24th March, 1881
Dearest Sebastian,
I hope that this letter finds you in good health. A week has passed and I’ve still yet to receive word from you. The note you left behind was rather terse and imprecise. Indeed, you neglected to mention just how long your absence would be and what your destination was. At your leisure, might you apprise me? I do hope you won’t be away for long.
Your loving wife,
Daisy
An entire week passed without word from Sebastian. Each day seemed more interminable than the last. Daisy felt like a sleepwalker, going through the motions of the passing hours without being aware of what she was doing. She met with Mrs. Robbins to plan menus and oversee the household as though nothing was wrong. She greeted Giles at breakfast. She continued organizing the library.
But the house was dreadfully quiet and cavernous without Sebastian. She missed him at dinner. She went into his chamber just to smell the lingering scent of him, walked into his study in the hopes she’d find him there. At night, she longed for him and hated herself for the weakness. She had no one to laugh with, no one to surprise her with kisses or meet her gaze in a wicked glance over the table.
It was unshakeable, this feeling she had as if a part of her had gone missing. She wanted that part of her back. Two weeks after a lifetime of waiting had not been enough. She wanted to rail against the unfairness of it, to rail against him, to find him—wherever he’d gone—and bring him back to her.
But she also wanted to deliver the most blistering, crushing dressing down in the history of dressings down. She wanted to demand that he face her, that he explain to her how he could have disappeared from her life as suddenly as he’d entered it. How could he have left her like this, leaving her to think she meant less than nothing to him? Had he gone to a mistress? Had he left because she’d confessed her feelings?
The questions plagued her, day after day. She woke up and wondered. Traveled through the day in meaningless attempts to distract herself, all while wondering. Laid down to bed at night, wishing he was with her, wondering still. Where was he? When would he return?
As the first week of his absence melded into the second, the sadness permeating Daisy began to harden into resolve. On Monday morning, she and Mrs. Robbins sat together for their customary planning of the week ahead.
“Would you care for some Root’s Cuca Cocoa, Your Grace?” the kindly housekeeper asked. Her hair was steel gray, and fine laughter lines bracketed her eyes and mouth. She was sincere and kind, and always smelled of fresh soap and powder.
Daisy had come to appreciate her steadfast presence, but she could hear quite plainly the sympathy steeping the elder woman’s voice. It was the same sympathy she’d seen in Giles’ expression when she’d asked if he knew where His Grace had gone or when he might return. I’m afraid not, Your Grace. Though I’m sure he shall return as soon as he’s able. Such matters do occasionally call His Grace away.
Such matters. Private and urgent matters. The mere thought made her curl her lip as she sat in the sunshine-stained salon with her husband’s housekeeper.
She straightened her spine. “Whatever for, Mrs. Robbins?”
“It’s just the thing for those who suffer from bouts of worry or sleeplessness,” Mrs. Robbins said gently. “There now, Your Grace. I know you’re fretting over His Grace, and it’s plain to see you aren’t getting as much rest or sustenance as you need. I’ll have Sally brew a cup for you, shall I?”
“No,” she bit out, watching as the housekeeper’s smile faded before adding, “thank you. Perhaps I will try some later.”
“Of course, Your Grace.” Mrs. Robbins nodded. “Forgive me for my presumption. I wish to see to your comfort.”
Daisy forced herself to smile, for none of this was the housekeeper’s fault, and she was a dear heart. “There’s no need to ask for my forgiveness, Mrs. Robbins. I greatly appreciate your concern as well as all your guidance in household matters. I do realize that my presence here has been rather unorthodox and unexpected. You’ve been an invaluable asset. Truly.”
The housekeeper flushed with pleasure. “Thank you, Your Grace.”
The questions bubbling up within her crowded onto her tongue then. Just the night before, she’d gone into his chamber, determined to scour it from the highest shelf to the lowest point beneath his carved oak bed in hopes of finding any clue as to where he’d gone. Nothing had seemed out of place. Everything had been in immaculate order, not a piece of furniture out of place. Nothing, that was, except for the note she’d located, slipped between the pages of a book, folded three times and dated the day he’d left. Would you care to meet for a morning ride? The skies look too ominous to wait until afternoon.
