The earl eyed the muddy fingerprints—or were they paw prints?—on the once-pristine paper. “If your hands were cleaner, I’d invite you to have a muffin.”
Raven wiped his filthy palms on the seat of his pants, drawing a muffled laugh from Tyler. “Consuetudinis magna vis est,” he replied with a shrug.
Old habits die hard. Wrexford’s mouth twitched. “Be that as it may, whatever is smeared on your fingers is robbing me of my appetite.”
“But it’s only—” Hawk swallowed the rest of his words as his brother kicked his shin.
The earl unfolded the note and skimmed the contents. “As luck would have it, Lady Charlotte is taking tea with Lady Peake this morning and requests my presence. That will allow me to tell her of our thoughts concerning Mather.” He looked up. “Weasels, kindly fetch paper and pencil from my workroom. I need to write a response, and then I also want to send a message to—”
“Your pardon, milord.” The butler reappeared in the doorway. “But another missive has arrived.” This one, a fancy piece of folded stationery fixed with an ornate wax seal, he passed to the earl himself.
“The devil be damned,” muttered Wrexford as he read the note.
Tyler came alert. “What is it?”
“Lord Copley is requesting a meeting with me at White’s on a matter of utmost urgency.”
“When?”
“At noon,” replied the earl.
“Hmmph, in broad daylight on St. James’s Street,” mused the valet. “I daresay it’s not a trap. Still . . .”
“Weasels!” The earl snapped his fingers. “Paper and pencil, along with some sealing wax!”
The boys were back in a flash. He quickly scribbled out two notes and used his signet ring to add his official imprimatur. “Leave this for Mr. Griffin at the Bow Street magistrates’ office,” he said, handing one of them to Hawk. “But first, go tell Lady Charlotte I will meet her at Lady Peake’s residence at eleven. Then head to Sheffield’s room and ask him to meet me there, as well.”
The earl turned to Raven. “And you—you take this to Lord Copley. But listen carefully, lad . . .” He leaned in closer, coming nearly nose to nose with the boy. “I want you to linger around his residence, and when he leaves, stick to him like a cocklebur until he arrives at White’s. I wish to know whether he makes any stops or meets anyone else. However, do it carefully, understand? He may be a murderer.”
Raven gave a solemn nod. “Oiy, sir. I won’t let you down.”
“Then off you go, Weasels.” He watched them dart away and disappear into the corridor. Raven’s task wasn’t dangerous, he told himself, and the boy was too clever and agile to come to any grief. Still, he couldn’t help but feel a twinge of worry.
“He’ll be fine,” counseled Tyler. “Urchins are invisible to men like Copley.”
It was true. The raggle-taggle children who roamed the streets were beneath the notice of the beau monde—save when they weren’t there on the street corners to sweep the manure aside so the fancy aristocrats didn’t soil their elegant footwear.
Wrexford pushed back his chair. “Let us fetch our coats. We both have much to do before the clock strikes twelve bells.”
* * *
Alison’s brow furrowed in concern as Charlotte entered the parlor and took a seat beside her. Light winked off the lens of her quizzing glass as she raised it to her eye. “My dear, you look like death warmed over.”
Charlotte winced, finding both the word death and the scrutiny of a much-magnified sapphirine orb unnerving. “It’s rather unpleasant to stumble over a man who has just had his heart pierced by a knife.”
“Another murder?” The dowager gave her hand a sympathetic squeeze. “What a ghastly shock for you.”
Charlotte refrained from enumerating all the dead bodies she had tripped over since taking up A. J. Quill’s pen from her late husband. Some secrets were better left unsaid. Instead, she quickly explained about the foray to East India House.
“However uncharitable it is of me,” said Alison, “I find it hard to muster any sympathy for Fenwick Alston. He was a scoundrel who dedicated his life to corrupting good into evil.”
“He’ll foment no more trouble in the world,” said Charlotte. She, too, found it hard to feel any pity. Vives in gladio in gladio mori. Live by the sword, die by the sword. “But let us leave off speaking ill of the dead. It’s the living who concern me.”
