by Alyson Chase
“What interesting employment.” She gave the man her most charming smile. “When someone hires you to catch a thief, what steps do you take to discover the blackguard?”
He snorted. “Usually, the person who hires me tells me who took their property. It’s not much of a mystery.”
“Well then, say it is a crime where the victim can’t talk. Say it’s a murder. How would you go about catching the killer?”
He shot her a wide-eyed look, and she hastily added, “I’ll bet that’s the type of question Bow Street will ask of you. How would you answer?”
He rubbed his jaw. “Well, in a gruesome case like that, I’d start with the victim, I guess. Figure out what type of man he was. Reasons someone would want to kill him. Work from there.”
“Huh.” She sat back. She hadn’t really considered the why of someone trying to kill her father. He was kind and absent-minded and completely harmless. If she’d thought about it at all, she just assumed it had something to do with money.
Although, his earldom was one of the poorest in the land. Why would someone go after him when there were so many richer targets that would be more profitable?
“Here’s the file.”
Startled, Juliana glanced up to see Mr. Hardmeat holding a folder out to her.
“Thank you.” She took it and flipped it open. There wasn’t much. The directions to Mr. Pickens past three residences. A list of previous employers. A letter of recommendation. Nothing that would speak to motive. But she wanted to be thorough. “Can I have pen and paper to copy this down?”
Mr. Hardmeat snapped his fingers at his son. “Boy. Earn your keep. Copy this file for the lady, and be quick about it.”
With a sigh that would have been more appropriate had he been asked to rebuild Hadrian’s Wall rather than write a few pages, the younger Mr. Hardmeat drew paper from his desk and dipped his pen in an inkwell. “Well?” He looked at Juliana expectantly. “I can’t read the contents from here, can I?”
“Right.” She hurried over and placed the file before him. “I really do apprec—”
“Whatever.” He bent his head to his task, but not before his father slapped the back of it.
“How many times have I told you to be polite to the customers?” His father shook his head, despairing, and stomped back into his office, slamming the door.
Juliana rethought her plan to reproduce as the younger Mr. Hardmeat copied the documents. The idea of children seemed all well and good, but the reality of this sullen, petulant being as one’s progeny was enough to give anyone second thoughts.
“Done.” He handed her the newly-copied papers, the ink still wet on the top page.
“Do you have a folder or envelope I can put them in?” She tried her hardest to make her voice as sweet as possible.
He just looked more irritated. “Fine.” He riffled through one of his desk drawers and produced a large envelope. “Good enough for you?”
“Perfect.” Now that she had what she wanted, she felt freer to speak. “A bit of advice, young man. If you want to inherit your father’s business—”
“I don’t.”
“Oh.” She rocked back on her heels. Well, there went that lecture. “What do you want to do?”
He shrugged. “Nothing, really.”
Juliana knew what that sort of indecision felt like. She took his pen and scribbled an address and time on a small piece of paper. She pushed it toward him. “Here. This is a good place to go to help figure out your interests.” And if she wasn’t thrown out of the salon for inflicting this sullen young man on them, she would consider this good deed worth it. “Remember, your life is what you make of it.”
With a nod to the thief-taker, she strode from the building, chin held high.
Life was what she made of it. She’d spent too much time last night crying over Brogan and his ideas on what her life was and should be. She was the one in control of her destiny.
And it was time Mr. Brogan Duffy understood that.
Chapter Twelve
Bertie shifted from foot to foot. “Do you think he’ll be here?”
Blowing out a breath, Juliana glared at her friend from the corner of her eye. He’d asked the same question every five minutes of their carriage ride over to the Voltaire Society’s meeting. Juliana usually didn’t find the conversation of this club as engaging as at the Rose Salon, but this one had meetings every week. Today’s was being held at the home of Lady Mary Cavindish, an older woman who was even more untraditional than Juliana.
“You didn’t have to attend the meeting with me,” she pointed out, shaking her skirts to unwrinkle them from the cab ride. “I know everyone here. There’s no danger.”
