Chapter 17
“A ring?” Charlotte seated herself on the edge of the bed and reached out to fluff up the pillow behind Wrexford’s head.
A touch of color had come back to his face since Henning had brought the earl back to Berkeley Square and helped get him into bed.
But she didn’t like the stoic tightness of his jaw.
“Baz has a signet ring tucked away in a keepsake box?”
“Yes,” he answered. “And the implications are …” A small hiss of pain, which he tried to cover with a cough. “The implications are not good.”
“We’ll speak of that in a moment. But first …” Charlotte added several drops of laudanum to a glass of water on the bedside table. “Stop being an arse and take some medication.”
“The damnable drug makes me muzzy,” he protested.
“That’s exactly what it’s supposed to do,” she replied in exasperation. “Only a stubborn idiot refuses it when having a wound sewn up. But I insist that you take it now so that you can sleep.”
“At least I was smart enough to insist Baz bring me here so that Mac could wield the needle and thread.” A pause. “She sets a much neater stitch.”
“Baz was in no condition to attempt anything requiring dexterity,” agreed Charlotte.
Indeed, she had flatly refused to let their friend attempt the return trip home, so at present, he was ensconced in one of the guest rooms of the north wing.
“Still, he cleaned and properly bandaged the gash, and brought you back here in a hackney, for which I am profoundly grateful.”
Wrexford let out a grunt.
Choosing not to parse its meaning, Charlotte held out the glass. “Drink.”
He reluctantly obeyed. “Before I sink into oblivion, I want to tell you about what I learned tonight and why Baz’s ring may be of great significance …
” He recounted his conversation with Sykes, and the fact that a mysterious gentleman had questioned him the previous week regarding Langdon’s activities around the time of the Lisbon Conspiracy.
“Sykes is a very observant fellow, and he noticed the engraved image on the pewter signet ring that the mysterious gentleman was wearing. It was of a heart and two crossed daggers.” A pause.
“And the same image is engraved on Baz’s ring. ”
“Perhaps the design has become a common one in Scotland.” She thought for a moment about the imagery. “The Scots are passionate about their heritage. It could signify love of country and a willingness to fight to defend it.”
“Perhaps,” conceded the earl. “But I sense that the truth won’t be so simple.”
His eyes fluttered shut, and his breathing shallowed. Charlotte brushed back a lock of hair from his brow, glad to see the drug was taking effect. “Come morning, we can task Tyler with making inquiries among his network of Scottish friends. But for now …”
The rhythmic in-and-out rasp of his breath indicated that Wrexford had slipped into slumber.
She rose, and after smoothing a rumple from the coverlet, she picked up the glass-globed candlestick on the table and withdrew from the bedchamber.
A draft of air—or was the chill tickle merely a figment of her imagination—stirred the tiny hairs at the back of her neck as Charlotte stepped into the corridor. She, too, sensed that this investigation was a treacherous web of secrets entangled within secrets.
On impulse, she moved to the stairs and tiptoed up a flight, suddenly wanting to still the vague fears spinning in her head by assuring herself that the Weasels were all safe within the protective walls of their townhouse.
Eddy’s room was to the right, and pressing her ear to the door, Charlotte smiled on hearing the rumbled snores of Harper. The hound had appointed himself the girl’s guardian, so she knew that all was well.
Turning, she retraced her steps to the landing and then continued on. A dappling of starlight showed that the schoolroom was blessedly quiet—even the shadows seemed to be sleeping peacefully.
“Shadows,” she whispered, feeling a little foolish. “I mustn’t let shadows cloud my judgment.”
A few more steps brought her to the bedchamber shared by Raven and Hawk. She hesitated, not wishing to betray her inner worries—
The faint scrabbling of boots caught her ear, followed by the muffled thunk of something heavy dropping onto the rug.
It was the harried “Shhh!” that impelled her to click open the latch.
“Sorry,” intoned Peregrine as Raven speared him with an accusing look.
Charlotte took a moment to be sure there was no sign of bodily harm before setting a fist on her hip.
“The new house rule expressly forbids the three of you from—” she began.
