12

WERY WENGEFUL

Dear Miss Rennie,

May I beg the Honour of an Appointment with you at your earliest convenience? I wish to propose a Commission that I think very well suited to your considerable Talents.

Your Most Humble Servant,

Edward Twelvetrees

MINNIE FROWNED AT THE note. It was commendably brief but odd. This Twelvetrees spoke of her “talents” in a most familiar sort of way; clearly he knew what those talents were—and yet he gave no introduction, supplied no reference from one of her existing clients or connections. It made her uneasy.

Still, there was no sense of threat in the note, and she was in business. No harm in seeing him, she supposed. She’d be under no obligation to accept his commission if it, or he, seemed fishy.

She hesitated over whether to allow him to come to her rooms—but, after all, he had sent the note here; plainly he knew where she lived. She wrote back, offering to see him next day at three o’clock but making a mental note to tell one of the O’Higginses to come a bit early and hide in the boudoir, just in case.

“OH,” SHE SAID, opening the door. “So that’s it. I thought there was something a trifle odd about your note.”

“If you feel yourself offended, Miss Rennie, I willingly apologize.” Mr. Bloomer—alias Edward Twelvetrees, evidently—stepped in, not waiting for invitation, and obliging her to take a step back. “But I imagine a woman of your undoubted sense and experience might be willing to overlook a bit of professional subterfuge?”

He smiled at her, and, despite herself, she smiled back.

“I might,” she said. “A professional, are you?”

“It takes one to know one,” he said, with a small bow. “Shall we sit down?”

She shrugged slightly and gave Eliza a nod, indicating that she might bring in a tray of refreshments.

Mr. Twelvetrees accepted a cup of tea and an almond biscuit but left the latter lying on his saucer and the former steaming away unstirred.

“I shan’t waste your time, Miss Rennie,” he said. “When I left you in the princess’s glasshouse, I abandoned you—rather cavalierly, I’m afraid—to the company of His Grace, the Duke of Pardloe. Given the scandal attached to his family, I assumed at the time that you knew who he was, but from your manner when I observed you speaking with him, I revised this opinion. Was I right in thinking that you did not know him?”

“I didn’t,” Minnie said, keeping her composure. “But it was quite all right. We exchanged a few pleasantries, and I left.” Just how long were you watching us? she wondered.

“Ah.” He’d been watching her face intently but at this broke off his inspection long enough to add cream and sugar to his tea and stir it. “Well, then. The commission for which I wish to engage your services has to do with this gentleman.”

“Indeed,” she said politely, and picked up her own cup.

“I wish you to abstract certain letters from the duke’s possession and deliver them to me.”

She nearly dropped the cup but tightened her hold just in time.

“What letters?” she asked sharply. Now she knew what it was about his note that had struck her oddly. Twelvetrees. That was the name of the Countess of Melton’s lover: Nathaniel Twelvetrees. All too plainly, this Edward was some relation.

And she heard in memory Colonel Quarry’s words when she’d asked if she might speak with Nathaniel: “Afraid not, Miss Rennie. My friend shot him.”

“Correspondence between the late Countess Melton and my brother Nathaniel Twelvetrees.”

She sipped her tea, feeling Edward’s gaze as hot on her skin as the breath from her cup. She set the cup down carefully and looked up. His face had an expression she’d seen on the faces of hawks fixing on their prey. But it wasn’t she who was the prey here.

“That might be possible,” she said coolly, though her heart had sped up noticeably. “Forgive me, though—are you sure such correspondence exists?”

He uttered a short laugh, quite without humor.

“It did exist, I’m sure of that.”

“I’m sure you are,” she said politely. “But if the correspondence is of the nature I surmise you mean—I have heard certain speculations—would the duke not have burned any such letters, following the death of his wife?”

Mr. Twelvetrees lifted one shoulder and let it fall, his eyes still fixed on hers.

“He might have done,” he said. “And your immediate task would of course be to discover whether that is the case. But I have reason to believe that the correspondence still exists—and if it does, I want it, Miss Rennie. And I’ll pay for it. Handsomely.”

WHEN THE DOOR closed behind Edward Twelvetrees, she stood frozen for a moment, until she heard the door of her boudoir open, across the hall.

“Well, that’s a rum cove,” Rafe O’Higgins observed, with a nod toward the closed front door. Eliza, who had come in to take away the tray, inclined her head in sober agreement.

“Wengeful,” she said. “Wery wengeful, ’e is. But oo’d blame him?”

Oo, indeed? Minnie thought, and suppressed the urge to laugh. Not from humor so much as from nerves.

“Aye, mibbe,” Rafe said. He went to the window and, lifting the edge of the blue velvet curtain, looked carefully down into the street, where Edward Twelvetrees was presumably vanishing into the distance. “I’d say your man’s inclined toward vengeance, sure. But what d’ye think he’d be after doing with these letters, if there are any?”

There was a brief silence, as all three of them contemplated the possibilities.

“Put ’em on broadsheets and sell ’em at a ha’penny a go?” Eliza suggested. “Could make a bit o’ money out o’ that, I s’pose.”

“Make a lot more out of the duke,” Rafe said, shaking his head. “Blackmail, aye? If the letters are juicy enough, I daresay His Grace would pay through the nose to keep just that from happening.”

“I imagine so,” Minnie said absently, though the echoes of her conversation with Colonel Quarry drowned out further suggestions.

“…he requires proof of the affair for a…a…legal reason, and he will not countenance the idea of letting anyone read his wife’s letters, no matter that she is beyond the reach of public censure nor that the consequences to himself if the affair is not proved may be disastrous.”

What if numerology was less penetrating an art than usual and Harry Quarry wasn’t a bluff, transparent four, after all? What if his care for Lord Melton was a charade? Twelvetrees had just openly engaged her to be his cat’s-paw; what if Quarry had the same end in mind but was playing a double game?

If so…were the two men playing the same game? And if so, were they in it together or working in opposition, whether known to each other or not?

She brought Quarry to mind, reliving their conversations and analyzing them, word for word, watching the emotions play out in memory across his broad, crudely handsome face.

No. One of the chief tenets of her family credo was “Trust no one,” but one did have to make judgments. And she was as sure as it was possible to be that Harry Quarry’s motive was what he had said: to protect his friend. And after all…Harry Quarry not only was convinced of the letters’ existence but had a good notion of their location. True, he hadn’t asked her to steal the letters, not explicitly, but had certainly done everything but.

She had promised Edward Twelvetrees nothing beyond an attempt to find out whether the letters did exist; if so, she’d said, then they could discuss further terms.

Well, then. The next step, at least, was clear.

“Rafe,” she said, interrupting an argument between Rafe and Eliza as to whether Mr. Twelvetrees more resembled a ferret or an obelisk (she assumed they meant “basilisk” but didn’t stop to find out), “I have a job for you and Mick.”