Council of War, Part II
Ilooked at each of them in turn—Rosalynd, steady and attentive; Finch, his breakfast abandoned, his notebook open; Nicholas, his amusement long since faded. “What I am about to share does not leave this room,” I said. “That applies to everyone present.”
“Understood,” Nicky voiced. Finch simply nodded. Rosalynd curled a brow.
I began with Davenport. How I had tracked him to his offices on Threadneedle Street and found his clerks burning records. What I had managed to recover—six crates of ledgers and correspondence, now in my library, where Whitfield, a forensic accountant I had used before, was working through them.
Then I laid out what the surviving documents had shown us.
The Dorado Trust. The account structure Davenport had built.
Regular payments routed to Marseilles, secondary transfers to Constantinople and Trieste.
Auction house revenue that defied any legitimate explanation.
I presented it as the ledgers had shown me—methodically, without speculation, letting the numbers speak.
And then I told them the rest. Davenport’s flight. The body found in a hansom cab, a stiletto buried in his chest.
The room went very still.
“The same type of weapon that killed Hale,” Rosalynd said quietly.
“Not only the same weapon, but the same hand, according to Inspector Graves.” I paused. “The consortium is eliminating anyone who might expose the operation. Davenport built the financial architecture. He knew everything. And now he is dead.”
Rosalynd set down her coffee. “That explains why the investors are so afraid.”
She described the tea at Rosehaven with the same precision I had brought to the ledgers.
Four women. Four husbands who had grown rich from the consortium and were now behaving as men who expected destruction.
Solicitors consulted about legal protections.
Letters burned in grates. Armed watchmen posted at private homes.
And through it all, the money still flowing—the returns still exceptional.
“They are not afraid of financial ruin,” she said. “They are afraid of what the money has purchased. And one of the wives mentioned a foreign gentleman who attended a consortium dinner six weeks ago. His presence frightened a man who had been in the City for thirty years.”
I turned to Nicholas. “This is why I asked you here. Marseilles. Constantinople. Trieste. Money flowing outward along these routes. Returns that cannot be explained by any declared cargo. Tell me what you see.”
Nicholas leaned forward. The easy charm had vanished. What replaced it was the expression I had seen in my study when he spoke of Constantinople—the sharp, focused intelligence of a man who understood geopolitical currents the way I understood evidence.
“You are looking at an arms corridor,” he said.
The words landed like stones in still water.
“Marseilles is the largest unregulated port in the Mediterranean,” Nicholas continued.
“It is where weapons are bought, sold, and transhipped without the inconvenience of government oversight. Constantinople is the gateway to the Ottoman Empire—which is, at this moment, the largest weapons market in the world. The Sultan is fighting insurgencies on three fronts. His army is desperate for modern armaments. And Trieste is the Austrian outlet—Steyr, the arms manufacturer, ships through Trieste. It is where the product enters the supply chain.”
“The product,” Rosalynd said.
“Rifles. Ammunition. Possibly artillery components.” Nicholas’s jaw tightened. “If the consortium has been running this operation for a year, the sums would be staggering.”
“And the auction house revenue?” I asked.
“Whatever they’re auctioning provides a plausible explanation for the returns. But the real profit is in the arms. Modern rifles sell for five to ten times their manufacturing cost in the Ottoman territories.”
Finch whistled softly. “Arms smuggling. Through a dead man’s shipping lines. Well, that’s a step up from my usual work.”
“It explains everything,” Rosalynd said.
Her voice was quiet, but I could see the connections forming behind her eyes—the same rapid assembly of evidence that made her formidable.
“The investors’ fear. They joined the consortium for profit and discovered what they were actually financing.
They cannot withdraw without exposing themselves.
They cannot speak without risking their reputations—or worse. And Hale—”
“Hale knew what his ships were carrying,” I finished.
“And someone killed him for it,” Rosalynd said.
The study was very quiet. Beyond the window, Grosvenor Square was waking—carriages, birdsong, the ordinary sounds of a city that did not know it sat atop a smuggling operation that stretched from the Thames to the Bosphorus.
