Chapter 27 #2
“I do,” answered Wrexford without hesitation.
“However unfortunate, your father and his men made certain choices and have paid for them. The one outstanding injustice is that the mastermind who put all this evil into motion is still at large and is also responsible for the death of your uncle—another terrible sin on his ledger. Once a final justice has been meted out, I truly think you will be able to put your past ghosts to rest and look ahead to a brighter future.”
MacArthur essayed a shaky smile. “I can’t thank you enough—”
“Let us not get ahead of ourselves. The threats to all that you and your friends have worked for is still out there, and no less dangerous than in the past.” Perhaps even more so, he added to himself. “So let’s concentrate on any details that may help us catch the villain.”
Before he can strike at you and your colleagues.
MacArthur took a seat on one of the barrels clustered beside the work counter and folded his hands in his lap. “Ask me anything, sir, and I will do my best to give you the answer.”
“Did you ever encounter a fellow named Philip Stoneham at your father’s workshop?”
“Yes, I remember him visiting occasionally.” MacArthur’s brow furrowed in thought.
“He was conversant in metallurgy, and my father was quite pleased with the improvements he created in the copper we used for our engraving plates. It was a small change in the formula—don’t ask me what it was—but the extra degree of hardness allowed a crisper line in the fine details of an engraving.
I could tell the difference immediately when I made a test plate. ”
“Do you think Stoneham was involved in the conspiracy?”
MacArthur didn’t answer right away. “My father was a very gregarious man, and there were always people going in and out of the shop.” He sat back.
“It wasn’t easy to discern who was a legitimate client and who was a participant in one of the many illegal enterprises that my father ran.
” The statement was punctuated by another sigh.
“He was actually rather careful in keeping the sordid details from me.”
Wrexford took a moment to ponder what he had just heard.
“But now that you mention Mr. Stoneham, I do recall that he occasionally came in with another gentleman, who seemed on very friendly terms with my father—indeed, my father always greeted him with an effusive ‘my good man.’” MacArthur frowned.
“It sticks in my memory because I once asked my father who the fellow was, and he pretended not to know about whom I was asking.”
A pause. “It was a lie, of course. I could always tell by a certain flicker of his lashes when my father was lying.”
“And you don’t know the gentleman’s name?”
The ensuing silence was answer enough.
“Or any other details about him?”
“He has a melodious laugh … and he always seemed to have a small packet of barley sugar drops in his pocket. Though I was usually hidden away in a corner of the print shop, he was in the habit of dropping one on my work counter as he was leaving.” MacArthur gave a self-mocking grimace.
“I know, I know, that’s pitifully little to go on. ”
“Perhaps more will come to you,” said Wrexford gently. “And now, I’ll let you get back to your work.”
As MacArthur levered himself to his feet, the earl added a reassuring pat to his shoulder. “Don’t worry, we’ll catch him.”
Patting back a yawn, Charlotte blinked the fuzziness from her eyes and lifted her gaze to the mantel clock from the book she was reading.
Despite Wrexford’s suggestion, she couldn’t bring herself to seek sleep beneath a cozy eiderdown coverlet while he was still out in the ink-black night, with unseen predators lurking at every turn.
It was only midnight—no need for alarm.
And yet, Charlotte felt a prickling of gooseflesh pebble down her spine.
“A draft,” she muttered, glancing at the windows and debating whether to stir herself and check the latches—
A pelter of footsteps in the corridor caused her to shoot up from her chair. Grabbing a poker, she rushed to the door and braced her shoulder to the paneled oak.
“Wrex! Wrex!” Fists hammered an agitated tattoo against the wood. “Are you in there?”
Charlotte flung open the door. “Cordelia!”
Her friend stumbled in, hair in a wild tangle around her ice-pale face. She would have fallen if Charlotte hadn’t managed to catch her arm.
“What—” The question died on her tongue as she took in Cordelia’s dazed expression and the rippling of primal fear in her eyes. Without further words, she marched her friend to one of the chairs by the hearth and threw a lap blanket over her shivering limbs.
Ye gods, did she really walk through the streets of London looking like a fugitive from Bedlam? Cordelia was wearing naught but her night-rail under her heavy woolen cloak and a pair of Sheffield’s low-cut Blücher boots on her feet.
Charlotte found her own fingers shaking as she hastily poured a glass of whisky and thrust it into Cordelia’s unresisting hands.
“Drink!”
Cordelia blinked in confusion, as if trying to bring herself back from whatever madness had taken hold of her.
Closing her eyes for an instant, Charlotte steeled her resolve and then gave a sharp slap to her friend’s cheek, leaving a faint red imprint on the frigid flesh.
Whisky sloshed over Cordelia’s hands and dribbled into her lap. “How clumsy of me,” she mumbled, and then began to laugh.
Now thoroughly frightened, Charlotte crouched down, fighting back tears.
“Come now, you’re stronger than this,” she said softly. Indeed, Cordelia had always been a paragon of strength, a steadfast pillar of calm and composure in the face of any crisis.
The only reason she would crumble …
Charlotte’s breath suddenly stuck in her lungs, choking her as if it were heavy as lead.
“K-Kit …” whispered Cordelia.
No-no-no-no. It was both a prayer and a plea.
The crackling of paper as Cordelia fumbled in the pocket of her cloak seemed to finally turn her terror into a more focused resolve. “T-This message was delivered a short while ago …” She withdrew the folded note, holding it gingerly as if it was a snake about to bare its fangs.
Dread numbing her fingers, Charlotte grasped it and smoothed it open.
There were only several lines written in a mockingly elegant script.
If you wish to see your husband alive again rather than as a mangled corpse, you had better pray that Lord Wrexford will do exactly as he is ordered.
A second note will be delivered to Berkeley Square shortly with instructions. Follow them to the letter—
Or else.