That note, unsigned and written in a bold, masculine scrawl, was the key to his abrupt departure. Daisy was certain of it. If only she could discover its author and what it meant. He had said nothing of plans to meet anyone for a morning ride. She would have recalled.
“Mrs. Robbins,” she began delicately, seeking the proper words, “has His Grace ever abruptly departed London in the past?”
A rare frown firmed the housekeeper’s lips. “I’ve instructed the kitchens to keep all the plates hot. Do you find their temperature to your liking, Your Grace?”
Daisy blinked. “The plates are always appropriately warm. But His Grace… is this a habit of his? None of the household seems particularly surprised. As a relatively new bride who had no inkling he’d planned a trip, you can appreciate why I might wonder, can’t you, Mrs. Robbins?”
Mrs. Robbins swallowed. “The chestnuts yesterday. Were they to your liking? I told Monsieur Gascoigne that chestnuts ought to be boiled prior to the roasting, but he disagreed with me and proceeded with the roasting. Are you growing tired of haricots verts? It seems to me that Monsieur favors them far too frequently. At least he has the sense not to chop them the way some cooks do.”
The housekeeper was babbling, and it was most uncharacteristic of her. It was Daisy’s turn to frown. “Mrs. Robbins, the chestnuts were lovely, and I must say that I’m not partial to beans, but you haven’t answered my question.”
“Oh dear me.” Gray eyebrows rose over eyes the color of sherry. “Are you certain you wouldn’t like some Root’s?”
Good heavens. Why would Mrs. Robbins insist on evading her questions? The insidious suggestion rose inside her again, that he had a mistress hidden away in the countryside. Perhaps he’d gone to her.
“No Root’s, Mrs. Robbins,” she said grimly. “You’ve been a retainer here since the last duke, have you not?”
The servant’s lips tightened. “I have been so honored, yes, Your Grace.”
“Then you’ve known my husband the duke for his whole life.”
“I have, and a finer gentleman doesn’t exist, Your Grace,” Mrs. Robbins said firmly.
There was a note of truth in the housekeeper’s voice, but it didn’t satisfy Daisy. “Then surely you can say whether or not he has previously disappeared in so sudden and unexpected a manner. You must appreciate that I am… concerned for his welfare. He left no indication of where he might be going or for how long he would be gone.”
Mrs. Robbins sighed. “It isn’t my place to say, Your Grace.”
Daisy stared, frustration rising within her, mingling with anger and despair. “Does His Grace like asparagus?” she asked suddenly.
The housekeeper blinked, looking startled by the abrupt shift in discussion. “Why, no, I don’t believe he does, Your Grace.”
“Excellent,” she gritted through a smile she didn’t feel. “Please see that it is served every day this week.”
“Of course, Your Grace.” Mrs. Robbins’ expression was one of blatant confusion.
“I like asparagus,” she explained. She would have gone through every vegetable she enjoyed until she’d reached one he didn’t like, and that was the truth of it.
5th April, 1881
Dear husband,
I’ve taken the liberty of sending copies of this letter to each of your estates should you find yourself at any of them. You are missed in London. While I understand the nature of your departure was both “private” and “urgent” as you stated, I believe that as your wife, I am at least entitled to know when you shall return. May it be sooner rather than later.
Yours,
Daisy
Liverpool was a city of dead-ends.
At least, that was the way it seemed.
Sebastian had been firmly ensconced there for over a bloody fortnight, and he’d precious few leads. In the small, nondescript rooms he kept over the Barrel and Anchor, the din of the seedy tavern reached him as a raucous assault on his ears: roaring laughter, music, and female squeals. His rooms smelled of stale ale and cheroots, and yesterday he’d interrupted an assignation between a dock worker and a whore in the hall.
He found himself in a grim sort of purgatory here, where he was Mr. George Thompson rather than the Duke of Trent and he came and went from his rooms without anyone giving a damn whether he lived or died. Hiding in plain sight was one of his gifts as a spy, but that didn’t bloody well mean he liked it, particularly when every speck of information he’d managed to glean from his days of scouring the city and questioning chemists had turned out to be worthless.
