Chapter 38
Chapter
“Home Office?” McGann whispers to Rogers. “What the bloody hell?”
Rogers shrugs. “I may have omitted that part in my explanation of affairs. The Home Office extends its deepest apologies—”
“Stuff it,” McGann says. “I really don’t care.” He turns to Barclay. “Where’s the box?”
“I don’t answer to you,” Barclay scoffs. “You’re nothing. Less than nothing. A lowly—”
“Enough!” McGann’s had enough of being treated like nothing by his brother. Enough of believing it to be true. Enough of standing here, shouting at the arsehole when he could be somewhere calm and quiet with Catherine. “Not. Another. Word.”
He limps toward his brother, furious. Barclay takes a step back from him.
“Now look here,” Barclay begins.
But Rogers cuts him off. “James mentioned that you hid the box in your private study.”
Barclay tries to speak again but Rogers holds his hand up.
“Before you say anything further, I will amend that statement to this one: James, during his full and quite detailed confession, stated that you hid the box in your private study. Quite a story that was, Your Grace. Double crossing the East India Company and endeavoring to sell stolen goods to the Crown? You have been busy.”
Barclay freezes, still as a deer caught in a hunter’s sight, and says nothing.
“Shall we just go and find it?” Rogers asks. “I’d rather get this over with. I could use a bite to eat and a chance at a doze. It’s been a trying few days.” He gestures for the door. “After you, Chief.”
Barclay, however, is closer. He lunges for the open entryway, and McGann can only track him with his eyes. He wishes he had the strength to go after him, but he knows he hasn’t. Not with his injured leg. But it becomes obvious soon enough that he needn’t have worried. His brother is no athlete.
Barclay has lived his entire life as a duke and is as soft and pampered, as swaddled and coddled, as the title might imply. His run is slow and lumbering, and he’s out of breath before he’s even made it down the hall. It takes only a moment for the constable to catch him and haul him back.
“What do I do with him?” the man asks the chief, holding Barclay’s arms behind his back.
“Have you no cuffs?” the chief asks, and the constable only shakes his head and shrugs apologetically. “I didn’t think we’d need them.”
“Just hold him then,” Rogers orders.
McGann, meanwhile, has turned to Catherine. “Shall we, Menace?” he asks, holding out his arm.
“Let’s,” Catherine says, looping her own arm through his. It makes his heart swell to have her there, as it does every time she slips her hand through his and lets her fingers tickle his bicep. He flexes it a little to show off.
“The cat with its cream,” she says quietly, just for him.
“Aye,” he whispers, “when I’ve you on my arm.”
Just as Sir Cleveland says, “Well then,” and glances nervously at the duke with his arms held behind his back by the constable. “This better be good or he’ll have all our heads.”
“It will be,” McGann says to the wide-eyed housekeeper who has quietly come into the room and lingers at the edge of it.
“Where is His Grace’s study?” he asks, and the woman points the way.
Catherine watches as the chief conducts a quick search of the duke’s study.
The lockbox isn’t particularly hard to find.
Barclay had hidden it, sloppily, inside a globe that forms part of the bar piece—originally made to house decanters in its hollow interior.
He hadn’t even bothered to fasten the top, simply dropping the box in so the globe no longer closed properly.
The entirety of the search takes less than five minutes, during which Barclay stands in the doorway staring, the constable still holding his arms behind his back.
“That’s it,” McGann says. “That’s the box. Menace, do you still have the key?”
“I do.”
She turns from the others to pull it out of her bodice as discreetly as possible. It takes a bit of fishing and poking to manage it, for which she hopes the crowd behind her has averted their eyes.
Probably ought to have thought this through better. Another reason why trousers are superior. They have pockets. Her fingers grope and probe, looking for the dratted thing, and behind her someone lets out a cough. Oh, for heaven’s sake.
But her fingers finally grasp the hard ridges of the key and she pulls it out with a triumphant little flourish.
“Here!” she says and turns, reaching for the box.
Barclay, unable or unwilling to acknowledge he’s been beaten, breaks free from the constable and lunges once again, this time for Catherine. She doesn’t have time to react except to look up, startled, as he barrels toward her and knocks her onto her bottom. She hits the floor with a hard thud.
The fall knocks the breath out of her and the key tumbles from her hand, bouncing off the hardwood floor with a clank before burying itself in the soft carpet that overlays the middle of the room.
It’s Persian in style, Catherine notes in her daze, the same as is fashionable in London.
She shakes her head and comes back to herself as Barclay grasps the key and McGann launches himself at his brother.
“Andrew!” she calls, but he’s already grabbing Barclay by the lapels and lifting the man off the floor. Barclay is nearly his brother’s height, but soft and round through the middle. His waistcoat strains against his buttons as McGann heaves him up until his feet leave the floor.
“Chief,” Barclay manages to get out, “a little help, please.”
