Harry fervently hoped that Roger had overestimated Sir Hilary’s abilities. Her hopes were dashed within moments.
“Well, the paper is from H&W Smith, recently relocated to Duke Street,” Sir Hilary said matter-of-factly.
Harry gasped. “How do you know that?” she said, awestruck.
He smiled and walked over to his desk. He reached into a drawer and pulled out a sheet of paper that looked identical to the notepaper. “Because I have the same set of stationery, though mine is embossed.”
Harry frowned at him, her emotions as wild as a pitching ship in a storm. One minute she was terrified and the next her relief made her giddy. “That wasn’t nice. I was quite willing to believe you were just that brilliant.”
“Well, I am,” Sir Hilary said with a shrug. “But in this particular case, I am simply being observant. However, there are some interesting things we can deduce from this information.”
“Deduce?” Harry asked with trepidation. There went her stomach again as she came crashing down from the height of relief.
“Hmm,” Sir Hilary said, rubbing the stationery between his thumb and forefinger. “In spite of its current condition, the paper appears to be relatively new. Purchased within the last few months, which means it was most likely obtained from the new premises on Duke Street. It would appear our writer either lives or works in Mayfair, a rather prestigious address.”
“Mayfair?” Harry said. “I find that hard to believe.” And that was no lie. Faircloth couldn’t afford lodgings in Mayfair, and he hadn’t worked a day in his life. But he was an excellent sycophant. Perhaps Lady Anne Maxwell lived in Mayfair? Harry wouldn’t be surprised to find out that Faircloth had been bedding her while trying to force Harry into marriage, the cad.
“Yes, it is hard to believe,” Roger agreed, frowning fiercely. “So whoever wrote this is someone Harry most likely sees regularly?”
“Most likely, yes,” Sir Hilary agreed. “Which makes quite a bit of sense, actually. After all, it’s clear they know her movements and what she’s up to, and with whom. It is only logical to assume then that it was written by someone of her acquaintance.”
“Logical, perhaps,” she agreed with a shudder she didn’t have to manufacture, “but disconcerting nonetheless. I hate to think that someone I’ve danced or dined with is writing me these rather disquieting notes.” Hated to think it, but knew it just the same.
“Well, you’ve hardly danced with anyone but Roger for weeks,” Sir Hilary pointed out. “Perhaps that’s what inspired the notes. When did the first one arrive?”
She debated whether or not to lie, but in the end could find no reason not to tell the truth. “Right after the Crumley ball, about three weeks ago.”
“Did the note mention me?” Roger asked. “Or Dumphrees?”
“Dumphrees,” she told him honestly.
“That means they didn’t follow you into the garden,” Roger said with obvious relief. “But they must have attended the affair.”
“It also means they’ve been watching you for a while now,” Sir Hilary mused, clearly unhappy.
She wanted to reassure him, but it would ruin everything. How she wished Roger hadn’t dragged him into this! She was already having a difficult time deceiving darling Roger, and now to add Sir Hilary—who had become something of a friend—to her deceit was quite, quite unsettling. She took a deep breath and stiffened her spine. It was for Mercy. She had to protect him first, and then herself. There was no one else to do it, though Roger was trying in his own bumbling way.
It was that last thought that made her smile affectionately at both men, which prompted suspicious looks. “Honestly, what harm can they do with notes?” she asked. “It’s true I found this last note threatening, but that is only because it followed so closely on the heels of the attack on Mercy.” She winced, wishing she could swallow the words as soon as they were out, knowing it had been the wrong thing to say. She really was not good at this lying business.
“It is precisely for that reason we should worry,” Roger argued. “It is logical to assume that the person writing these notes is also the person behind the attempted kidnapping of your boy. Mercy is mentioned prominently in this note. You must be careful, Harry. To take the threat lightly is playing right into their hands.”
“I must agree with Roger,” Sir Hilary said. “Particularly his caution about taking this threat too lightly. These are not the words of a rational person. Their ‘plans’ concerning you sound ominous at the least. And the threat to take Mercy could mean harm to you or the boy.”