He’d yet to uncover evidence of the dynamite factory Carlisle suspected was being run from the city. No large purchases of glycerin, nitric acid, and sulfuric acid—the ingredients required for the creation of dynamite—had been recorded at any of the chemists he’d visited thus far. He was becoming convinced that either Vanreid was using his ships to somehow secret dynamite or the bastards had chosen another city as their base.
With a muttered curse, he stalked to the chipped pitcher and bowl atop an equally battered washstand and splashed water on his face. The man staring back at him in the cracked mirror was a forbidding stranger. Wincing, he peeled away the false mustache affixed to his upper lip.
The removal smarted, but not as much as being away from Daisy did. Each day he was gone from her, unable to contact her, far from her side and her bed where he longed to be, was like a bare blade finding its home in his gut.
Two sharp knocks at his door, followed by a pause and then three more in rapid succession interrupted his thoughts. Using the scrap of toweling by the pitcher and bowl, he dried his face before pivoting and striding back across the chamber. He hesitated only a moment before knocking once on the door.
The person on the other side knocked back in the sign they had prearranged.
Griffin had arrived at last. Feeling a small surge of relief that his friend and comrade had finally joined him, he pulled open the door, careful to keep out of sight lest anyone should see him sans mustache.
His friend raised a golden brow at him as he stepped over the threshold and the door snapped closed at his back. Like Sebastian, he wore plain trousers and a work shirt and jacket. He’d grown a beard, and he rather resembled nothing so much as a Whitechapel thug. “Brother George, is that you?” he deadpanned.
“Of course you must know that it is I, brother John,” he returned, grinning.
They clapped each other on the back solidly.
“It’s good to see you, Bast,” Griffin said. “I’m deuced glad Carlisle decided to pair us up on this one.”
“As am I.” Though they were the best of friends, they had not worked together on many missions. When he’d received word from Carlisle two days prior that Griffin would be joining him, he’d been more than pleased, in spite of their last clash. Griffin had a sharp eye, keen wit, steady hand, and the cool calculation of a seasoned warrior. “Even if it means I’ll be stuck in bloody Liverpool for another fortnight at least.”
Tomorrow, they would move to a new part of the city, take different rooms, and begin Thompson Brothers Chemists. Since Sebastian’s work had thus far uncovered precious little, they were going to act as a lure, selling their goods wholesale below market price. Either the Fenians were purchasing their acids and glycerin in small quantities from a variety of chemists to avoid detection, or they were not in Liverpool at all.
Thompson Brothers should—within a relatively short time frame—give them the means to determine the answer. If the plotters were in Liverpool, it stood to reason that they would purchase more affordable supplies, and it was down to Sebastian and Griffin to monitor the customers and their purchases.
“Liverpool is where we need eyes and ears the most,” Griffin said then. “We’ve word from the consul in Philadelphia that there are plots in the works to blow up public buildings here in the city.”
Sebastian’s blood went cold. “Jesus. The information is reliable?”
Griffin nodded. “It comes directly from the Pinkertons.”
Hell. The Pinkerton Detective Agency’s work was always sound. “I’ve still no evidence that the dynamite is being manufactured here. I’ve run every lead I had to ground, and I’ve come up with nothing.”
“I’m here now, old chap. We’ll find these bastards one way or another and put a stop to them.” Though Griffin’s tone was congenial, his countenance was anything but. His expression was fairly murderous.
“That we will.” He paused then, his thoughts going, inevitably, to Daisy. Christ, what must she think of him? He had wedded her, bedded her, and left with nothing but a terse note and no indication of when he might return. Though he knew his actions were borne of duty rather than callousness, she did not, and the notion had been driving him mad this last fortnight. He longed for her as he never had for another, and though he cursed himself for his weakness, he couldn’t deny it. “Have you any word from London?”
“Bloody fucking hell, Bast. Is this about your American tart?”
His head felt as if it may explode. “She. Is. Not. A. Tart,” he bit out.
