Pike turned and resumed dusting. The feathers flicked over the frame surrounding a painting of one of Brundage’s ancestors. Across the noble head, and black eyes. Across his nostrils.
“My brother died at Dos Montañas, sir.” Pike measured these words out through clamped teeth. It was almost a hiss.
There had been a rumor circulating in British government circles about General Blackmore’s loss at Dos Montañas from the very beginning—someone with foreknowledge of British troop movements had sold them out to the French. And those with foreknowledge were very few in number, and included Hawkes and Brundage.
Mr. Pike had clearly been seething for the last three years while in the employ of Brundage, because he had very specific suspicions of his own.
Hawkes admired a man who could hold a grudge so efficiently, then adroitly seize the opportunity for revenge when it came upon him.
He was taking an enormous risk by confiding in Hawkes. But he knew Hawkes by reputation.
Hawkes slipped his hand in his coat pocket and by rubbing two fingers against them freed a pound note from the roll there, palmed it and slipped it into the urn below the portrait, rotating his hand just a little so Pike could see it.
“I’m terribly sorry about your brother, Mr. Pike,” he said sincerely and swiftly. “If you do not respond to the following question, I will assume the answer is affirmative. Did you inadvertently put contraband French cognac in the decanter to serve to Brundage’s guest? If so, do you know how he obtained it?”
Pike finished freeing the ancestor of dust and applied himself to the porcelain urn below it. Shiny things. How Brundage loved them.
Pike’s features were tense now. He swallowed.
At last he said politely, “Sir, if you’d like to purchase a beautiful urn like this one you ought to pay a visit to Mr. Roland Guthrie’s Antiquities just off Bond Street in London. I was sent there three times to retrieve objects like this”—he flicked the duster over the urn—“and then sent to return them. I saw no money change hands. The last time was about four years ago. During one of my visits, he gifted me with a libation.”
Hawkes took this in, and felt a theory coalescing. And if he was right... it was the piece of the treason puzzle he’d been missing.
Ah, Lady Aurelie. Hawkes said a silent thank-youto the wayward girl for inadvertently leading him here tonight.
Hawkes shot a glance over his shoulder at the stairs. But there was no sign of Brundage.
“Pike, did you happen to overhear or witness any sort of altercation between the earl and his fiancée about a month ago? Would have been on a Tuesday.”
Pike gave his head a subtle shake. “But the first Tuesday of the month is the staff day off, sir.”
Mr. Pike dipped the duster into the urn, slid his hand down it and retrieved the pound note with admirable dexterity.
It was always so much easier to deal with clever, bribable men.
“My thanks, Pike,” Hawkes said. “Until we meet again.”
Chapter Two
“I’m beginning to think I ought to call Mr. Barnabus Tweedy out, given how thoroughly he’s replaced me in my wife’s affections.”
Lucien Durand, Viscount Bolt, murmured this with mock severity to his wife from one pillow over. His lips were inches from hers. It was just past dawn, and The Grand Palace on the Thames was rustling into life for the day.
“Only temporarily,” Angelique reassured him on a purr, dragging her bare toes down his furry calf. “But don’t worry. You’re a close second.”
Two rooms over, a still-shirtless Captain Tristan Hardy kissed his yawning wife on the top of her head as she sat down at her little dressing table to pin up her hair. “You were awake thinking about Mr. Tweedy all night, weren’t you? I don’t think you were this excited before our wedding.”
“Well, Iwasmarried once before I met you,” Delilah told him with mock gravity. “But this is the first time I’ve hired the footman of my dreams.”
For Angelique and Delilah, the proprietresses of The Grand Palace on the Thames, were going to propose to Mr. Barnabus Tweedy and were almost certain he would accept.
The competition for good servants was fierce and bloody in London, and the enticements The GrandPalace on the Thames had to offer—an adequate salary, lots of work (much of it hard), an environment of unsurpassed congeniality, excellent food and plenty of it, an epithet jar in the sitting room, and comfortable accommodation in a building situated in a neighborhood in which one was only moderately more likely to be stabbed than in other neighborhoods—meant they struggled to compete. Delilah and Angelique liked to think The Grand Palace on the Thames was elevating the tone of the docks in general, especially since they had at last managed to bribe the local drunk men into urinating on other buildings instead. Helga’s scones had done the trick.
The hope they clung to was that the perfect footman would fall in love with the whole notion of The Grand Palace on the Thames once he had a chance to meet them, and would be willing to forego a little more salary or cache for the pure delight of working there.
So far one candidate had stolen a spoon, and Captain Hardy had been compelled to chase him down the street, seize it from him, and whack him with it. Another promising candidate had casually and deliberately dragged his hand right across Angelique’s bottom as he departed his interview, as though he’d weighed the job and the bottom and had decided the second was the opportunity he simply could not pass up. Helga, the cook, had driven him out of the house with a rolling pin. There was one who showed up reeking of gin, another who was clearly lying about ever having been a footman because he just wanted a cup of tea and a chat, and others who were merely thick or uncouth.
And while Captain Hardy and Lord Bolt were willing to help with the sort of work a footman wouldnormally do, they had their own work with their ship, and Triton Group, their import and export endeavor. And besides, they were not at all the sort of men who were meant to be at the beck and call of their wives. Or at the beck and call of anyone, really.