He twisted his hat around his left hand. “At tea, you said you thought one of them might be responsible for the attacks on your father. You’re right; no danger here at all,” he said sarcastically.
She squeezed his arm as she led him up the steps of the townhouse. He truly was sweet, but she didn’t know how much assistance Bertie could provide in a threatening situation. But perhaps she was being unfair. When Mr. Pickens had attacked her, Bertie had done a marvelous job of putting his face in the path of Pickens’s fist. It had distracted Pickens from her for a good thirty seconds.
No, Bertie had the heart of a lion but the physical prowess of a mouse. It hadn’t been until Brogan had arrived to detain Mr. Pickens that she had felt safe.
She frowned. She hadn’t heard from the blasted man all day. She’d expected a note at the very least, updating her of his progress, when she’d returned to the agency’s apartments. Not wanting to spend the afternoon staring at the walls, she’d paid a visit on Bertie.
And wished she’d been having tea with her surly investigator instead.
Pushing away that disconcerting thought, she said, “I don’t really believe someone here wants my father dead.” She rapped on the door. “But my father introduced Snow and me to this society, too. They were his friends first. And one of them might know a reason my father has made an enemy.”
A butler opened the door, looking as much the long-suffering servant as a man could look. From her few visits to this house, Juliana knew he liked to put on the appearance of disapproving of his mistress’s radical life-style. The woman had created London’s very first gentlewomen’s club, for heaven’s sake, a wondrous place where the most ungenteel things happened. But the butler’s attentiveness to Lady Cavindish, the light in his eyes when he looked upon her, showed his devotion.
“Good afternoon, Lady Juliana. Mr. Huddleson.” He stepped back and pointed down the hall. “They are gathered in the morning room.”
“Thanks.” Bertie handed his hat to the man. “I don’t suppose you know… I mean to say…”
Juliana took pity on him. “Is Mr. Smythe here?”
“Yes, my lady.” The butler sniffed. “Arrived not ten minutes ago.”
Bertie paled.
She secured her arm more firmly through his. “You have nothing to fear from seeing the man.” She pulled him down the hall. “The wrong was all on his end.”
“I know, but it doesn’t make meeting with him any easier.” He tugged at the knot of his cravat. “Not when he and I were—” He darted her a quick look. “Uh, such particular friends.”
She patted his hand and drew him into the sitting room. Bertie wasn’t the only one to face a past lover. She met James Masters’s gaze and gave him a smile and nod. But unlike Bertie’s relationship, hers had ended amicably.
“Juliana! Bertie!” Lady Mary swept forward and took her hands. “Thank the heavens another woman has arrived.” She nodded towards the settees and chairs in the room, most of the spaces filled. “As you can see, the only feminine influence on the conversation has come from me and Miss Lynn. And she, well…”
“I understand, Lady Mary.” Miss Bella Lynn was a… challenging conversationalist, to say the least. Never outright rude, yet she seemed to make those around
her aware of her disdain all the same. “What is the topic of conversation today?”
The woman sighed and patted her snow-white hair. “We’re still up in the heavens, discussing comets and what-not. I much prefer talking about the going-ons of what happens down here on our planet.”
A man peeled himself off his perch on the windowsill and glided their way, his smooth movements impressive considering the height of his heels. The ends of his tawny hair just curled about his collar, and Juliana knew for a fact that he spent a large sum of money on a barber to give him that slightly disheveled look. “The topic has become dreadfully dull, I agree. And since we are guests in your home today, I say we change the subject. Did anyone read the opinion piece in The Times about the upcoming demise of Romanticism? They’ve predicted it every year in the past twenty.”
He winked at Bertie, and her friend stiffened next to her.
Juliana burned for Bertie’s sake. To act so casually, as though nothing had occurred between the two men, was the deepest of cuts. Mr. Smythe was truly a horrible man. “The Romantics bore me,” she said. “All feeling and no reason. They’re the toddlers of modern poetry.”