Harry nibbled on the tip of her finger as she warily eyed both men. It was true she’d begun to wonder about Faircloth’s stability. He seemed obsessed with her capitulation. Any sane man would have accepted her refusal at this point. A true villain would have simply revealed the information and ruined her by now. But Faircloth seemed quite certain she would eventually give in. As a result, she had set her own plan in motion, and so would see it through.
“Is there anything else you can decipher from the note?” she asked.
“Only that the writer was most likely a man,” Sir Hilary confirmed. “I confess this is more a feeling and an opinion than a fact ascertained through scientific means. There have been studies on handwriting, however, that show—”
“Just the point, Hil,” Roger interrupted, “not a scholarly lecture on the topic.”
Sir Hilary sniffed in annoyance. “You never did care for scientific scholarship,” he accused Roger. “It was all classical studies for you.”
“Not true,” Roger defended himself. “I enjoyed mathematics. Now, why a man?”
“Fine.” Sir Hilary sighed with martyred resignation. “See the aggressiveness of the pen marks? This was written with a heavy hand, causing deep indentations in the paper, and several messy ink spots. It could indicate a great deal of anger, of course, but coupled with the short, sharp strokes it makes me believe the writer was a man. Also”—he held up the paper and read from it—“certain actions, this behavior, the boy. The word usage here indicates a man.” He put the paper down. “Women tend to personalize their correspondence. If a woman had written it, it would have read: your actions, your behavior, your boy. As I said, this is all conjecture, as there have been no definitive scientific studies done on the subject. Just my own amateur attempts to study the phenomena.”
Roger made a frustrated sound and began pacing the stretch of carpet that Harry had worn thin not long ago. “I’d already suspected most of this, so it doesn’t really shed much light on the situation.”
“Did you?” Sir Hilary said with obvious surprise. “How?”
Roger gave him a wry look. “Well, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that in order to know what Harry was up to, someone would actually have to see what she was up to. And since not just anyone can attend the parties that she does, well, there you go. Someone from our social set must be the writer. And something about the threat to Mercy, it seemed like a man to me.”
“You are developing excellent instincts,” Sir Hilary complimented him.
“Because I’m clearly not a genius?” Roger asked in a wry tone that matched his look.
“Ahem,” Sir Hilary said with a raised brow. “In your own way.”
“Do you think the writer is … stable?” Harry asked in a small voice.
“Hardly,” Sir Hilary said with conviction. “A stable mind certainly wouldn’t pen a note such as this. They’d gossip behind your back and write to The Times.”
Harry worried at her lip. Surely they were overreacting? Faircloth was out and about in society. They’d seen him, interacted with him, and neither man had pointed and said, Here is an unstable man. Their concerns were based on conjecture and their fear of the unknown, nothing more. Faircloth was annoying and a nuisance, and, yes, a threat to her independence, but not dangerous to her physically. And he’d tried to take Mercy only to force her hand. She could prevent that from happening again.
“Harry,
if you have any idea who might be doing this, you must tell us,” Roger said, watching her carefully.
Her stomach dropped. “Why do you say that?” she asked sharply.
“Surely you have some suspects,” Roger said. “I don’t know why you would hide that from us, but if you are, you must speak up. I fear for your safety, and Mercy’s.”
“I don’t know for certain who it is,” she said, trying to be as honest as possible. Roger had clearly seen through her lies, so she must try to be honest from now on, as much as she could. She really didn’t know for sure that it was Faircloth. It made sense, but he had admitted nothing.
“I hope that you are correct, Lady Mercer,” Sir Hilary said gravely, “and that we are wrong about both the writer’s possible identity and stability. I have seen those we least expect turn out to be the villain. Don’t let that happen to you.”
She maintained her silence, but her thoughts were dour. In this case, the person she most suspected was certainly the villain. She looked at Roger and could see the concern in his expression. Ironically, it seemed she trusted the self-proclaimed devil at her side the most. Now, how could she arrange for her devil to stay there and protect her from the real villain?