“Copley,” said the dowager, her expression grim. “It seems there’s no chance now of getting the documents Woodbridge signed.”
“As to that . . .” Charlotte hesitated. An idea had come to her as she had tossed and turned in the hours of darkness just before dawn. But it would require the help of their friends and was not without risk.
“Yes?” urged Alison, her eyes alight with curiosity.
“I will wait until Wrexford arrives to explain,” she said. “Though I have a feeling he won’t agree to the idea.”
“What idea?” asked the earl as the dowager’s butler led him into the parlor.
Charlotte waited for his escort to withdraw before replying, “One that concerns retrieving the Argentum documents from Lord Copley.”
“The situation has changed,” announced Wrexford.
She edged forward in her seat. “How so?”
“Copley just sent me a note requesting a meeting at noon.”
Her eyes widened. “What do you think he wants?”
“It seems pointless to speculate,” he replied. “From the very beginning of all these intertwining mysteries, nothing has been what it seems. So, we shall just have to wait and see.”
* * *
With steady, light-footed steps—not too fast, not too slow—Raven wove in and out of the sun and shadows dappling the street, just another tiny flicker of movement in the vast tapestry of London’s unruly daily life. Up ahead, his quarry marched along at a purposeful pace, head down, preoccupied with his own thoughts.
Like all the highborn aristocrats, Lord Copley appeared oblivious to the world around him, observed the boy. Never a wise decision. Trouble didn’t give a rat’s arse as to whether one possessed pedigree and privilege.
The way grew more crowded as Copley turned onto Piccadilly Street, heading for St. James’s Street. Fancy carriages and high-perch phaetons clattered over the cobbles, cheek by jowl with drab dray carts and hackneys. Up ahead at the corner, people were clustered at the curb, waiting for a brewery wagon filled with barrels to squeeze past a barouche. Through the press of bodies, Raven caught a glimpse of Skinny holding his broom in readiness. This was his regular street-sweeping spot, and business looked to be good.
Tapping his stick to his boot in impatience, Copley maneuvered his way to the edge of the street. Ducking and dodging elbows, Raven quickened his steps, not wishing to be caught up in the crush of people waiting to cross when the way cleared.
Out of the corner of his eye, the boy saw someone else start to move....
The two drivers began to shout at each other, sparking the pedestrians to add their own voices to the curses. A whip cracked. The agitated ring of iron-shod hooves echoed off the stones. And all at once, the wagon broke free.
Seizing the opening, a curricle pulled by a matched pair of muscled chestnuts shot forward.
Copley hesitated....
Raven saw the pearly-white flash of a gloved hand—
And then suddenly a blur of well-tailored wool was tumbling into the path of the oncoming horses.
A scream rose above the sickening crunch of bone and splintering wood. Wheels skittering, the vehicle swerved drunkenly and came to a halt halfway up the street.
As the onlookers jostled in shock and confusion, a gentleman waved them away from the gruesome sight.
“Stand back, stand back!” he ordered, taking care to avoid the puddles of blood as he approached the unmoving body.
Raven wriggled through the press of bodies, his eyes locking for an instant with Skinny’s before shifting to the dark-clad figure
who had taken charge.
Crouching down, the gentleman flexed his long fingers—another flash of pearly white—before turning Copley face up.
The boy crept across the cobbles, close enough to hear the breath rattle in Copley’s throat.
“Blue Peter.” It was hardly more than a whispery rasp. Copley’s eyes fluttered open for an instant and then fell shut. A shudder racked his broken body. “T-tell Wrexford to watch for Blue Peter.”
Shifting slightly, the gentleman pressed a palm to the baron’s windpipe and then calmly crushed the life out of him. Without batting an eye, he slipped his fingers inside Copley’s coat.
Searching, searching . . .
Raven inched closer. Spotting a papery flicker as the gentleman withdrew a packet of folded documents, the boy darted forward and snatched it from his grasp.
Snarling an oath, the gentleman grabbed Raven’s jacket, but as he fell to his knees, the boy twisted and kicked free. Scrambling to his feet, he skidded on the blood-slick stones, teetering off-balance for an instant, and then broke into a run.