Smythe narrowed his eyes. He made his living as a Romantic poet, but had yet to break into the ranks of a Wordsworth or Shelley or Rose. “As the founder of your favorite salon is a Romanticist, I’d say that is a bit hard of you.”
“But she may not be wrong,” a man wearing a banyan as a coat said. “I’ve long complained about the maudlin excesses of the movement. Balance is what’s needed.”
“Balance?” Miss Lynn leaned forward, putting her elbows on her knees. “We’ve been ruled too long by classical ideals of Rationalism. It’s what has led to hundreds of years of domination by the aristocratic class. Romanticism elevates true beauty, spontaneity, the authenticity of the individual. There should be no balance for that.”
A loud chorus of boos clashed with applause of support. And any more talk of comets was promptly forgotten.
Pushing Bertie in the opposite direction of Mr. Smythe to mingle, Juliana led Lady Mary back to her chair and settled beside her. “Lady Mary—”
“No such conceits here. Just Mary.”
“Mary.” Juliana leaned closer, not wanting to be overheard, although with the exuberant ejaculations that accompanied the current discussion, being overheard was unlikely. “You’ve known my father for some time now.”
“If you consider forty years a long time.” Mary plucked up a glass from the table in front of her and took a long swallow. “If you consider the entire history of the world, that’s hardly any time at all.”
“Yes, well, in those forty years, have you ever…” She squinted. How to phrase this?
“Ever what?” Mary smiled, the crepe skin of her cheeks pulling tight. “I can assure you, in my years there is very little I haven’t done.”
Juliana chuckled. “Yes, but I was wondering more about my father, and what he might have done. Have you ever known him to have enemies?”
Mary sat back. “That, my dear, is a very odd question.”
Juliana looked at her hands. “I realize that, but—”
“I adore odd questions.” The older woman tapped one of her rings against the rim of her glass. “But I can’t think of anyone who doesn’t like your father. Henry is, and has always been, a very kind man. After your mother passed, there was quite the flurry of eager young things hoping to become the next Countess of Withington.”
“Really?” Juliana pursed her lips. “My father’s estate—”
“Was enough to get by on. For a sensible sort of woman, having a kind husband and enough to be comfortable is more than enough. Your father would have been fortunate to wed any one of those women, but he was too heartbroken to consider marrying again.”
Her heart squeezed. She didn’t remember much of her mother, but she did remember the love. Their family had been happy.
Mary frowned. “There was that odd business with Sir Thomas Miles. Because of your mother’s death, it wasn’t commented on overmuch. The breach between the two men seemed a trifle compared to your father’s loss.”
“Sir Thomas…” Juliana chewed her bottom lip. She had a vague memory of sitting on a Sir Thomas’s knee, pretending to be riding a horse as he bounced her up and down. He even made neighing sounds, much to her smaller self’s delight. “I remember him. He and my father were friends. What happened?”
“I think it was an investment that went bad.” Mary tilted her head. “Your father encouraged Sir Thomas to put money in something or other? Perhaps it was the other way about.” She shrugged. “No matter. It wasn’t a scandal of any sort. No large row, not that I can recollect. They simply ended their friendship.”
And it had been seventeen years since her mother died. Holding a grudge for this long seemed improbable, if not impossible.
“Now,” Mary said, placing a blue-veined hand on Juliana’s knee, “what’s this about?”
“Hmm? About?” Rats. She should have come up with some sort of story why she was asking questions. She didn’t want it known she suspected an acquaintance of her father’s was trying to murder him. She somehow didn’t think people would be as willing to speak to her if that was the case. “Nothing in particular. I did lose my mother so early that I suppose I just want to know everything about my father’s life I can.”
Mary arched an eyebrow. “And knowing his enemies will fill out the family history, will it?”
Her stomach sank. “Something like that.”
“And this has nothing to do with the handsome yet imposing man glaring down at you?”
Juliana looked up and yelped. Brogan stood not three feet away, arms crossed over his chest, looking like he wanted nothing more than to thrash her.