* * *
“I believe you should continue to be seen together, just as you’ve been doing,” Hil told them as he escorted them to his front door after giving Harry back the note. “It seems to be your escalating relationship that is driving the note sender.”
“But shouldn’t we be trying to discourage him, rather than encourage?” Roger asked, not hiding his worry.
“No,” Harry said immediately. “Sir Hilary is correct. If we can flush him out of the bushes, then we should. Our fear lies in his anonymity. If we take that away from him, well, he can’t harm us, can he?” She smiled brightly at Roger. “I’m afraid, Mr. Templeton, that you’ll have to squire me about London until he shows himself. What a shame.”
Again, it didn’t take a genius to figure out that Hil’s plan nicely coincided with Harry’s. Of course, Hil’s plan was to catch the man threatening Harry, and Harry’s plan was to show Roger off, now that she’d caught him. Convenient for her that Hil had inadvertently made her quest easier. “Yes, a terrible shame,” Roger agreed blandly, causing Harry’s smile to dim. He felt like a cad after he said it. “Dining, dancing, wine, and cards with a beautiful woman on my arm. However shall I stand it?” he added, just to see her smiling again.
“Well, don’t be too eager,” Hil advised. “We want to draw him out of hiding, not force his hand.”
“What do you mean?” Roger asked with a frown.
“I mean, don’t aggravate him to the point of escalation. We want him to reveal himself, not step up his harassment of Lady Mercer to actual violence.”
Roger felt Harry shiver under the hand he had on her elbow.
“No, we don’t want that,” she agreed fervently.
“Then perhaps we should rethink this plan,” Roger said, trying to be the voice of reason.
“Nonsense,” Hil told them blithely, already turning back to his library. “I’m sure you can resist the temptation to seduce Lady Mercer on the dance floor.”
Chapter Sixteen
When Roger returned to Hil’s after dropping Harry at home, he followed Wiley’s voice into the library. He was obviously trying to help Hil reassemble his rubble, without success, and without Hil’s gratitude.
“You’ve got it wrong again,” Wiley was telling Hil with exasperation. “See here, where the corner is? It should meet that piece there, I’m telling you.”
“Wiley,” Hil said impatiently, “those are not even the same cut of brick. Clearly they do not go together. I believe this piece”—he held up one of the larger chunks of red brick—“was above the blast.” He put it back down and picked up a smaller piece. “And this one was off to the left.”
“How the devil can you tell when they’ve all been blown to bits?” Wiley asked belligerently. “I don’t think you can tell your arse from your nose after being exploded.”
“I was not exploded,” Hil said, his ever-present sense of the literal, and the grammatically correct, taking over. “And I most certainly know the difference between my arse and my nose, I assure you. Ah, Roger, you’ve returned. And how did you leave Lady Mercer?”
“With great difficulty, if he’s got any bollocks at all,” Wiley offered with a grin. “Lots of romantic sighs and hand kisses, eh, Nancy boy?”
“Hardly,” Roger said. “I do not sigh romantically. I simply haven’t got it in me.”
“Ha!” Wiley laughed. “There’s your problem. Ought to be worrying about how to get it in her.”
“Do you practice being crude each morning, or is it a natural talent?” Roger asked, irritated.
“You are perilously close to mentioning Lady Mercer and that activity that we are not allowed to mention in conjunction with the lady,” Hil told Wiley.
“What?” Wiley asked. It took a moment but then realization dawned. “Ah, the shagging. Right. Sorry.”
“Have you determined the cause of the blast?” Roger asked Hil, ignoring Wiley’s last remark.
“Alas, no,” Hil lamented. “I don’t believe they were able to salvage all the pieces of the wall, which is unfortunate.” He brushed off his hands and jacket, as he’d done earlier, and came around the desk with a smile. “But that will wait until tomorrow. How was Lady Mercer when you left her?”
“Blithely indifferent to her dangerous situation and wickedly clever about trying to get my clothes off,” Roger answered as he fell back into a messy sprawl on one of the chairs facing Hil’s desk.
