Wrexford had closed his eyes, allowing the warmth of the whisky to mellow his mood. With great reluctance, he raised a lid. “We’re all idiots, Kit.” Especially when it comes to love.
His friend forced a wan smile. “Yes, but some of us are more so than others.” He rose—a trifle unsteadily—and went to stand by the hearth. After staring for a long moment at the unlit coals, Sheffield turned and braced one arm on the mantel.
“I owe you an apology, Wrex. I let a recent promise take precedent over a longtime friendship. It was wrong—”
“Kit—” began the earl.
“No. Let me finish.”
Wrexford’s grudging sigh signaled him to go on.
“You trusted me, and I let you down,” said Sheffield. “You deserved my loyalty, and my honesty.” He shifted his stance. “I won’t make the mistake of prevaricating again.”
The mention of prevaricating caused Wrexford to feel a spasm of guilt. Keeping secrets, however well intentioned, was fraught with peril. Omissions tangled with misunderstandings, and suddenly trust, an oh-so-fragile bond to begin with, snapped.
“I owe you the truth, and if Lady Cordelia doesn’t agree, then, well . . .” Sheffield squared his shoulders. “So be it.”
“Since we are baring our souls,” interjected the earl. “I haven’t been entirely forthcoming with you, either.” Charlotte would likely tease him for allowing emotion to overrule reason. But in this case, he would gladly be hoisted with his own petard.
“So,” he added, “you may save your breath when it comes to explaining the business arrangements you’ve made with Lady Cordelia. I know about the account at Hoare’s bank. Griffin learned about it during the course of investigating the murder at Queen’s Landing and came to ask me some questions about it.”
Sheffield appeared stunned. “But I . . . I can’t imagine how the two things have anything—anything!—to do with each other.”
In for a farthing, in for a guinea.
“Allow me to explain . . .” Wrexford gave a terse account of the murder victim’s relationship to Woodbridge’s banker, David Mather.
Sheffield turned pale as bleached muslin.
“That’s not all.” The earl forged on, determined to make a clean breast of it before he could change his mind. His friend deserved no less, no matter the consequences. “Lady Charlotte witnessed an incident at the ball . . .”
Sheffield listened in stark silence to the account of Cordelia’s unsettling meeting with her brother.
“We made the decision not to mention this to you until there was solid evidence that the murder is connected in any way to Woodbridge,” finished Wrexford. “We knew you were distraught about other things, and wished to protect you from further worry.”
A few fat drops of rain spattered against the window glass. Somewhere in the distance, thunder rumbled.
The earl then went on. “But good intentions often pave the path to perdition. So I’ve concluded that painful though the truth may be, it’s better than the alternatives.”
His friend didn’t react. He stared off into the shadows, seemingly lost in a fugue of his thoughts.
Dark ones, by the look of it. Perhaps he had made a mistake in being so brutally honest. Of late, his judgment had felt shaky.
“Kit?”
Roused from his reveries, Sheffield slowly turned and ran his fingers through his hair. “Ye gods. This changes everything.”
“There’s no need to sound so blue deviled. What we have are merely random bits of information. And as of yet, we’ve no reason to think that they all fit together.”
Sheffield pulled a fistful of folded papers from his pocket. “That’s because I haven’t yet shown you the letters I found in Woodbridge’s study.”
* * *
Repressing a shiver, Charlotte turned up her coat collar. The wind had shifted, driving fitful gusts of damp air up from the tidal pools. The grit-flecked chill prickled like knifepoints against her skin as the stench swirled up to clog her nostrils.
She shifted her stance, sliding her sodden boots deeper into the recessed niche between two buildings. Like the others pressed cheek by jowl within the rookeries, they were a sorry jumble of drunken angles and crumbling walls. Time seemed to be mired in the same viscous mud that was seeping through her soles. Or perhaps it was merely the urgency of her own worries that had the minutes passing at a snail’s pace.
Charlotte blew on her hands for warmth, watching her breath turn to silvery skeins of vapor, which quickly dissolved into the gloom.