I looked at Nicholas. I should not have asked him. The thought came unbidden and unwelcome. Hale was murdered. Davenport was dead. Jessop had vanished. And I had invited my brother to get involved.
“Warwick.” Nicholas’s voice cut through my thoughts. He was watching me with an expression I recognized—because it was the same one I wore when I saw someone I cared about heading into danger. “Stop it.”
“Stop what?”
“Regretting that you asked me here.” A flicker of the old warmth. “I am not a child. You asked because you needed what I know, and you were right to ask. Now, what do you intend to do about it?”
What indeed.
I returned to my chair and looked at the three of them.
Rosalynd, who would walk into any drawing room in London and extract secrets from women who had every reason to stay silent.
Finch, who could find a man in the labyrinth of London’s docks and back alleys when the police could not.
And Nicholas, who could read the map of a conspiracy that stretched across half of Europe.
These were the ones I trusted. This was the war council.
“We need proof,” I said. “Not suspicion. Not a pattern. Proof that will stand before a magistrate and, if necessary, before the Crown. Finch—find Jessop. He is the last man alive who worked inside Hale’s shipping operation.
If he is still breathing, I need him found and protected before the killer reaches him next. ”
“Consider it done, Your Grace.”
“Rosalynd, you and I will visit the auction houses. We will find out what those ships were bringing back.”
She smiled. “Splendid.”
“Nicholas.” I met my brother’s eyes. “The foreign gentleman. The one who attended the consortium dinner. I need you to think about who that might be. A man connected to the arms trade, with ties to the Ottoman territories, who would attend a private dinner in London and frighten a room full of City investors.”
Nicholas nodded slowly. “I have some thoughts on that already. Let me make enquiries.”
“Discreetly,” I said. “That is not a suggestion, Nicky. It is a condition. Two men connected to this consortium are dead. I will not add a third.”
His eyes held mine. For a moment, something passed between us—not the old argument about protection and independence, but something quieter. An acknowledgment that the stakes had changed, and that care was not the same as cowardice.
“Understood,” he said.
Finch drained the last of his coffee, pocketed his notebook, and rose. “I’ll start at the docks. Jessop has family in Yorkshire—his landlady mentioned it. If he’s gone to ground, that’s where I’d look.”
He paused at the door and glanced back toward us. “Take care. All of you. Whoever is running this operation has killed twice and cleaned out offices in a matter of days. They’re not amateurs. And they’re not finished.”
“No,” I said. “They are not.”
Finch nodded once and left. Nicholas followed shortly after, his step quieter than when he had arrived, the easy energy replaced by something more measured.
Rosalynd remained.
She sat in her chair, her coffee long gone, her hands folded in her lap.
The morning light from the window caught the copper in her hair and turned it to flame.
She was looking at me with an expression I could not quite read—concern, certainly, but something else beneath it. Something steady and fierce.
“You should sleep,” she said.
“I will. Tonight.”
“You will not. You will sit in that library and read those ledgers until your eyes fail, and then you will read them again by candlelight.” She rose and crossed to the desk, standing close enough that I could smell the faint scent of rosewater in her hair.
“I will ask Milford to bring you food. And, if need be, stand over you to see that you eat.”
“You are managing me.”
“Someone must.” Her hand rested briefly on my arm. “We will find the proof, Steele. We will stop these men. But not if you collapse before we get there.”
I covered her hand with mine. Held it for a moment longer than was wise.
“I apologize,” she said, “but I must leave. The masquerade is tomorrow, and there’s still much to be done.”
“I’d forgotten about it.”
Her hard gaze pinned me. “I expect you to be there, Steele.”
“I will be.” I turned over her hand and kissed the palm. “How else do I get to hold you in my arms without exciting gossip?”
When she left, I sat in the silence of my study, still breathing in her scent. But not for long.
Milford strode in with a tray stacked high with sandwiches, a jug of ale, and a tall glass. “Lady Rosalynd’s orders, Your Grace. And I’m to stand over you and watch you eat.”
Not bloody likely. “You are dismissed, Milford.”
When he didn’t so much as shift a muscle, I asked, “Who exactly issues commands at Steele House?”
All I got in response was a raised brow.