“What are you doing here?” she asked. For such a large man he sure could move softly. How he’d crossed that room without her noticing, she didn’t know.
“My job.” He held his hand out to her. “I’d like to speak with you. In the hall.”
She looked at his hand, looked at the curious glances they were garnering, and hurriedly slipped her own palm over his. “I’d like to speak with you, as well.” She had many things to say to this man. Many, many things. First on her list was how unprofessional it was to abandon her simply because they’d had a disagreement.
With a flick of his wrist, he jerked her to standing. “I’m glad we’ve reached a consensus of opinion on one thing at least.’
As she was pulled from the room, she heard Mary chuckle. “This salon meeting is becoming more interesting by the minute.”
***
Brogan tried to rein in his temper. The day had started off poorly and only gotten worse. The note from his father had thwarted his investigation that morn, and when he tried to get it back on course, he found Lady Juliana not only not safe in the apartments, but traipsing about with their suspects.
He pulled her through the door and out of hearing from those in the sitting room. “Explain.”
She tugged her hand free and shrugged. “Explain what exactly?”
He gritted his teeth. “Why you’re here instead of at the apartment letting me investigate.”
She shrugged again. “I’m a member of this salon, too.”
“You aren’t investigating?”
“I didn’t say that.”
He looked at the ceiling. God give him patience with this woman. “You’ve hired me to do a job. Let me do it.”
“I thought we were to work together.” She poked him in the chest, a move of hers that brought up too many memories of intertwined tongues and heated bodies. “You agreed. Then you run off this morning without me. That doesn’t mean I’m going to stop investigating.”
Damn, why had he thought she’d sit meekly at home while he worked? Nothing in their past history should have suggested that. But she’d riled him up last night when he prided himself on staying emotionless at work. Made him so frustrated he hadn�
�t been thinking straight.
“Why are you at this meeting?” She cocked her head to the side. “Do you think the perpetrator could be one of my father’s acquaintances here, too?”
Brogan scraped his palm across his jaw. All he wanted was to go home, eat enough to make up for the luncheon he’d skipped, and go to bed. Not worry about whether Lady Juliana would interfere with his investigation. Not worry about the trouble his sister was getting into. Not continue down the path of what he was becoming more and more convinced was a wild goose chase. By all accounts, her father was a quiet, gentle sort of man, not someone to target for death.
“Your father’s acquaintances in London are few.” His friends anywhere were few. The man led a simple life in the country most of the year. “I won’t leave any avenue of inquiry unexplored. But is it true he hasn’t attended any salon in over a year?”
Juliana nodded. “It does seem unlikely anyone here is the culprit. But like you said, no avenue unexplored.”
He eyed her. A request to return to the apartment wouldn’t be taken well. Unable to get rid of her, he would have to work with the woman. Besides, these were her friends, too. Her introductions could help.
He waved a hand at the doorway. “Shall we?”
She took her skirts in one hand and turned for the room. “We shall.”
Brogan saw one familiar face. Bertie rose with a smile to come greet him, until he saw the other man angling for Brogan and Juliana. Bertie sat back down with a plop.
“Juliana.” The other man swaggered up to them in pantaloons tight enough to make Brogan wince in sympathy. The top of his head reached Brogan’s jaw, and he had the pale, sickly look that seemed in favor with toffs these days. “Who is this delightfully rough-looking man of yours? I didn’t realize your tastes ran to the laborer set.”
Juliana went stiff beside him. Before Brogan could correct the implication that they were together, she said, “Mr. Smythe, meet Mr. Duffy, an associate of my brother’s and mine. Mr. Duffy, Mr. Smythe. A poet.”
The man tutted. “We really must work on your introduction skills, dear.” He bowed his head. “I am Jonathon Smythe, poet, philosopher, artist. I’m the type of man who is always looking for a good… associate,” he said slyly. “I suffer from gout, high bile, and periodic fits of the vapors.”
