by Kate Moore
When Hazelwood returned to the club, a dozing Wilde staggered to his feet from a couch in the coffee room. The youth to took Hazelwood’s coat and hat and offered him a second copy of the little blue book.
“Found it at Lackington’s, sir.” The youth yawned. “Goldsworthy’s in his office.”
Wilde didn’t say, nor did he have to that their leader expected Hazelwood’s report. Hazelwood clapped the youth on the shoulder. “Off to bed with you now, Wilde. I’ve got another job for you in the morning.”
The youth looked over his shoulder at him. “Sir, Miranda wants to read the book, if it’s no trouble.”
“If it helps your cause, Wilde, I’ll give her a crack at it.”
Hazelwood made his way to the spymaster’s office. In the whole time he’d lived at the club, scaffolding had hidden its façade along Albemarle Street. The interior rooms, except for the coffee room and the bedrooms, were draped in canvas. Passersby were meant to think the place empty and undergoing renovation, and not housing a nest of spies. During daylight hours, most of them passed through the back of the house and out through Kirby’s chemist shop on Bond Street to disguise their comings and goings.
The under-renovation disguise was pronounced in Goldsworthy’s office, which had the tented look of a military field headquarters. Hazelwood found two men in the office, Goldsworthy, behind his huge desk, and Captain Harry Clare, at ease in one of the club’s green leather armchairs facing their leader. Seated, Samuel Goldsworthy was no less monumental than when he rose to his towering height. A dozen candles illuminated the desk and cast the big man’s imposing shadow over the canvas-draped wall behind him.
Hazelwood took the leather chair next to Clare, opposite the big man. In his scarlet regimental jacket, Clare looked like a faded print of Wellington’s annual Waterloo banquet.
“Hazelwood,” Goldsworthy greeted him, “just the man I wanted to see. What’s the report?”
“The enemy is after the girl. We were followed from Mivart’s to the dressmaker’s this morning, and around seven this evening, while her maid was at supper, the girl’s rooms were searched.”
Goldsworthy’s shaggy russet brows lifted. “And? Any papers taken?”
“Not that the girl will admit to. She showed alarm over one Morocco-bound book. As soon as she found it, she had little further interest in the work of the thieves.”
Clare sat up a little straighter in his chair. “Bold customers, I’d say to enter Mivart’s. Looking for what?”
“That’s the question I’ve been pondering.” Hazelwood watched Goldsworthy, trying to read any tic or twitch in the bluff ruddy face. The big man’s expression was as readable as lichen on a boulder. Goldsworthy was not one to give away government secrets. “What information would Fawkener give his daughter that the other side badly wants?”
Goldsworthy showed no sign of hearing him. “Has the girl made any further claim that her father is alive?”
“Not a word.” Hazelwood held up the little book he’d received from Wilde. “She’s got herself a copy of The Husband Hunter’s Guide to London, and plans to give the Season a go. I’ve offered to help, of course.” He held on to the information that the guide had been delivered to her from her father through his bankers not the government.
Goldsworthy nodded approval, while next to him Clare snorted.
Hazelwood turned to his friend. “You doubt my ability to be of service to a maiden navigating the perilous seas of her first London Season?”
Clare assumed an innocent expression. “I’m sure that if she’s looking for a reliable shot, or a man who can break heads, you’re her man. Is that her object?”
Hazelwood shook his head. “I think she rather expects to find a fellow of dull and respectable domesticity plus a tidy income.”
“You’re safe then,” Clare quipped.
Goldsworthy cleared his throat with a rumble that could be mistaken for a coal cart passing. “Gentlemen, may I remind you that the girl in question likely has information vital to His Majesty’s government and that we must have that information.”
Goldsworthy’s tone reminded Hazelwood of certain unpleasant interviews he’d had in his youth with the Headmaster of his school. Goldsworthy had a sense of humor, but he also had a presence that squashed rebellion. Now he fixed Hazelwood with a grim stare.
