Chapter 3
ARUNDEL HOUSE, GROSVENOR SQUARE.
Finally dry from the torrential icy rain, Vincent dismissed his butler and took a candle to his study, bypassing the sealed room that once belonged to his late brother.
He hadn’t gone inside for months now, and casting a curt look at the knob, he kept on. Not willing or able to bear the crushing weight of memories and pain, tonight was not the night to venture in either.
He wasn’t cold, just… numb.
The north-facing study of Arundel House greeted him with a crackling hearth and the familiar smells of leather and ink. He touched his candle to the waiting lamp, poured himself a whisky, and settled into his chair, drawing out a folio and setting it beside the ordered stack of papers.
This was the hour he reserved for the work very few knew of. The work that had consumed the better part of a decade and was the reason he slept so poorly.
There was a list of almost thirty men and women. That had slowly whittled to three of the most heinous, starting with the easiest mark to find, and at the end, the one most deplorable, who had architected the swindle that bled his father dry over a decade ago.
First, Vincent had needed to start with the men’s minions.
The three minions had been foot soldiers: two wealthy American brokers named Harlow and Harlowe who had funneled the money, and a shipwright called Barnaby who had built shell vessels that never left the drydock.
It had taken six years to track them, but though their records had yielded scraps—the scraps were enough to trace the chain upward.
Upward, to the fourth of the serpents: the Viscount Walcot, Albion Atwood. A dandy and a pink of fashion, whom Vincent monikered The Mouthpiece. Walcot had a gift of gab and had used his insidious talent to sweet-talk his father out of hundreds of thousands.
Walcot also spent most of his time at his tailor, trying his best to be the second Beau Brummel, attending balls with his wife, and promoting his phaeton business with a glass of champagne in hand and a sweet smile.
Vincent had infiltrated his home expecting to find records of the fraud. The records were gone. What he’d found instead was proof the man was a bigamist with a wife in Cornwall and two children whom he studiously ignored.
When those letters had been published in the Times, with the helpful note from the Phantom, the ton had tittered about it for weeks, forcing the man to divorce his current wife and run from town to his first one.
When the man’s abandoned house had mysteriously burned to the ground, no one had batted an eyelash.
It was the Phantom’s doing, of course—or so they’d claimed.
Vincent knew that it was the hand of Walcot’s scorned second wife, but he was happy to take the blame. From then on, tales of this Phantom eking vengeance from evildoers had started to trickle through the Upper Echelons.
The ton thought him an avenger of wrongs; they were only partly right. Vincent had no interest in righting every wrong in London, only the ones done unto his family.
“Either the man was piss poor at record keeping, or he knew his crimes would come to fore, so he destroyed them before the fire,” Vincent huffed under his breath.
Logically, he knew that was the smart thing to do—but it irked him to no end that true justice would never be served.
With a wicked slash, he crossed that man’s name off the list and moved over to the final two, the fifth and the sixth.
The sixth was Gibbs Custor, the reason for Vincent’s bruised eye this night and the architect of the whole rotten scheme.
Vincent had never laid eyes on the man, and precious few had; Custor operated from the shadows, insulated by wartime contracts, friends at Carlton House, and the very cronies whose names filled the five lines above his.
Strip those away first, and the man had nothing left to hide behind.
So, onto the fifth. Ballard, Earl Dallagh, an industrialist with a vice grip on the neck of the English burgeoning railroad system and steam engines.
After nine months of surveilling the man’s movements and confirming which of his several London properties held his private study, Vincent was going to get him next.
A brisk knock on the door had him turning a page. “Enter.”
The housekeeper, a woman in her late fifties, stepped inside and dipped her head respectfully. “Forgive the late hour, Your Grace. I wished to inform you that the last of the invitations for the ball have been sent out this morning.”
“I trust you have made the pertinent decisions, Mrs. Roan,” Vincent said while his eyes roamed over the schematics of the earl’s house. “You know I bear little patience for the peacockery of the ton.”
Tamping her mirth, Mrs. Roan replied, “I am well aware, Your Grace. Be at rest, I have made sure to encompass a good subsection of the ton, from widows to this season’s most sought out debutantes—”
Vincent eyed her precariously, wondering if her mention of the debutantes was a thinly veiled hint that he really ought to be considering marriage.
