Chapter 2
TWO
ANTHONY
Wide, brown eyes stared up at Anthony with a mixture of curiosity and wariness. These were the same eyes he had caught for the briefest of moments on his way into the village. The young woman’s brows were now arched, her soft, pink lips parted in surprise.
Upon entering the inn, he had noticed her fiddling with something beneath the table.
What had she been doing with her hands under the table?
Anthony’s jaw tightened at the unwelcome possibility that presented itself to him, and his gaze flitted to the reticule hanging over her wrist. A sagging, heavy reticule.
His gaze darted back to her, and the wary look in her eyes gave way to something more mulish.
“If you please, sir,” she said roughly, tugging her arms back and bringing to his awareness just how tightly he was holding them.
He released her, and his gaze slipped back to the reticule. Of course, it was possible it was nothing but a fan and a mirror weighing it down. A particularly heavy mirror. He could hardly ask her what it contained, though.
“Excuse me,” he said brusquely, pushing past her and to the table. The maid bid the young woman a hasty goodbye and followed him.
“I have a table near the window, sir,” she said. “The bench is more comfortable, and there is more—”
“I want this one,” he said, taking a seat. When the maid lingered, he looked up at her. “Refreshment, if you please.”
She nodded, then, after a brief hesitation, disappeared.
When he was satisfied no one was watching, he slid his hands under the table, feeling for the spot where Harris had told him he would conceal the diary. His fingers made contact with something, and he breathed out his relief.
It was short-lived.
He pulled what was decidedly a paper rather than a diary toward him and onto his lap, his chest tightening with misgiving.
He unfolded the paper and found himself looking at a painting. No, a drawing.
It was both, really. It reminded him of the caricatures that often appeared in the windows of London print shops, but this one was a bit less refined and more vibrant in color. It portrayed a woman surrounded by dogs and men. Mrs. Gattenby, if he was not mistaken.
He lowered his head until he could see under the table, then reached a hand toward the place he had expected to see the diary. But both his eyes and his hands told him precisely what he had been afraid of: there was nothing more there.
He swore under his breath and hurried up from his seat, going over to the window. His eyes searched for the young woman who had been here just before him. What had she been doing with her hands under the table? And what had been in that overly burdened reticule?
It was no use, though. The window was crowded with people staring at the sole piece of paper hanging from it—one very similar to the one Anthony held in his hand.
He slammed a fist against the wall in frustration, and a few people nearby startled. He stalked back toward the table, stopping the maid with his hand on her arm as she appeared in the large doorway with his refreshment on a tray.
“Who was the young woman sitting at that table before me?” he asked.
The maid hesitated, her gaze shifting to the paper in his hand. She swallowed and said nothing.
Anthony’s grip tightened as a sort of panic began to take hold. Without that diary, how could he save his brother? Fate couldn’t serve him such a trick—it wouldn’t, surely.
“Her name,” he said. “What is her name?”
“Is there a problem, Mr. Yorke?” Mr. Digby came up behind the maid, his mouth arranged in a smile and his tone attempting a lightness belied by the intent curiosity in his gaze.
Anthony’s jaw clenched. He despised Digby, and he would never have chosen to come to The Crown and Castle of his own volition.
It had once been his custom to break his journey here when he came to London, but the inn had recently garnered a reputation for attracting Society’s biggest gossips.
It was Harris who had chosen the inn, though, not Anthony.
Confound the man’s insistence on doing things in the most inconvenient and secretive way.
Digby’s eyes roamed, and Anthony shifted the folded paper out of sight. Why was everyone at this inn so blasted inquisitive? “I wish to know the name of the young woman sitting at that table when I arrived.”
“Ah, that would be Miss Mandeville, sir,” Digby replied, happy to be of help.
Mandeville. Anthony committed the name to memory.
“A frequent guest of yours?” Anthony needed more than just a name if he was to follow the path of his suspicions. If she had merely been passing through, he needed to know her destination.
Digby chuckled. “Not quite, sir. Her family lives just down the lane”—he gestured with a thrust of his chin, making the skin beneath it jiggle like a turkey’s neck—“at Bellevue House.”
The maid clenched her eyes shut and turned her head away. Why the chagrin? What did it matter to her if Anthony knew the young lady’s name or where she lived?