Annie Wright would be coming. But whether she could shed any light on—
A scuffling of steps snapped her attention to full alert. She waited a moment, allowing whoever had entered the narrow cul-de-sac to pass her hiding place before venturing a peek.
Swish-swish. The lone figure was already gripped in the thick-fingered darkness of the narrow alley. It was the soft rustle of skirts that told Charlotte it was a woman.
After slipping out from her niche, Charlotte darted forward, quickly narrowing the distance between her and her quarry. With home just steps away, Annie Wright appeared to have relaxed her guard. Head bent, the barmaid trudged around the corner leading to her own ramshackle building with nary a glance around to check her surroundings.
Charlotte came up behind her, close enough to reach out and grasp the fringe of the shawl wrapped around the barmaid’s head and shoulders.
“Miss Wright.”
Annie spun around and brandished a fist. A dribble of moonlight through the rotting shingles overhead showed she was holding a knife. “Get away from me,” she warned. “Take a step closer and I’ll gut ye.”
Charlotte raised her hands to show she had no weapon. “I just want a word with you.”
“Be off.” The knife cut a menacing dance through the shadows. “I don’t talk te strangers.”
“It’s important,” pressed Charlotte. “A friend of yours is dead, and—”
Steel flashed as Annie lashed out a wild stab. Charlotte dodged the attack with a lightning-quick spin and thrust out an elbow, knocking Annie off-balance.
“Sorry,” she muttered, seizing the barmaid’s wrist and twisting it behind her back.
A yelp slipped through Annie’s gritted teeth as her fingers spasmed, allowing Charlotte to wrest the weapon from her grip.
“Go ahead and kill me, ye bloody bastard.” The barmaid ceased struggling, but defiance crackled in her voice. “I ain’t saying nothing.”
A brave woman. Naïve, but brave. If a hired cutthroat wished to extract information, she would soon be singing like a canary.
Releasing a small sigh, Charlotte stepped back and slid the knife into her pocket. “I’ve no intention of harming you.” Dropping her deep-throated voice, she added, “As I said, a friend of yours is dead, and I’m trying to help ensure his murder doesn’t go unpunished.”
Annie rubbed at her wrist, her expression betraying both surprise and suspicion. “Ye’re a . . . a . . .”
“Yes. A woman like you.”
“Why . . . ?” The barmaid narrowed her eyes. “Why d’ye care?”
Charlotte glanced around. The surroundings were dark and silent as a crypt, but in the stews there were always unseen eyes and ears. “I’m happy to explain,” she replied. “But not here.”
A hesitation.
“If I wanted you dead, your blood would already be puddled in the mud. But given what happened to your friend, I daresay there are others who may wish you harm,” continued Charlotte. “The choice is yours, of course. However, if I were you, I wouldn’t want to face them on my own.”
Annie’s eyes betrayed a flicker of weary resignation. “I s’pose I’m damned if I do and damned if I don’t.” She gave a curt wave. “Follow me.”
* * *
A short while later, Charlotte retraced her steps through the maze of alleyways leading away from the river. A long trek homeward lay ahead, while behind her lay . . .
More questions than an
swers. The first pearly hints of dawn were teasing at the horizon, and yet the mystery of the Queen’s Landing murder remained tangled in fog and shadows.
Annie Wright had proved to be a conundrum—suspicious and secretive, as well she should be, given that violence had darkened her life. But Charlotte was adept at drawing out secrets, and the barmaid’s story had slowly come to light around the guttering flicker of a single tallow candle.
It was her accent that had first given her away. Annie mimicked the slur of the stews very well, but Charlotte had caught the trace of a more cultured voice. When pressed, the barmaid had admitted to her the sad story of her past. A prosperous family, a disastrous marriage to a man beneath her station, who had turned out to be a violent lout. The murdered clerk—Charlotte had finally discovered the poor man’s name was Henry Peabody—had been a childhood friend, and it was to him she had turned for help when the beatings had become unbearable.
