Stephanie Laurens - The Lady Chosen

What little color had returned to Duke’s face fled. A moment passed, then he moistened his lips. “He told me if I told anyone at all about him, he’d kill me.”

Tristan inclined his head, gently said, “And what do you imagine will happen to you if you don’t tell us about him?”

Duke stared, then glanced at Charles.

Who met his gaze. “Don’t you know the punishment for treason?”

A moment passed, then Deverell quietly added, “That’s assuming, of course, that you make it to the scaffold.” He shrugged. “What with all the ex-soldiers in the prisons these days…”

Eyes huge, Duke dragged in a breath and looked at Tristan. “I didn’t know it was treason! ”

“I’m afraid what you’ve been doing definitely qualifies.”

Duke hauled in another breath, then blurted out, “But I don’t know his name.”

Tristan nodded, accepting. “How do you contact him?”

“I don’t! He set it up at the beginning—I have to meet him in St. James’s Park every third day and report what’s happened.”

The next meeting was to occur the following day.

Tristan, Charles, and Deverell grilled Duke for a further half hour, but learned little more. Duke was patently cooperating; recalling how keyed up—how panic-stricken, she now realized—he’d been earlier, Leonora suspected he’d realized that they were his only hope, that if he helped, he might escape a situation that had transformed into a nightmare.

Jonathon’s assessment had been accurate; Duke was a black sheep with few morals, a cowardly and violent bully, untrustworthy and worse, but he wasn’t a killer, and he’d never meant to be a traitor.

His reaction to Tristan’s questions about Miss Timmins was revealing. His face a ghastly hue, Duke falteringly recounted how he’d gone up to check on the ground-floor walls, heard a choking sound in the dimness, and looked up, to see the fragile old woman come tumbling down the stairs to land, dead, at his feet. His horror was unfeigned; it was he who had closed the old lady’s eyes.

Watching him, Leonora grimly concluded justice of a sort had been served; Duke would never forget what he’d seen, what he’d inadvertently caused.

Eventually, Charles and Deverell hauled Duke off to the club, there to be held in the basement under the watchful eyes of Biggs and Gasthorpe, together with the weasel and the four thugs Duke had hired to help with the excavations.

Tristan glanced at Jeremy. “Have you identified the final formula?”

Jeremy grinned. He picked up a sheet of paper. “I’d just copied it out. It was in A.J.’s journals, all neatly noted. Anyone could have found it.” He handed the sheet to Tristan. “It was definitely half Cedric’s work, but without A.J. and her records, it would have been the devil to piece together.”

“Yes, but will it work?” Jonathon asked. He’d remained silent throughout the interrogation, quietly taking things in. Tristan handed the paper to him; he scanned it.

“I’m no herbalist,” Jeremy said. “But if the results as laid out in your aunt’s journals are correct, then yes, their concoction will definitely aid clotting when applied to wounds.”

“And it was lying there in York for the past two years.” Tristan thought of the battlefield at Waterloo, then banished the vision. Turned to Leonora.

She met his eyes, squeezed his hand. “At least we have it now.”

“One thing I don’t understand,” Humphrey put in. “If this foreigner was so set on finding the formula, and he was able to order Jonathon here killed, why didn’t he come after the formula himself?” Humphrey raised his shaggy brows. “Mind you, I’m deuced glad he didn’t. Mountford was bad enough, but at least we survived him.”

“The answer’s one of those diplomatic niceties.” Tristan rose and resettled his coat. “If a foreigner from one of the embassies was implicated in an attack on, even the death of, an unknown young man or even two from the north, the government would frown, but largely ignore it. However, if the same foreigner was implicated in burglarly and violence in a house in a wealthy part of London, the house of distinguished men of letters, the government would assuredly be most displeased and not at all inclined to ignore anything.”

He glanced at them all, his smile coolly cynical. “An attack on property close to the government’s heart would create a diplomatic incident, so Duke was a necessary pawn.”

“So what now?” Leonora asked.

He hesitated, looking down into her eyes, then smiled faintly, just for her. “Now we—Charles, Deverell, and I—need to take this information to the proper quarters, and see what they want done.”

She stared at him. “Your erstwhile employer?”

He nodded. Straightened. “We’ll meet again here for breakfast if you’re agreeable and make whatever plans we need to make.”

“Yes, of course.” Leonora reached out and touched his hand in farewell.

Humphrey nodded magnanimously. “Until tomorrow.”

“Unfortunately, your meeting with your government contact will have to wait until morning.” Jeremy nodded at the clock on the mantelpiece. “It’s past ten.”

Tristan, heading for the door, turned, smiling, as he reached it. “Actually, no. The State never sleeps.”

The State for them meant Dalziel.

They sent word ahead; nevertheless, the three of them had to cool their heels in the spymaster’s anteroom for twenty minutes before the door opened, and Dalziel waved them in.

As they sank onto the three chairs set facing the desk, they glanced around, then met each other’s eyes. Nothing had changed.

Including Dalziel. He rounded the desk. He was dark-haired, dark-eyed and always dressed austerely. His age was unusually difficult to gauge; when he’d first started working through this office, Tristan had assumed Dalziel to be considerably his senior. Now…he was starting to wonder if there were all that many years between them. He had visibly aged; Dalziel had not.

As cool as ever, Dalziel sat behind the desk, facing them. “Now. Explain, if you please. From the beginning.”

Tristan did, severely editing his account as he went, leaving out much of Leonora’s involvement; Dalziel was known to disapprove of ladies dabbling in the game.

Even so, how much missed that steady dark gaze was a matter for conjecture.

At the end of the tale, Dalziel nodded, then looked at Charles and Deverell. “And how is it you two are involved?”

Charles grinned wolfishly. “We share a mutual interest.”

Dalziel held his gaze for an instant. “Ah, yes. Your club in Montrose Place. Of course.”

He looked down; Tristan was sure it was so they could blink in comfort. The man was a menace. They weren’t even part of his network anymore.

“So”—looking up from the notes he’d scrawled while listening, Dalziel leaned back and steepled his fingers; he fixed them all with his gaze—“we have an unknown European intent—seriously intent—on stealing a potentially valuable formula for aiding wound healing. We don’t know who this gentleman might be, but we have the formula, and we have his local pawn. Is that correct?”

They all nodded.

“Very well. I want to know who this European is, but I don’t want him to know I know. I’m sure you follow me. What I want you to do is this. First, tamper with the formula. Find someone who can make it look believable—we have no idea what training this foreigner might have. Second, convince the pawn to keep his next meeting and hand over the formula—make sure he understands his position, and that his future hangs on his performance. Third, I want you to follow the gentleman back to his lair and identify him for me.”