The Gentleman Spy: A Guardian/Ward Historical Romance

Chapter 28

Beau had already gone twelve rounds with Gentleman Jackson at his boxing club in Bond Street when Mr Lyon showed up, his eyes wide and eyebrows high as he studied Beau’s tattoo.

When he spoke, however, he said, ‘How do you do, Avon? Your return to town is all anyone can speak of. I’m not at all surprised to find you here preparing to defend yourself against the matchmaking mamas.’ He laughed at his own jest, his jovial disposition in stark contrast to the grunts and groans knocking around the club.

Beau rolled his eyes as he dodged a left hook. ‘Care to join me?’

Lyon looked a little awed by the invitation and agreed. Stepping up to the mat, he removed his coat, waistcoat, and boots. The bell sounded, signalling the end of the current round, and he took his place, looking more confident than Beau had expected. They squared off, Beau in happy anticipation of putting Lyon through his paces.

‘Your form is good,’ Beau said to the younger man after a minute or two, ‘but you hesitate. Outside of these rooms, little pauses such as those could cost you dearly.’

He moderated himself a little, certain Lyon couldn’t take the full force of his strength, but then he did not wish to subject the man to it either. Beau had Jackson, Saunders, and Allard for such purposes.

More dangerous than Beau’s strength was his skill. His footwork was unmatched even by Jackson himself; he was a master of feinting and baiting, and he possessed a deadly combination of accuracy, speed, and power.

Lyon watched him with cautious eyes as they moved around one another.

‘Did you think I invited you to box just to thrash you?’ asked Beau, genuinely curious to learn the answer.

‘It crossed my mind.’ The wary way Lyon answered made Beau chuckle. ‘You have known me in face and name the better part of my life, but in essentials, we do not understand much of the other.’

‘And?’ Beau asked, landing a punch to Lyon’s ribs.

Lyon grunted. ‘And the few conversations we’ve shared in recent history have been’—he faltered, absorbing another punch—‘serrated.’

‘You appear on familiar, even intimate, terms with my ward and my sister.’

‘Esther and I have been friends with Miss Doubleday almost since her arrival at your estate. Only in the last year or so has Miss Calverleigh been joining us for tea or the occasional picnic,’ replied Lyon, his jaw jutting at the perceived offence. ‘I am no fox in the henhouse, my lord. I would say your care does you credit, but how convenient for your concern to align so neatly with your homecoming.’

Beau had no interest in being maligned by a pup who thought himself the pinnacle of gentlemanly principles and who would describe iniquity as anything preventing him from securing his place on the dance cards of his partners of choice. Beau did not pull his next punch, but he did lend a hand to Lyon when the young man fell to the floor.

Lyon brushed himself off, throwing a leery sidelong glance at Beau. They squared up, tapped knuckles, and began another round.

‘You are right. In essentials, we are practically strangers. I’m past due in becoming better acquainted with my younger neighbours, such as yourself and Babin.’ Beau’s statement was only half true. He knew plenty about all the estate owners, big and small, in his part of the country, but not all of the knowledge had been obtained by neighbourly methods.

‘Babin is a good fellow.’

‘You are well acquainted?’

Lyon shrugged, and Beau let him land a hit. ‘He’s an Oxford man. I went to Cambridge, like yourself. He’s a year or two ahead of me anyhow and seems to keep busy with his home and fields. A neighbour introduced us at an assembly last year. Mentioned I’d be inheriting my aunt’s estate and would one day be woven into the fabric of the area in a more permanent way.’

‘A piece of advice, if I may?’

With a subtle tip of the head, Lyon acceded.

‘Use caution where Babin is concerned.’ Beau knew Lyon wasn’t involved in Babin’s business dealings, but being present in town, being a friend, and being na?ve was enough to put the young man at risk.

‘Because he’s of French descent? I’d not thought you so closed-minded as that.’

‘Is he? I had no idea,’ Beau lied.

‘Babin was shortened from Babineaux by his father when he came over in the nineties. If I recall, he still has a grandmother there, maybe an uncle or some such, on the coast.’

‘Interesting,’ was the best Beau could do. ‘But no, not because he’s French.’

‘Who’s French? Besides me,’ Allard interjected, his accent softened after spending more than half his life living in England. ‘My apologies for the interruption, but I’m in need of a private conference with Avon.’