The whole thing smelled highly suspicious. What he wished to do was to stalk straight to the Mandeville house, but it would be terribly awkward if his suspicions were incorrect.
Perhaps Harris—the man Anthony had hired to help him clear his brother Silas’s name—had misinformed him of where to look, or even run out of time to place the diary where he had said he would.
Or perhaps Harris had put the caricature there instead of the diary by mistake.
Anthony would have no trouble believing something of the strange man.
He would need to verify things with Harris before taking any action against Miss Mandeville.
“Thank you, Digby,” Anthony said, walking around both the innkeeper and the maid.
“Will you not stay, sir?” Digby asked, scurrying after him.
“Not today,” Anthony said. Or ever, if he could help it. The last thing he needed was to catch the attention of those fueling the talk of the ton.
His errand required the utmost secrecy—his brother’s future depended upon it. And that diary was the key to it all.
Anthony brushed a petal from the shoulder of his tailcoat and glanced up at the magnolia tree currently offering him shade. The grass below was littered with its pink petals, and this was the third that had fallen on his person.
He pulled out his pocket watch and gritted his teeth at the sight of the time. He had intentionally set the meeting for the hour before Hyde Park was inundated with every member of the ton, all wishing to be seen now that London was filling with the beau-monde.
A rustling brought him whirling around in time to see Harris’s head emerging from the bushes.
“What the devil?” Anthony said as Harris motioned for him to approach.
The man wore a serviceable if somewhat threadbare brown coat and an equally well-used gray top hat. His gaze shifted warily around the surrounding area.
“For heaven’s sake,” Anthony said. “Come out of those plants, Harris.”
He shook his head, still eyeing the environs with mistrust. “Don’t like meeting in public. Told you that. Too many roving eyes.”
“And no wonder if you insist on acting like a dashed loose screw.” Anthony took hold of the man’s arm and pulled him from the bushes. He relied on Harris, but heaven help him, the man had a head full of as much conspiracy as common sense. “Where is it?”
“Where is what?”
“The diary, man,” Anthony said impatiently. “It was not at The Crown and Castle.”
Harris drew back, affronted. “It was. I saw it with my own eyes. Put it there with my own hands—under the round table in the corner. Perhaps you went to the wrong one.”
Anthony’s jaw clenched. “I assure you, I did nothing so dunderheaded.” He pulled something from the inner pocket of his coat. “Perhaps you put the wrong thing there, as this was the only thing under that table.”
Harris frowned and took the paper, unfolding it. He tilted his head as he surveyed the drawing until his eyes lit with recognition. His wide gaze shifted to Anthony’s. “How’d you get your hands on this?”
Anthony pulled it out of his grasp, his patience wearing thin. “I just told you that. It was under the table.”
Harris’s gaze fixed on the paper again. “That’s one of those caricatures, that is.”
“Your powers of deduction are astounding.”
Harris’s fingers reached slowly for the paper, his eyes suddenly hungry. “Could I have it, sir?”
Anthony shifted the paper out of reach. “You may not. I need it to track down that blasted diary. If you had simply handed it over in person as I asked you to do, we wouldn’t be in this predicament.
Instead, you insisted on a ridiculous and unnecessary game of hide and seek, all while my brother is forced to bide his time in France for a murder he did not commit. ”
Harris’s lips turned down at the sides. “I’ve used that hiding place a dozen times, sir. No one knows it but me.”
“You and the eleven other people you’ve left things for, I surmise, not to mention the person who left the caricature,” Anthony said dryly. “You could hardly have chosen a more well-frequented inn.”
“Sometimes the best hiding place”—he tapped his temple and smiled—“is right under people’s noses.”
“Evidently not in this case,” Anthony said.
But there was little use dwelling on the mistake.
The only thing it accomplished was to waste precious time.
It had been nearly five months since the fateful night Silas had been obliged to flee England, and the diary was the nearest Anthony had come to finding a way to exonerate his brother of blame—something that would not have been necessary if only Anthony had accompanied Silas to the meeting as he had promised to do.
“Do you know who is responsible for these caricatures?” Anthony asked.
If anyone knew, Harris would. He made it his business to snivel out every bit of useful—and useless—information that might put a shilling in his pocket.
Harris shook his head. “No one does.”