach steps, apparently impervious to the cold.

“Lady Phoebe,” he said. “You and your brother should be safe now.”

She searched his face. A reserve had returned to his eyes, and his mouth had settled in a grim line. There was nothing in him of the glad teasing look they’d shared on the stones of the alley when he had taken her hand and kissed her palm. She tried to pinpoint the moment when that look of joy had vanished and his grim detective look had taken over.

“I cannot thank you enough, Mr. Jones, for restoring Andrew to me,” she said. She could think of no protocol for expressing such gratitude. He had given her back her life and changed it entirely in the process. She had discovered strengths she had not known she possessed and had broken free of limits she had not realized constrained her.

“Glad to be of service, my lady,” he said.

“You are supposed to say that you could not have done it without me.”

That made him smile, a brief quirk of his lips that did not light his eyes.

She could not resist adding, “You will keep your promise to Agnes and visit us.”

He looked away. “I may be occupied with the details of the case for some time.”

“Nevertheless,” she said, willing him to turn back to her. “A promise to Agnes cannot be lightly broken.” She would not mention herself.

At last, his gaze returned to her. He offered another faint smile and a hand to help her up into the carriage. She hesitated. The wind tugged at her bonnet. Andrew bounced on the carriage seat. Jones, at last, gave a nod, an abbreviated agreement to visit, but there was an air of reluctance in it that she distrusted. He had withdrawn into his role as detective.

She took the offered hand and climbed into the carriage. He closed the door and stood impassive just beyond her reach. She had a fleeting vision of throwing the door open again and calling, Wait, this is not how things end between us. The vision faded with the first lurching motion of the wheels. The carriage pulled away.

*

Robin returned to the house. Wenlocke and the duchess insisted that he stay the night. There were messages to send to Mayne and others, and Robin accepted an offer of help from the duke. The duchess gave him a quick, light embrace and went to tuck her own children safely in bed. Wenlocke and Robin made the study their headquarters, supplied with sandwiches and small beer. Servants took Robin’s missives and sent them off express to H Division’s Leman Street headquarters and the commissioner. He welcomed the activity. He had let Phoebe go. What remained was the job. It was what he wanted. With the restoration of Andrew to his family, surely Robin had earned his place in the new detective force that Mayne was building. There was nothing to regret.

It was true that for a moment as Robin lay on the stones and looked up into Phoebe’s glad eyes, he had felt wholly connected to her, the first person outside of the Jones family to whom he had felt a strong tie. Then the stink of his own river-soaked clothes brought him back to his senses. Bolton’s sneering dismissal struck him as true. Robin was some man’s by-blow. In calling him Jones , the plainest of surnames, Wenlocke had raised him above his true place in the world. Robin had released her hand in its exquisite soft kid glove, a glove torn in the encounter with his world, the one where he was most at home. Briefly the search for her brother had connected them, but there could be no doubt that they belonged in their separate spheres.

“Are you quite all right?” Wenlocke asked with his usual penetrating look.

Robin shook himself. The river stink was gone. He was himself again. He had done his job. He would report to Mayne in the morning. Finding Andrew and capturing Bolton was a win for Mayne’s secret detective department. “I am. Or I will be.”

He would be. He had his work. The commissioner would be pleased. Robin had restored Andrew Marchmont to his sister. It would not matter at the Yard, but their life had been restored. Crime was not about goods taken or even about violence itself, it was about this damage to the fabric of lives. Shattuck’s life, Leary’s life, his sister Molly’s life, her sons’ lives, the lives of Phoebe and her brother, and even the lives of Henry Marchmont and his great-aunt. Exposing Bolton unexpectedly revealed who Phoebe Marchmont’s true friends were. In the end the case had connected her not to Robin, but to Wenlocke and the duchess. If Lady Phoebe wished to return to society, she could count on them as friends.

For the moment, there was nothing more for him to do. He hated to be idle, but sleep would not come amiss. He had only to heave himself out of the chair he occupied, and seek the bed that Wenlocke’s people had prepared for him. He set aside the mug of small beer in his hand. His face smarted some from his contact with the paving stones of the alley. There would be bruises as well, but he would heal. His eyelids closed.

