Hawkes had once seen Brundage slap a footmanto the floor for apparently pouring the wrong type of brandy. He’d done it with the same casual, swift grace with which he’d lit Hawkes’s cheroot tonight.
“That’s terrible news, indeed,” Hawkes said gravely. “About your heart.”
Brundage regarded him intently.
Then decided to slowly incline his head.
Hawkes exhaled a cloud of smoke. “Ah, I missed these cheroots, Brundage,” he said lazily. “You always did have the best tobacco, for which I was always grateful. You always did have the best taste in everything, in fact, and I can imagine the loss of such a lovely girl must prey upon you greatly. I look forward to once again taking up all of my favorite vices presently. After I find your exceptional fiancée.”
He could see the words work their magic on Brundage, who was reluctant to be charmed, but willing to be flattered. It was the sort of thing Hawkes had said when he ingratiated himself into the inner circle of French diplomats in Cherbourg, winning their trust and friendship, gathering intelligence which he’d deftly delivered to the English military.
He’d eventually fled in the night, coldly triumphant. Leaving behind humiliated and ruined men. A hero to his country. A traitor in another.
But if Lady Aurelie could be found, Hawkes would find her.
He would start by, oh, saying a word to a certain man he knew who frequented a certain pub where the hack drivers liked to gather, and like a flame touched to a fuse, this would travel swiftly throughout the hack drivers, the drunks and dock workers, the clerks and lady’s maids and servants and costermongers, the patriots and ne’er-do-wells and opportunists who noticed everything and said nothing except to each other.
And to him.
Forty minutes later, Hawkes took himself back down the stairs of Brundage’s rented townhouse, his pockets freshly stuffed with loose English currency and Brundage’s letter of introduction.
Exhaustion tugged at his limbs. He was probably about a dozen excellent meals and good night’s sleep away from feeling anything like his old self again. But he paused a moment in the marble-floored foyer, his jaw slowly set. This was precisely the sort of home he’d saved a lifetime to buy. A dream that had been wrenched from him when he was arrested.
“If you’ll forgive the presumption, Mr. Hawkes, I was sorry to hear about what happened to you, and it’s good to see you looking well.”
Hawkes spun toward the voice.
In the sitting room adjacent, a strapping young footman was wielding a feather duster and watching him.
Hawkes hesitated. And then he took two slow, cautious steps toward the man and lowered his voice. “I’m afraid I’m at a disadvantage, Mr....”
“Pike, sir. Benjamin Pike. I haven’t forgotten the kind thing you did for me, Mr. Hawkes.”
Hawkes stared at him, and then he recalled: he’d last seen the man’s gray eyes burning with anger and mortification. Because what Hawkes had done was help Pike to his feet after Brundage had casually slapped him to the floor several years go.
“Think nothing of it,” Hawkes said shortly. “No man should do that to another man.”
Hawkes pivoted to leave.
“Thank you for saying so, sir,” Pike said politely. “But I did make a mistake that night. I made a mistake about what I put into the decanter.”
Pike’s inflection hadn’t changed. But his gaze was fixed rather intently on Hawkes, and he’d enunciated each word slowly and meaningfully. “I was new to my position, sir, and did not yet know an important difference.”
Hawkes went still, frowning faintly.
And then epiphany was on him like a falcon on a hare.
He lowered his voice and said swiftly, “It wasn’t brandy, was it? It was cognac.”
He recalled now that Brundage had first taken a sip of that brandy before batting it out of Pike’s hands.
Before Hawkes could taste it.
Holy Mother of God.
During the war, cognac amounted to something like liquid treason. The only way a man could get it was by smuggling.
Or by accepting it as a nice... French... bribe.