“The government expects you to do what you do, Hazelwood. Persuade Jane Fawkener to tell you what she knows.”
“Do what I do?” He kept his tone neutral in spite of a sudden distaste at his employer’s suggestion.
Goldsworthy offered a dismissive wave of one of his melon-sized hands.
Clare interpreted. “He means, Hazelwood, that you are to use that polished address for which you are so well known to get the girl eating out of your hand.”
Hazelwood had not misunderstood. Goldsworthy wanted him to be his old self, the man he was before he’d been recruited as a spy. He had been only too willing to respond to female interest from the first blushing housemaid who’d giggled at him to the highflyers who’d offered their services at the going rate. He let Goldsworthy wait.
If he could figure out what information the government wanted, maybe he could avoid being a complete villain in the girl’s life.
“My guess is that whether Jane Fawkener realizes it or not, her father has left her in possession of the names of his friends in the Middle East, and that every one of those friends would be in grave danger if that information fell into Russian hands.”
Goldsworthy assumed a sudden deafness while he rustled through a pile of loose documents on the vast desk. Hazelwood and Clare exchanged a glance. The big man’s feigned disinterest was as good a sign as any that Hazelwood had hit it right.
A moment later, the papers shuffled to his apparent satisfaction, Goldsworthy pulled an envelope from the pile and lifted his head. He fixed Hazelwood with another fierce stare. “Can you do it?”
“You mean can I captivate the girl? Make her smile at me, look my way when I enter a crowded room, ignore all other partners, and offer me her confidences? Of course.”
“Good. Do you know who followed you today?”
“A hired spy, a local, and not a serious tough. He scared off easily. Tomorrow, I’ll send Wilde around to the livery stable where the fellow came from to see who sent him. Anything more, sir?”
“You’ve secured the information tonight?”
Once again Goldsworthy’s attitude left him with a vague distaste for the assignment. “Protected the girl, you mean? I left a guard outside her door.”
Goldsworthy nodded his approval. “Here’s an invitation to a dinner party next week. Take the girl. See what you can learn.” He tossed an envelope across the desk, and with a wave of his hand, he dismissed them both. “Goodnight, gentlemen.”
Hazelwood and Clare rose. They passed through the darkened coffee room without speaking until they reached the foot of the stairs, where they stopped to pick up candles, and Clare spoke again. “Do you think Malikov’s behind these attacks on your girl?”
Hazelwood took up his candle. He needed to get his head straight. He had been thinking of Jane Fawkener as his, which was a sure way to make mistakes and muff his assignment. “If Malikov is involved, then someone inside the Foreign Office is sharing information about the girl a little too freely. Her Walhouse cousins were at her door at an uncivil hour this morning.”
“Chartwell could have told the family that she’d returned,” Clare suggested.
“True, but I don’t like it that we’re lying to the girl at every turn.”
Clare laughed. “It’s your last case, and you’re complaining because you’ve been ordered to make love to a pretty girl. Just do it, and be thankful you’re not facing a Spanish fort with French guns trained on you.”
“Clare, is that envy speaking? Remind me sometime to ask you about your
faults, if you have any. Has Goldsworthy saddled you with something particularly disagreeable or dangerous?”
“Worse than that. Dull. I’m looking for a blind man, who may be mad.”
“Ah.” Hazelwood understood. Clare liked to lead charges in battle, sword drawn, facing the enemy head on. He had no stomach for lurking in dark places listening to random talk, seeking crumbs of information.
“So far my blind man hasn’t turned up in any of the usual places, nor is he known in the almshouses. Usually, a blind man has his territory, and the neighborhood folks look out for him or know how to avoid him. I don’t think this fellow is doing any begging.”
“Then someone is sheltering him. Why does Goldsworthy want him?”
“He may be the only witness to a murder.”
“A blind witness?”
Clare shrugged. “That’s Goldsworthy for you. Our inscrutable leader won’t share what he knows until you’re up to your neck in assassins.”