Quick as a snake, the gentleman was up and after him. A lunge, and his fingers hooked in Raven’s collar.
“Oiy, oiy!”
His feet suddenly entangled in a dung-encrusted broom, the gentleman went sprawling. He was up in a flash, but Raven had already disappeared down one of the side streets.
“You miserable little piece of filth.” Spinning around, he lashed out a blow that caught Skinny flush on his bony shoulder.
“Oiy, oiy!” he howled. “I wuz jest tryin’ te help!”
Fixing the urchin with a venomous look, the gentleman cocked his fist to strike again.
“Here, here, sirrah!” A portly fellow dressed in a navy coat and biscuit-colored pantaloons stepped between them. “Shame on you. No man of honor should ever beat a helpless little child.”
The gentleman spat out another oath.
“Are you hurt, lad?” asked the portly fellow.
Skinny, tears rolling down his face, gave a theatrical wince.
Spotting two officers from Horse Guards striding from Whitehall, the portly fellow let out a sigh of relief. “Ah, here come the authorities ! We shall let them sort this all out, eh?”
But the pearly-white-gloved gentleman had already melted away into the crowd.
* * *
Wrexford left the dowager’s townhouse early, intent on arriving at White’s with time to spare. Sheffield hadn’t shown up, but as the earl’s note had explained about the foray to East India House and Alston’s murder, he suspected that his friend had chosen to stop first at Woodbridge’s residence to inform Lady Cordelia and her brother of the death blow to their plans.
For without the official documents showing Woodbridge as the owner of Argentum Trading Company, there was no chance of recovering the money held in the company’s bank account before the dastards withdrew it as a bill of exchange.
Copley, he admitted, had outmaneuvered them and now held the upper hand. Which begged the question of why he had asked for a meeting.
Unless it was to gloat.
A sense of profound failure shook him to the bone. For all his so-called reason and logic, he had done naught but chase after shadows, only to be left lost in the dark. His friends had looked to him for help.
And I let them down.
Wrexford quickened his steps, trying to shake off his self-loathing and concentrate on what bargaining chips he might have to play in the coming meeting.
“Wrex!”
The earl looked up and felt a spasm of fear on seeing Sheffield’s face.
His friend took his arm and drew him into the shade of a bookshop’s bowfront window. “There’s been an accident on Piccadilly Street.”
Raven. His heart leapt into his throat.
“A gentleman somehow stumbled into the path of an oncoming carriage and was crushed to death.” Sheffield’s voice dropped to an even lower pitch. “I couldn’t get close enough for a look, but word is, it’s Copley, though that may be mere crowd rumor.”
The earl spun around. “I had Raven following him. If anything. . .” No, he refused to contemplate the worst. “If anything has happened, the boy will fly back to Berkeley Square.”
CHAPTER 28
Lungs burning, pulse pounding, Wrexford raced up the front steps of his townhouse and flung the door open, Sheffield right on his heels. The sound of their boots echoed like gunfire as they crossed the entrance hall’s marble tiles and skidded into the main corridor.
“Milord!” Riche’s hail went unheard.
Wrexford’s palms were clammy as he fumbled with the brass latch to his workroom.
“Sorry, sir.” Hands shoved in his jacket pockets, Raven was standing with his back to the banked fire. “I bolloxed the job. But—”
After crossing the carpet in three swift steps, Wrexford swept the boy into a fierce hug.
“Oiy, oiy! You’re cracking my ribs!”
Be damned with appearing a sentimental fool. He held tight, reveling in every little jab and jut of the boy’s bony body.
Sheffield cleared his throat with a cough—or perhaps it was a laugh. Wrexford didn’t care. Raven’s warmth was melting the ice from his blood.
“What happened to your face, lad?” queried his friend.
“I slipped on the cobblestones . . .”
Wrexford reluctantly allowed Raven to wriggle free. The boy’s cheek was scraped, and the bruise spreading over his jaw made his grin look a little lopsided.
“But thanks to Skinny, the smarmy dastard couldn’t catch me!”