Peabody had helped arrange for a job at the Ship’s Lantern, allowing Annie to escape her marriage and melt away into the nameless swirl of the dockyard slums. Living in poverty was preferable to living in hell.
So that, mused Charlotte, explained why Annie had been frightened of speaking with a Bow Street Runner, and why Henry Peabody had spent time around the wharves.
She darted across Ratcliff Highway and chose a path that would take her through Leadenhall Street, impelled by an inexplicable urge to see the grand East India Company headquarters, where Peabody had worked.
Had his fellow clerks and employers mourned his passing? she wondered.
However, the thought was quickly pushed aside by more pressing questions. While Annie Wright had appeared sincere in her grief, she had been evasive in answering questions about what motives might lie behind her friend’s death. At one point, she had seemed on the verge of revealing something.
But then, when Charlotte had mentioned David Mather, fear had clamped Annie’s teeth shut, and she had withdrawn into a sullen silence. Deciding further probing was pointless, Charlotte had contented herself with getting a grudging promise that the barmaid would think over things and meet with her again in a few days. She had also mentioned that if Annie wished to reach her sooner, she could send word through Alice the Eel Girl, who sold her wares near Limehouse Dock.
Trust. It was a bond fraught with complexities, even between friends. She understood Annie’s reluctance to trust an utter stranger.
And yet . . .
Henry Peabody was dead, and Charlotte sensed the barmaid knew why.
Would the reason reveal that her own friends were in peril? It was, she determined, a question she couldn’t afford to leave unanswered.
* * *
Sheffield set the papers on the desk blotter and carefully smoothed out the creases. “As you see, there are several letters expressing satisfaction that a mutually agreeable deal had been reached, and that all the official documents had been signed and the funds handed over,” he explained.
“Kit, we’re aware that Woodbridge is in need of money,” murmured Wrexford after a cursory look. “It makes sense that he would seek a loan from one of the private banks that cater to the beau monde.”
“Yes, yes, I’m aware that he wouldn’t be the first aristocrat to mortgage future profits from his estate to cover pressing debts,” replied his friend. “But now look at this.” Sheffield shifted the letters, uncovering a scrawled list of four names, each with a small inked star beside it.
The earl picked up the list and subjected it to careful scrutiny.
“Hoare’s, Gurney’s, Barclays, Coutts . . . the names are all well-known private banks,” said Sheffield.
The earl frowned. The list definitely stirred suspicions, but he kept himself from jumping to conclusions. “The stars could mean he visited them and tried to secure a loan—”
“That won’t fadge, Wrex. We know he got money from Hoare’s bank, and the letters I just showed you prove he also received loans from Gurney’s and Barclays, which makes it likely that he did from Coutts, as well,” retorted Sheffield. “You’re always saying that we must look at empirical evidence, and this all seems to prove that Woodbridge is up to something havey-cavey.”
Wrexford didn’t disagree.
“Having done some research myself on the matter of bank loans,” continued his friend, “I can assure you that the private banks on Woodbridge’s list don’t bother lending piddling sums of money. If he’s convinced all four of them to given him a loan, he’s secured—”
“A bloody big sack of blunt,” murmured Wrexford.
Sheffield slapped his palm down on the desk. “I tell you, there’s Satan’s own mischief afoot here.” He began to drum his fingers against the dark-grained wood. “The key question is, How the devil did he borrow such a large sum of money? His estates aren’t nearly enough collateral, and that’s assuming they aren’t already mortgaged to the hilt.”
“Actually, there’s perhaps an even more important question.” The earl met his friend’s gaze with a grim expression.
“Just how is he intending to pay it all back?”
CHAPTER 11
A blade of sunlight pierced through the windowpane, its angled brightness a sharp reminder that the day was well past its zenith.
“Merciful heavens, I vowed that I wouldn’t fall into the same slothful habits of the indolent rich,” muttered Charlotte as she hurriedly shoved the last pins into her coiled hair and rose from her dressing table. “But at least I have a better excuse for my slumber than the frivolities of drinking and dancing until dawn.”