“Ah,” Hil responded as he leaned against the desk and crossed his ankles and his arms, regarding Roger gravely.
“What?” Roger asked belligerently.
“Her blithe indifference doesn’t strike you as odd?” Hil asked.
“It strikes me as bloody suspicious.” Roger leaned his elbows on his knees and ran his hands through his hair in frustration. He gave an unintelligible growl. “I know she’s lying. She’s hiding something. Don’t you agree?”
“Of course she’s hiding something. She’s a woman. Hiding things is as natural to them as breathing. And quite frankly I find it refreshing. Half of what we know nothing about I have no desire to know.” Hil shuddered. “Too much information can be worse than too little.”
“Too right,” Wiley agreed from behind the desk, where he was still trying with a great deal of determination to force pieces of rubble together.
“Exactly,” Hil said, nodding. “Women are entitled to their little secrets, I say.”
“Perhaps, but in this case her secrets could get her killed. I hardly think that’s the sort we ought to turn a blind eye to,” Roger told them both.
“Well, no,” Hil said. “But I thought you should understand from the beginning that you will never know everything about her.”
“I have never claimed to know everything about women and will never do so, nor do I want to. The beginning of what?”
“Why, your love affair, of course.” Hil’s answer was too quick.
“This is not the beginning of anything, dammit,” Roger said, standing and walking to the window to look out on the busy late afternoon traffic up and down Brook Street. Hil lived in one of the more modest houses on Brook Street, not far from Hanover Square. A fashionable address, though not nearly as grand as Harry’s home. He was feeling very down lately about the sorry state of his life. Lack of his own fashionable address and the means to pay for one were just some of the many issues separating him from Harry and any future with her.
When he was young, running wild with Harry, he’d never thought about his future. His father was indifferent about Roger’s future as well, since his elder brother was an earnest sort of fellow, serious and determined to learn at their father’s knee with the intent to inherit and carry on the family name and landholdings, which were slim. Roger was left to his own devices. He learned to be fu
nny, and quick, and carefree. So much so that at fifteen his father, in a burst of paternal responsibility, had sent him off to school unexpectedly to “make something of himself.” Exactly what, he’d never been told. Certainly the man reflected in the window glass was not the result Roger had envisioned at fifteen.
“What should I do?” he asked Hil, meaning with his life. Hil misunderstood.
“Eventually she’ll tell you whatever it is she’s hiding. Once again, I was only trying to make light. Really, Roger, I’m not used to you being so morose. You provide the levity in my life; it’s why I keep you around. I’m no good at it.”
“Is that why?” Roger asked, turning around and leaning against the window frame with his arms crossed, forcing a smile. “I thought it was because I was broke and had no prospects, and you are more kindhearted than most people realize.”
“Yes, well, that, too,” Hil told him with a quick smile. “But mostly for the laughs.”
“I can do laughs,” Wiley offered from behind the desk. “Show him the door.”
Roger laughed. “You, on the other hand,” he said to Wiley, “are a hard-hearted little bastard.”
Wiley grinned at him, looking away from his rubble puzzle, and one piece crashed to the floor, breaking into more pieces. “Oops, sorry there, Hil.”
Hil closed his eyes with an aggrieved sigh. “Unless you’d care to be reported as the cause of the explosion, Wiley, I’d suggest you leave off my rubble.”
“Do you really think being seen with Harry will force her anonymous bully out of hiding?”
“No,” Hil said. “I think being seen seducing her and making love to her will force her bully out of hiding. Stop trying to be a gentleman, Roger, and be the Devil I know you are. You want to be, and God knows she wants you to be. Stop holding back. The notes have become threatening because you are a threat. So be one.”
“Harry doesn’t need a Devil, she needs a gentleman,” he protested. “She’s risen in station quite a bit since I knew her as a child. I don’t want to ruin that for her, particularly not for some fleeting infatuation she has for an old childhood love. In order to be accepted here in London, she needs a man who is accepted.”
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