“Oh, Christ.” Griffin studied him in his signature, penetrating manner that had made far more worthy opponents than Sebastian tremble in fear. “Never say you fancy yourself… in love with the chit.”
He spat the word “love” as though it were a dirty word, something to revile, a bitter taste he couldn’t wait to remove from his tongue.
Heat climbed his throat. Good God. He didn’t flush, and yet… how else to explain the warmth searing his flesh, reaching to even his cheeks? He cleared his throat. “The chit is my wife.”
Griffin’s lips thinned. “Have you forgotten the circumstances that made her your wife?”
“No, goddamn it,” he growled.
Of course he hadn’t forgotten. How could he, when the deceit he’d perpetrated swallowed him whole each time he thought of it? He had spent his entire adult life as a spy, lying to everyone around him. Manipulating, dissembling, using, donning whatever name and disguise he required in the moment. But for the first time, the credo by which he’d lived—anything in the name of the League—no longer sufficed.
“I saw any number of cheeky wenches in the tavern below. You could have your pick of the lot for the night, if that’s what ails you.” Griffin’s gaze was steadfast, unrelenting.
Damn him. “I don’t want to tup a whore,” he bit out. “I’m married to her, by God. I owe her my fidelity, if nothing else.”
“Fuck.” Griffin shook his head. “I told Carlisle it shouldn’t be you, but he was adamant you were the man for the task. He doesn’t know you the way I do. You’re too bloody softhearted for it, and now she’s managed to cozen you into thinking she’s not the deceptive bitch she truly is.”
Sebastian didn’t think. Indeed, his brain seemed to take leave of the rest of his body, for it was almost as if the two were disconnected as his fist swung wildly, finding rigid purchase in his best friend’s jaw for the second time in as many weeks. He watched as Griffin’s head snapped back, almost from a dream. A bloody nightmare.
But Griffin had pushed him too far, and this… he would not be insulted. Wouldn’t allow his loyalty to be called into question, not by anyone and especially not by the man he considered a brother. The way he’d spoken of Daisy, disparaging her, as if she were a siren who’d bewitched him, and as if any other woman might easily take her place. It was not to be borne.
Griffin was a seasoned fighter, and he was cold as ice. Always. So the fist meeting Sebastian’s jaw a scant few seconds later was no surprise, though the burst of pain and stars marring his vision took him aback for half a second. There. He supposed they were even this time around.
“Have you no word on her?” he asked ruefully, rubbing the place where his friend’s right hook had connected with his face.
“Fucking hell,” Griffin snarled, staring at him as though he were a stranger.
“Who watches her?” Sebastian pressed, undeterred in his quest for some word of Daisy, however small and insignificant. By God, he missed her, and with a desperation that was utterly humiliating. “Surely someone, if not you. Is she safe, at least?”
Leaving her had been difficult enough, but leaving her behind knowing that her bastard of a father was within the same city, still capable of reaching her and hurting her… that was a different kind of torture. The sort of torture that none of his training could have prepared him for.
“She’s safe.” Griffin’s lip curled into a sneer. “What’s next, Bast? You’re going to secret her away to the country and start getting brats on her? Men like us aren’t meant for that life. We’re bound to put the League first.”
Sebastian met his gaze, unflinching. His friend wasn’t wrong, not about any of it, and he was being torn apart from the inside out, stretched in two opposing directions. Love versus loyalty, duty against want. “I’m putting the League first or I wouldn’t be here, damn it.”
Griffin’s expression became dazed. “This isn’t like you.”
No, it wasn’t. But he’d never been in love before. “Maybe you don’t know me,” he said evenly.
Because the truth of it was that he’d begun to realize not even he had known himself. The man he’d believed himself to be had been an island in a vast ocean, accountable to no one, untouchable and unbreakable. The man he thought he was would never have fallen in love with a slip of an American girl who was stronger than anyone he’d ever met. He was not himself without her, and she was the part of him that had been missing all along. With Daisy, he was whole.
“I’m beginning to think I don’t,” Griffin said, sounding weary. “But we’ve a duty to uphold and a mission to carry out.”
Yes, they bloody well did.