At the top of the stairs, as they prepared to go their separate ways, Clare had a last question. “Have you made plans for leaving the redemption club?”
“‘Redemption club?’ Is that what you’re calling it? No plans. You?”
“None.” Clare grinned at him and they parted.
Hazelwood sought his own rooms. Though he could joke with Clare, Hazelwood didn’t like the part he’d been assigned to play in Jane Fawkener’s life. He had thrown himself into youthful love affairs, but he had never deliberately deceived a woman for gain.
He entered his room, set down his candle, and began to undress. Goldsworthy’s club was not the Albany, but the original owner of the club had designed spacious rooms for lordly tenants. Hazelwood liked his single and quite comfortable bed with its fresh herb-scented linens. The handsome dark furniture and the Turkey rugs suited him. There was a good hearth, a leather chair, and a desk and bookshelves. He realized he had come to think of them as his, too, though, nothing in the club belonged to him. And he would have nothing of his own in the world until he finished his service and his debts were paid.
And he liked his work steering young men away from Malikov, which had been his job for nearly a year with occasional episodes of facing foreign assassins with Blackstone and Clare.
He shouldn’t let lying to Jane Fawkener trouble him. He knew what Clare would say. There were Englishmen in dangerous spots on the other side of the world who depended on them for good information about the enemy and on English secrets being kept. Why should it matter to him, if, years from now, Jane Fawkener, Lady Somebody-or-Other, came across a fan or a ribbon or a glove that stirred an errant memory of the time in her life when a man named Hazelwood played the villain? She’d be the wiser for any deception practiced on her. Besides, Jane Fawkener was smart. The chances were that she would see through him.
To get access to her book, he was supposed to seduce her into trusting him. He’d given Goldsworthy his assurance that he could do it, but as he thought of Jane, he realized she was unlike his former flirts. She had surprised him that first day by refusing the honor offered her father and claiming that she would turn husband hunter. Seeing her in contrast to her cousin Allegra confirmed his impression that Jane had a cautious, skeptical turn of mind, and an eye for anything that rendered a person ridiculous. He suspected that she’d take exception to some of the Husband Hunter’s advice, and yet she seemed determined to follow the guide step-by-step. At least by reading it, he could anticipate her actions, like her desire to visit her grandmother.
Only when he had settled himself in bed with a brace of candles and his copy of The Husband Hunter’s Guide to London did he remember a thing that had bothered him about the ransacked hotel room. The thief had left Clive Walhouse’s card of invitation untouched on the desk.
* * * *
Clive tried to give the appearance of indifference as he passed Lady Pamela in the crowded salon of a prominent Member of Parliament’s house. Just when Clive was growing accustomed to a daily dip into the pleasures of her lush body, she was required by a visit from her in-laws to be rather more circumspect than usual. There would be no late-night meeting between them tonight.
He accepted a fourth glass of wine from a passing footman and steeled himself for his friends’ conversation about sport. Talk about guns and horses and numbers of birds bagged in the fall was inevitable. He’d never been particularly keen on any of it. Perhaps because his father’s chief road to ruin had been overspending on dogs and horses.
He fixed a properly affable smile on his lips, positioned himself to watch Lady Pamela from across the room, and allowed himself to recall a recent interlude between them in the little house he had taken in St. John’s Wood.
Malikov’s voice in his ear startled him sufficiently that his arm jerked and a few drops of claret caught the lace of his cuff.
“I take it you were unable to persuade your cousin Jane to remove to your home?”
Clive switched his glass to his other hand and shook the claret from his fingertips. “Good evening, Count.”
“You look out of sorts, tonight, Walhouse. Are you and the fair Pamela already on the outs?”
“Not at all.” Clive recognized the attempt to needle him. Malikov was up to something. “Her mama-in-law is in the house. Discretion required, you know.”
“I see your sister is having quite the triumphant night.”