“Don’t fade on me yet.” Wenlocke nudged Robin’s elbow. “There is something you must know.” His tone brought Robin back to alertness.

“You are not anyone’s by-blow,” he said. “Your mother’s sister lives and has children. You have living grandparents. There are probably other relations as well.”

Robin shook his head. “People who have not missed me any time in the past sixteen years, who have settled lives in which I have no part.”

“Perhaps.” Wenlocke put aside his drink and went to his desk, opening a drawer and removing an item that fit easily in his hand. “But people, I suspect, who have never been easy with Bolton’s having properties and a title that should have… gone elsewhere.”

“Bolton? You are saying Bolton and I are connected?” Robin shuddered. A terrible thought occurred, one that made it hard to breathe. “He’s not my father, is he?”

“Quite the contrary. Here, take this.” Wenlocke dangled a cameo on a delicate gold chain. Robin extended his hand and took it.

“What is this?”

“It is an engagement gift, we suppose, from your father to your mother. I took it from her neck the day I found you.” Wenlocke sat again at Robin’s side. “Finch is a wonder, you know. He, too, is a detective of sorts. Jewelers, you see, like dukes. They were willing to share their records with us. From those records, Finch went on to find marriage registries, newspaper announcements, and baptismal records.”

Wenlocke made it sound simple, but Robin knew that hours of tedious work had gone into that search. He had the oddest sensation of coming to the end of a narrow alley, facing a wall and being unable to turn around. He belonged to himself and Wenlocke and the duchess. He had turned his back long ago on the possibility of any other family. His way forward in London depended on his being Jones. His instinct was to push against the wall, to make the wall yield.

The chain in his hand was fragile as a cobweb, light as a butterfly wing, but it caught the firelight and gleamed. “Who was she?” he asked.

“Your mother was Anne Thorpe. Her father and brothers were naval officers of the White. Her sister married a commander, as well. Her father lives quite a retired life now. Her brothers are gone.”

Robin laughed. He had the oddest sense of not being himself. “You and Finch have been quite thorough.” The delicate chain raised another question, a harder one. “How did she come to be alone in that street?”

“Ah,” said Wenlocke. “That is where Bolton comes into the story. You must tell me if you are ready to hear more.”

“As long as Bolton is not my father,” Robin said.

“He is a cousin of your father’s, much the way Henry Marchmont is Andrew’s cousin, a male relative with a claim on entailed lands and titles if there is no other legitimate male heir. I suspect Bolton got his start in the property recovery business by going after your father’s property.”

“How?” Robin owed it to his mother to ask.

“What we know is that Bolton slandered your mother, and apparently that slander provoked your father to challenge Bolton to a duel. There were witnesses who swore that your father was the challenger.” Wenlocke paused. “Bolton killed him. Your mother fled with you. Her relations were abroad, so we do not know with whom she sought shelter.”

“Are you saying my father had a title?”

“He was John Egerton St. Albans, Sixth Baron Somerton of Ashbury Park. You are his son.”

Robin sprang to his feet. Wenlocke’s story overturned everything he believed about himself. “What if I just want to be Jones, a detective, not some idle lordling with a minor title thinking he’s grander than his fellow Londoners?”

Wenlocke’s dark brows quirked upward. He spoke in a decidedly dry tone. “That could be construed as a particularly offensive remark, if one were inclined to take offense. You are not required to assume the title. It could simply lapse. That is a matter for the Lords’ Committee on Privileges. But if you claim the title and properties, you remove them from Bolton’s control.”

A sharp rap on the study door interrupted the conversation.

“Come,” Wenlocke called.

His butler entered and handed Wenlocke an express. He tore it open and read, his face grim.

“Tell me,” Robin demanded.

“Disturbing news. Bolton never made it to Leman Street. Apparently, he had more hired fists waiting. The real constables from H Division have been found drugged and bound in a room at the Town of Ramsgate pub. Bolton’s gone.”

“Phoebe.” All thoughts of sleep fled. Robin was out of the chair. “I’m going to Marchmont House.”

“I’ll come with you,” Wenlocke said.