Deep down, Vincent knew that if his father were alive, he would have pushed him to find a wife and not use his energy to right decades-old wrongs and bring brazen perpetrators to long-awaited justice.
For once, father, you’re wrong.
“—I have also invited lords from the ducal tier to accomplished men of science whom I understand you appreciate.”
“And the Earl Dallagh?”
“Was the first on the list.”
“Good,” Vincent marked off a cross on the earl’s upstairs balcony where he could easily gain entrance. “When the night comes, please make my excuses for not hosting.”
“And what shall they be told, Your Grace?”
“That I am out of town on spur-of-the-moment business, or that I spontaneously sailed to New Holland to test my progress at Gentleman Jackson’s and spar with kangaroos,” Vincent drawled sardonically.
He crossed over another possible entrance, one that came from an unused attic. “Be free to use your imagination.”
“Noted, Your Grace,” Mrs. Roan accepted with a grin. “Before I settle in for the night, shall I send up anything, food or drink?”
“Cold cuts and fruit, please.”
“It shall be done, Your Grace. And do have a good night.”
Nodding absently, Vincent scoured the schematics again, tracking the route he would take to the man’s study.
This was an old Georgian house, and knowing that Ballard was an industrialist with engineering compatriots, he could bet his last farthing that there were renovations made since these schematics were drawn up.
Alas, it was a risk he would have to take.
A roll of thunder drew his attention from the yellowed paper in front of him to the window beyond. Instantly, his mind strayed to the young woman he’d rescued hours earlier, and he felt a strange spark inside his chest.
He remembered feeling a flare of pride at her boldness, resourcefulness, and fire.
When he had met her eyes outside her home, he’d seen a tiredness under her resolve, as if she too were fighting an invisible battle—like he was.
It was a tiny yet intense connection that had made him feel… not alone for a small while.
If that were the case, why had I not introduced myself?
“Good evening, Your Grace,” a young maid said at the doorway while holding a tray with a covered meal.
She was a ginger-haired girl, bran-faced with dimpled cheeks that hinted at a jolly disposition. He did not recall seeing her before. Perhaps Weston had hired new staff? “May I enter?”
“Please,” he gestured to his desk. “Thank you, Miss…”
“Lilian Guthrie, Your Grace,” she curtsied. “Is there anything else you would need from me?”
“No,” he responded, waving a pen. “You’re dismissed.”
“Good night, Your Grace,” the girl said.
Instead of reaching for the food, he pulled out an almanac and cross-referenced it with the date of his ball.
It was predicted to be a new moon, a night of thick darkness that he would use to his full advantage.
All he needed was to find proof that the man had swindled his father out of three hundred thousand pounds and used it to fund his own industrialist enterprise, reaping millions from an unkept promise of sharing profits.
Another rumble of thunder stole his attention momentarily from the page, and once again, he thought of his water sprite. How luminous her eyes had looked under her fiery hair, like the nymph Calypso rising from the depths.
Even in the dimness, he could see her lips were natural, sultry, coral pink, luscious and ripe, a cherry for the tasting…
An unexpected streak of arousal pumped through him. He dropped his pen and pressed the heel of his hand to his bruised eye with a groan. A woman he had exchanged all of two words with, and his body had apparently decided that was quite enough.
Shaking his head, he turned back to his plans and marked off two more possible ways to make a sudden exit, before sitting back with a heavy sigh. Turning to his plate, he speared a grape.
Who was she?
What was she doing out that late?
Her home in Bloomsbury Square hinted that she, or her family, were of means—yet that only made her appearance at midnight on that deserted street all the more baffling.
“Focus, man!” He steered his thoughts back to the task ahead. “These men need to pay for their crimes—” His eyes flew up to a portrait resting over the fireplace.
It showed him at five-and-ten, his younger brother Benjamin at thirteen—both dark-haired like their guileless father—while their mother sat in a plush chair, a genteel brunette swathed in delicate peach.
That month, a very dry April, had been one of Benjamin’s best months, and while he did look the picture of health in oils, the boy had still been as pale as a ghost. Less than five years later, he had passed from his lung ailment only because their father had lost his wealth to three scheming blackguards and could no longer afford the proper physicians.