To the devil with champagne. Smothering a yawn, she grabbed up a shawl and hurried downstairs. At this moment she would gladly sell her soul to Satan for a cup of steaming black coffee.
McClellan was busy kneading dough at the worktable and didn’t look up as Charlotte slipped into the kitchen. “There’s fresh coffee in the pot on the hob,” murmured the maid, “and rolls warming in the oven.”
“Bless you,” replied Charlotte with a grateful sigh. She poured a cup, the rich burnt-spice aroma chasing the lingering smells of the stews from her nostrils as she quaffed a long swallow.
“A long night.” It was more of a statement than a question. After dusting the flour from her meaty hands, McClellan added, “I hope whatever you were doing proved worth the risk.”
“We shall have to wait and see,” said Charlotte. She fetched the warm rolls from the oven and took a seat at the table opposite the maid. “The earl and I have faced other wretchedly complicated investigations, but this one . . .” She broke off a bit of bread. “This one is proving difficult beyond words.”
McClellan carefully wiped down the tabletop with a damp cloth. “Perhaps because it is your friends who are involved in possible misdeeds, and you fear that solving the mystery will bring heartache as well as justice.”
Charlotte stopped crumbling the bread between her fingers. The maid, she knew, had some dark incident in her past. They had never discussed what it was. Charlotte was all too familiar with guarding painful personal secrets to have pressed for a revelation. However, she sensed McClellan understood that decisions were never black and white. And every shade of grey was tinged with consequences.
“Yes,” she answered. “Right and wrong is a question that can cut one’s heart in two.”
“No, it isn’t,” replied McClellan. “Your heart knows what’s right, and to act otherwise would be a betrayal of all you hold dear—a far worse crime than any of your friends may have committed.”
“Thank you.” She managed a wry smile. “For making the essence of a dilemma sound so simple.”
The maid shrugged. “It usually is.”
“Errare humanum est,” murmured Charlotte. To err is human. “If our friends have made mistakes, let us hope Wrexford and I can help them find a way to make things right.”
Any further discussion on the subject was forestalled by the sound of steps racing down the corridor.
“Awake at last.” Raven fix
ed her with an accusing stare as he skidded to a halt by the table.
“You never sleep late unless you’ve been up to something dangerous,” added Hawk.
“Which means we should know about it.” Raven scowled, mimicking the earl’s expression of annoyance with frightening accuracy. “Where did you go?”
Charlotte raised a brow. “Do you really wish to pursue the subject of secretive nocturnal activities?”
It was almost comical how quickly their faces flushed with guilt.
“I thought not.” She softened her words with a quick smile. “I know we are all trying to help our friends. But let us use prudence and good sense in how we do so.” A pause. “Be assured that the earl knew what I was doing.” Whether he agreed with it was another matter.
Raven gave a solemn nod, signaling an end to any further butting of heads. “Speaking of friends, we’ve just come from seeing Skinny. He’s feeling much better, but he’s still a bit quiffy-niffy.” He looked to McClellan. “May we get some food and broth to bring to him?”
“Hmmph.” The maid rose and turned to the larder. “Never mind that. I’m coming with you. I’ve some purchases to make in Covent Garden, so I’ll have a look at him, just to be sure all is well.”
“If you’ve any concerns about his well-being, bring him back here,” said Charlotte. “I’ll set up a cot in the aerie. The boys can go ask Wrexford for—”
“For what?” queried the earl, pausing at the kitchen’s entrance. “Forgive me, but the front door was ajar, so I took the liberty of entering to ensure nothing was amiss.”
Charlotte felt a rush of relief. Oddly enough, his deep-throated drawl had come to have a steadying effect on her.
“Skinny has been feeling poorly,” answered McClellan. “I’m accompanying the boys to have a look at him. If need be, we may wish to borrow your carriage to bring him here.”
“Take it now. It’s right outside,” said Wrexford. “I’ll find a hackney for the trip home.”
As the maid began assembling a basket of food, Charlotte flashed him a look of gratitude, then turned her attention to the boys.
“Don’t fret about Skinny,” she said. “We’ll take care of him.”
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