‘Then I suppose I ought to end the round,’ replied Beau, knocking Lyon down once more and helping him back up with the same effortlessness.

The younger man pouted. ‘Next time, you need not go easy on me.’

Beau picked up a towel to wipe the sweat from his bare chest. ‘See what your ribs have to say about it tomorrow and the day after.’ He turned to Allard. ‘A moment to refresh myself, and we can go.’

The two men made their way down St James’s Street, along Pall Mall, and turned down the bland lane on which J.B. Brown Co. was situated and where Saunders was waiting. Cutting through the little maze of halls and doors, they spilled into Lord Duffy’s office with such energy the equerry spilled tea on his waistcoat.

Beau apologised with a sardonic curl of his lips before turning his attention to Duffy. ‘What have you learned of Babin’s accomplices? I assume that’s why Allard came to fetch me.’

Duffy nodded and picked up several sheafs of paper on his desk. ‘Jude Hensell is known to us. He worked as a spy for the French and has been inflaming revolutionary groups in the North. Henry Fournier, we’ve determined, is supplying barrels of gunpowder from France, likely aided by Babin’s grandmother, who lives on the coast. But Charlie Newling remains a bit of an enigma. We’ve been unable to find even a record of his person.’

‘Babin’s lack of originality is disappointing,’ Saunders ventured, as the men digested this information.

Beau agreed, but said, ‘He’s still got time to surprise us.’ It bothered him that in the letters he’d seen in Babin’s study, those which had been intercepted and opened by the Home Office before being resealed and sent on, and the ones he’d received from Poughill, not a single date had been mentioned, for an act of mutiny or otherwise. ‘We’re missing something.’

‘One of our best codebreakers has been through every piece of mail Babin’s received since you first wrote. Most of it borders on the mundane, with a few mentions of card parties, family dinners, the theatre,’ replied Duffy, sounding a little affronted. ‘He isn’t stupid enough to blast the building before it’s filled with lords, and I confirmed the location of the stockpiled gunpowder myself. How many shipments are left? One?’

‘One,’ confirmed Beau. ‘Babin has been receiving them at regular intervals. If the pattern holds, six days from now will be the final one.’ Which still left a week or more before Parliament reconvened. Another detail that rubbed against his instincts.

Duffy dragged his long bony fingers along his jaw. ‘Then in six days we’ll be waiting for him at the storeroom. I’ll be in touch,’ he said, dismissing them.

Outside, the three men exchanged uneasy glances.

‘I suppose that’s what happens when you get used to being in charge, being right,’ remarked Saunders.

‘Go on to Avon House,’ said Beau. ‘Have Wallace settle you in the study. I’ll be there directly. I’ve got a quick errand.’

His errand to the jeweller to inspect the stones for a ring he was having made was quick, and Beau trotted up the steps of Avon House less than an hour later. On the first-floor landing, he turned towards his study only to be greeted by his ward.

‘Your valet awaits you in the study.’ The emphasis she put on valet was not lost on him. ‘Along with another gentleman, or so I suppose him to be, but perhaps he’s only a fleshy apparition.’

‘Have you seen many spirits? I’d not thought you a connoisseur.’

Emerald walked alongside him as they approached the study door. He could feel she wished to say more, and she opened her mouth before pinching it closed several times. With a hand on the handle, he said by way of consolation, ‘Perhaps a game later, if you are inclined.’

‘We’re for Lady Abercrombe’s. Her husband had a portrait commissioned for her fortieth birthday.’

‘She turned forty the year I turned three-and-twenty. How fine for her that the members of the ton have such short memories.’

The corners of his ward’s mouth hooked upwards, and he felt inordinate pleasure in winning even a ghost of a smile from her.

‘Will you be there?’

It was the first time she had ever asked him directly about his plans, and her interest warmed him like the first rays of spring sun after a long, sorrowful winter.

‘I had other interests in mind for this evening. But I recall once having promised never to interfere with your pleasure, so if it would please you, you may depend upon my presence.’ His answer was forthright, and the chance she might demur or deny him caused a little twinge of uncertainty to fist around his stomach.

The pale pink tinge to her cheeks and the sweet, slow smile brightening her already lovely face was his reward, and it remained with him long after he shut the door to the study behind him.