But the chief and Sir Cleveland have already moved to Catherine’s side to help her off the floor. She watches McGann aggressively shake his brother until Barclay drops the key. Rogers picks it up again, fits it neatly into the lockbox, and opens it.
“Andrew,” Catherine says again, now back on her feet and dusting off her skirts. She moves to his side. “You probably ought not to kill him.”
McGann has moved one bear-paw-sized hand from Barclay’s lapel and placed it firmly around his throat. The duke’s eyes bulge from his head.
“Are you alright?” McGann asks her while the duke struggles in his grip.
“I’m fine. I’d have kept my balance if it weren’t for these dratted slippers.”
“And planted him one?” Andrew asks, his eyes leaving his brother’s face to momentarily gleam down at hers.
“Certainly.” She glances up at Barclay and then back to Andrew. “You might loosen your grip a bit,” she says. “Unless you do intend to kill him.”
McGann only shrugs at that, as if he hasn’t yet decided. “Your call, Menace. Mercy or no?”
“Hardly my decision. He’s your brother.” But then she thinks of all the damage this man has inflicted. On Andrew and her and Rogers and Esmee and heavens only knows how many other people. “Although, if you’re asking my opinion, I say no mercy.”
“Ahem,” Rogers interrupts from the other side of the room. “Probably best to release him into custody now, Captain. I’m going to have enough explaining to do as it is without a ducal death on my hands.”
“You’ll swing for this,” Barclay sneers as McGann reluctantly loosens his grip and sets the man on the ground. “All of you will.”
“I won’t,” Catherine says, and plants her feet, swivels her hips, and hits him square in the nose with a jab. “There are some plusses to the aristocracy, you know.”
Then she turns to Rogers and smiles sweetly. “He’s all yours,” she says. “But do keep a hold of him this time, will you?”
“Yes, my lady,” the constable replies and moves to take Barclay back into his custody. The duke’s nose is beginning to bleed but no one offers him a handkerchief, so the blood puddles and dries on his upper lip.
“Excellent hand position,” McGann says to her quietly before turning back to Rogers, who is rifling through the contents of the lockbox.
“Keep the daguerreotype,” he says, “but I’ll have the rest of that box back now.”
“Of course,” Rogers says and tucks the photograph into his pocket.
“This will be helpful. But, Captain, it’s the diary we really need.
You’ve recorded everything here: names, dates, ledger numbers, accounts.
Prices of goods bought and sold, most at a suspicious disadvantage to the Crown.
The public will outcry the photograph, certainly, but it’s the theft that the Crown will punish. ”
“The diary is the smoking pistol?” Catherine asks, incredulous.
“It is. And with your permission, Captain, we’ll use it to finally put those bastards out of business.”
“Aye, granted. Now give me the box. It’s got my mother’s things in it.”
Catherine puts her hand on his arm. She knows how much his mother means to him. “What do you have of hers?” she asks him quietly.
“Not much. Hairpins. A ring. Marriage papers.”
“I beg your pardon?” Catherine stares at him. He can’t have just said what she thinks he said.
“What?” he asks, looking down at her.
“Who did she marry, Andrew?” Catherine asks slowly, her heart already sinking. She knows what it means, those marriage papers. And she can tell from his face he has no idea.
“My father,” McGann says. “Gran said they tied the knot right before she died. It was the only promise he kept to her, the bastard. After I was born, though, so don’t go and get any ideas about me being above my station. I’m an illegitimate sailor and nothing more than that.”
“Andrew.” She can hear the thin, wavering quality to her own voice. “May I see those papers, please?”
“Aye.” He holds the box out to her. “You can see anything you want, Menace.”
She takes the papers from him and stares at them, willing them to be anything other than what they are. But there’s no mistaking what she holds in her hands, despite how much she wishes it otherwise.
It’s the marriage certificate of Andrew McGann’s mother and father. There can be no misunderstanding what it is or what it means. She closes her eyes and briefly, ever so briefly, toys with the idea of saying nothing at all. But she can’t do it—not to him.
“Whatever is the matter, dear?” Elizabeth asks, taking a step toward her at the same time as McGann asks, “Are you alright, lass?”
She lifts her eyes to his and watches the concern evident in his face. “Menace?” he asks, and she would give anything, anything at all, not to have to say the next words out of her mouth.
“You’re the duke, Andrew,” she says. “It’s you.”
He steps away from her. “That’s not bloody funny, Catherine.”
“It’s not meant to be.” She feels so queasy she thinks she might cast up her accounts right then and there.
“The rules of primogeniture are different in Scotland. It makes no difference when you were born. If your parents married at any point, before or after your birth, you’re the Duke of Barclay. I’m so sorry, Andrew.”
“No.” He shakes his head, his curls flopping around in a boyish manner that doesn’t fit this particular scenario at all. “I’m bloody well not.”
She wishes—by heavens, how much she wishes—that were true. She knows what being a duke entails: the land, the title, the responsibilities, the estates, the expectations of the ton. And she knows Andrew McGann will hate every moment of it.