“Is she?” Clive frowned. He had probably erred there, ignoring Allegra’s movements. He wondered whether the Count had sought her out and coaxed the story of their morning visit out of her. It would be easy enough for a man of his address to get Allegra babbling about her grievances. Clive found himself a little irked with his friend.
He didn’t really want the count sniffing around Allegra. The man was acceptable company but hardly a match for his sister.
Malikov lifted his glass in a toast. “To a splendid match for your sister and a final defeat of the duns at your door.”
Clive swallowed the angry retort that bubbled up inside him. He now regretted his unguarded sharing of his monetary woes with the Russian. “Thank you. You can be sure that our family will look out for Jane Fawkener.”
Malikov clapped him on the back. “Just the thing. Keep her in the family fold, where she can’t hurt your fortune.”
The role of family in the Husband Hunter’s quest is first and foremost to provide those connections through which helpful invitations and introductions may be obtained. No family tie, however slight can be ignored, especially where considerations of rank may weigh. One’s second cousin, once-removed, the Dowager Duchess of Grandpark, is as worthy of a visit as the dearest godmother of your heart.
—The Husband Hunter’s Guide to London
Chapter Nine
By nine Hazelwood stood before the tall mahogany-framed glass in the back room of Kirby & Sons chemist’s shop while Kirby examined the fit of a new blue coat that was to replace the one ruined by Slouch Hat the day before. Kirby’s fitting room was as plain as Madame Celeste’s establishment was ornate. Yellow painted walls, heavy solid tables and chairs, a Kilim-rug padded bench, and open shelves of fabric and tools gave the room its comfortable masculine air. Only Miranda hunched in the corner over The Husband Hunter’s Guide to London added a feminine touch. This morning her father had to speak sharply to her when he required his chalk or tape.
Hazelwood smiled at Miranda’s absorption. He had found a night of reading the book quite enlightening. Had he read the thing a decade earlier, he would have known how to signal his unavailability to the hopeful mothers and daughters of three seasons who had wrongly imagined he wanted to be caught. Had Isabella Walhouse, Teddy’s youngest sister, read the thing, she would not have sent him a letter of distress over her impending marriage to Stafford begging him to rescue her. The first of many scandals would have been avoided. In the end his father’s action against him had reduced him to a
permanent state of ineligibility as a husband. Now he could read the guide with disinterested amusement.
In the few minutes he’d had to study Jane’s copy, he’d noted on page twenty-six the letters EF, HC, and TD. Last night he’d penciled that brief marginalia into his own copy. It was a start. Each time he got hold of her copy, he’d collect another piece of its notes, but that was hardly fast enough to suit Goldsworthy. The enemy, it appeared, was working just as fast to steal the information away. The one advantage their side had was that the enemy did not know about the book Jane had received from her father. Hazelwood very much wanted time to examine her copy thoroughly.
Kirby smoothed the new jacket across his shoulders and nodded his approval of the fit. “I’ve put some give in the shoulders, should yer lordship ‘ave to take a swing at another bully boy.”
Hazelwood thanked him and turned to Miranda just as Wilde entered the room, dressed for the task of tracking down Slouch Hat.
“Sir, your rig’s ready and the coffee flask you wanted.”
“Thanks, Wilde. Let me take you as far as the hotel. I’ll let you know the target as we go.”
Miranda still did not look up. She was hunched over the book, her shining chestnut curls falling forward across her creamy cheeks. Hazelwood reached down and put a hand over the pages.
“Oh, do you want it back, my lord?” She was plainly reluctant to part with her treasure.
“Tonight, Miranda.”
“Don’t encourage ‘er, yer lordship. She’s got ‘er work to do,” Kirby said sternly.
Hazelwood looked into a pair of sweetly imploring eyes and shook his head. “Miranda, pay close attention to the parts that will teach you to steer clear of charming rogues with bad intentions and not a groat to their names.”
“Don’t worry, about me, Lord Hazelwood. I’m not a flat.”
“See that you don’t turn into one when some silver-tongued idiot starts an ode to your eyes.”
“As if I would fall for poetical nonsense.”