“What dastard? And why Skinny—” began the earl, only to have the rest of his question die on his lips as Raven plucked a packet of papers out of his pocket.
“The dastard who pushed Copley under the wheels of a curricle—it was horrible—tried to steal these documents from inside his coat,” explained the boy in a rush. “I figured they must be important, so I snatched them for you.”
The thick papers were speckled with blood, noted the earl, as he accepted them from Raven. “Well done, lad.”
“That isn’t all, sir.”
His hands tightened, setting off a faint crackling.
“Lord Copley whispered something just before the dastard crushed his throat,” continued Raven. “He said, ‘Blue Peter. Watch for Blue Peter.’ ”
Wrexford frowned in thought. “Who would be called by such a moniker?”
“Someone at the docks?” suggested Sheffield. “There are all manner of exotic foreigners working as stevedores or warehouse workers. Perhaps blue refers to a tattoo?”
“Excellent thinking, Kit. That makes sense. Sir Darius and his friends might know of him.”
“There’s another thing, sir,” said Raven. “The dastard who pushed Copley was wearing white gloves. Seemed odd to me.”
The boy was right. It was odd. However, that little detail could wait. The earl moved to his desk. “Never mind that now. Before anything else, we need to look at these papers.”
Raven and Sheffield hurried to join him as Wrexford unfolded the sheaf of documents. The top sheet was a letter, written in a tiny, cramped script. But before he read it, he took a quick look beneath it.
A smile touched his lips, mingling both surprise and satisfaction. He passed several of the pages to Sheffield.
“By Jove,” murmured his friend as he quickly scanned the contents. He paused for a moment to touch the thick wax seals affixed to one page, next to the signature of Jameson Thirkell Mansfield, Earl of Woodbridge, before looking up. “I thought it a lost cause, but you did it, Wrex.”
“We did it,” murmured Wrexford, reaching out to ruffle Raven’s hair.
In addition to the legal papers naming Woodbridge as sole proprietor of Argentum Trading Company, Copley had included all the bank promissory notes that Woodbridge had entrusted to the consortium. While the others chortled in celebration, the earl quickly returned to the letter, anxious to know what had caused Copley to have a crisi
s of conscience.
“Bloody hell,” he whispered after reading through the long and detailed explanation. It didn’t excuse the baron’s choices. But perhaps his final act was an atonement of sorts for his past sins.
“What?” demanded Sheffield.
“Copley has given me all the pieces of the Argentum puzzle.” A grunt. “Save for the name of the real ringleader, which he wanted to tell me in person, rather than commit to paper.”
The earl refolded the letter and put it in his pocket. “But never mind that now. We must move quickly. You need to rush to Woodbridge’s residence. I’ll be by shortly with my carriage to fetch both of you.” He explained why. “But say nothing to Lady Cordelia. I don’t wish for her to get her hopes up, in case things don’t go well.”
Turning to Raven, he touched the boy’s scraped cheek. “My apologies, lad, but might I ask you to run several more errands?”
Raven let out a snigger. “Just because I agreed to a fancy new name doesn’t mean I’ve gone soft as a prancing popinjay. What do you need me to do?”
Wrexford scribbled out two short notes and handed them over. “Run to Bow Street and hand the first one to Griffin, who should be waiting for it. Then head to the Sun and Sextant Club and leave the other for Sir Darius Roy,” he replied. “After that, return to Lady Charlotte and ask her to don her urchin’s garb and come to my townhouse as soon as it’s dark.”
By then, he hoped to have some good news. “Oh, and you may tell McClellan that she has orders to make you and Hawk as many ginger biscuits as you can eat.”
A whoop echoed in the corridor as the boy raced off.
“Ah, to possess the resilience of youth,” said Sheffield, flexing his shoulders as he picked up his hat from the work counter. “It’s a sad commentary on my advancing age when the prospect of a full night of sleep seems far more desirable than a great many other pleasures.”
The earl opened his desk drawer and took out several items, which he quickly shoved into his pockets. Given what the rest of Copley’s letter had spelled out, the final moves of the games within games were about to play out.
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