“From going out to investigate anything to do with Mr. Campbell’s murder,” finished Raven. “And we didn’t!”
Damnation. Charlotte made a mental note that all future edicts must be more carefully worded. “Then kindly explain to me just what you were doing in the dead of night …” She glanced down at the mallet handle protruding from the rucksack that Peregrine had dropped. “With a bag full of tools.”
“We suspected that Mr. MacArthur was up to something havey-cavey,” said Hawk.
“I’m quite sure that he was nosing through some papers in Wrex’s study,” interjected Raven.
“And so Raven hired Scratch and his friend Muffin to keep an eye on MacArthur after his workday was done,” explained Peregrine, “and they followed him and two other men to a deserted warehouse, where the group met up with a wagon and unloaded a number of large crates.”
Raven waved his fellow Weasels to silence and finished by describing what they had found. “We were going to come wake you and Wrex right way,” he added. “Hawk made some drawings of the machinery that we found inside the warehouse. Shall we all go show them to him now?”
“It will have to wait until morning.” A sudden patter of rain hit up against the mullioned glass as the passing squall darkened the night sky …
An apt reminder of how things could change in a heartbeat.
“You three were not the only ones breaking the spirit, if not the letter, of the house rules.”
The clatter of cutlery ceased, along with all conversation, as Charlotte and Wrexford entered the breakfast room.
The earl’s left arm was in a sling …
Eddy put down her fork and expelled a harried sigh. ”I seem to be the only one in this family who is expected to obey all the rules imposed on me—and without so much as a hair’s breadth of wiggling room in interpreting their meaning.”
“I did not set out with any wiggling in mind—” began Wrexford.
“Wrex made a small error in judgment, which led to a near-lethal mistake,” interjected Charlotte. “It’s a lesson to all of us as to how quickly trouble can strike.”
Bowing her head, Eddy stared down at her plate, her momentary frustration giving way to uncertainty. “A-Are you going to be all right?” she asked in a small voice.
“Of course he is,” said McClellan, as she hurried in with a fresh pot of coffee and poured a cup for the earl. “I made very neat work of stitching up the gash. He’ll be right as rain in no time.”
“Indeed, there is no need to fuss,” added Wrexford.
“We have more important things to discuss.” He took a long swallow of his coffee, savoring the sharp spice of the dark brew as it washed the lingering taste of the laudanum from his throat.
“Has Tyler returned from accompanying Baz back to his abode?”
The surgeon had claimed that his medical duties required him to leave at first light, and while the earl suspected that wasn’t true, he chose not to challenge the excuse.
“He should be back shortly,” answered McClellan.
“Let us hope he has managed to coax out some information on why Baz is behaving so oddly,” said Charlotte.
“I have a feeling there’s no easy answer to that,” mused the earl. “For now, let us turn our attention to the other event of last night that involved our family.”
Raven stopped breaking a morsel of his muffin into crumbs.
“Three of our four Weasels decided to shimmy through a gap in the wording of my new house rule,” observed Charlotte. “Eddy is to be commended for showing greater maturity.”
“In fairness to them, they had no reason to think their foray had anything to do with the murder of Mr. Campbell,” said Eddy. Her brow furrowed in thought. “Does it?”
Raven was quick to reply. “Dunno.” He signaled for Hawk to spread out the drawings he had made in the warehouse.
“But there is an array of sophisticated printing equipment in the warehouse being used by Mr. MacArthur and his compatriots, along with a special type of lathe—a rose engine—for creating intricate geometric patterns on metal. And since we have learned that Mr. Campbell had ties to a notorious counterfeiting gang …” His words trailed off in a shrug.
“Given Campbell’s murder, the sudden presence of machinery capable of printing banknotes certainly raises a number of unsettling questions,” responded Wrexford.
Eddy bit her lip.
“According to Griffin, all the members of Lisbon Conspiracy counterfeiting gang were hanged.” Charlotte looked up from studying Hawk’s sketches. “Save for the boy genius,” she added softly.
“Who has perhaps returned to London as a young man,” muttered Raven, “with an even more insidiously clever plan to make himself and his conspirators rich as Croesus.”