Chapter 28 #2
“Are you sure—” A swift glare by Vincent sealed the butler’s consternation. “It will be ready, sir,” Weston bowed his head.
Once the door closed, Vincent scribbled a quick letter to Keaton, requesting him to use his clerical connections to find a suitable teacher for James. As a footnote, he added one amendment: Remember Richard Rochester.
Keaton would likely get the inference. Rochester, a fellow student, had struggled at Eton, stumbling through letters while cruel boys called him dullard and worse—until the school employed a tutor familiar with such difficulties.
Now Rochester kept books for a thriving mercantile house and likely knew his sums better than half the peacocks in Parliament.
By the supper hour, Vincent shot a look at the clock and wondered if he should share supper with Emma—but decided against it.
Things were already strained; how much worse would they get over a meal?
Besides, what would they converse over? The blasted weather in Spain where she’d take her next honeymoon?
No, it was better to leave her to her thoughts and give him time and space to prepare for infiltrating Weaver’s temporary domicile.
He sharpened his knives, checked the pistol, and loaded extra shots into the satchel he’d fashioned to tie around his outer thigh for quick reach.
Lockpicks followed, then a slender strip of metal, then a small dagger slid into the sheath at his back for the moment when every better plan had gone to the devil.
By a quarter to midnight, he hovered at the door leading to Emma’s rooms.
For one foolish second, his hand nearly lifted.
Instead, Vincent threw up the hood of his cloak, dragged the devil mask down over his face, and headed out.
Whatever wretched, unrequited… thing he felt for Emma could wait.
Justice for his father and brother could not.
At midnight, moonlight lay pale over the mist, turning the affluent little neighbourhood into something spectral.
By the rear gates, Vincent studied the house Weaver had been gifted for his years of loyal villainy and nearly smiled. For a man who had served Gibbs Custor, the little ferret had chosen the least defensible property in Essex.
A twisting, tree-lined drive hid the house from the road, the neighbouring homes sat too far off to be useful, and a thick wood crowded the back grounds close enough to swallow the presence of a small army.
“For once, I can be glad dandies care more for prospect than security,” Vincent muttered to himself.
Dismounting, he patted Colossus’ neck and left the black horse tucked beneath the trees, where coat and creature melted neatly into the dark. Then he crouched and made for the wall surrounding the rear grounds.
Scaling it easily, Vincent landed soundlessly on the other side.
The back windows were dark, suggesting the household slept. He trusted that about as much as he trusted a politician with a charity purse.
Keeping low, he crossed the elaborate garden. It was quiet, secluded, and overfull with hedges, urns, statues, and enough decorative nonsense to fund an orphanage for a decade.
Hooking his foot on the stone lip of a low bow window, broad enough to serve as a door for any thief with ambition, he hauled himself upward.
A minute later, he perched on a second-storey ledge and drew out the slender strip of metal fashioned for window sashes; the lock gave him some trouble, but he got it open soon enough.
Sliding the pane up, he slipped through the casement and dropped onto the carpet with a light thump.
His eyes flicked from left to right as he edged forward, keeping his awareness high, and the moment a footman stepped out of the shadows, he pounced on him from behind in a severe chokehold.
“D-Devil… what do you want?” the stunted man breathed, his voice pitching into a whine.
“For you to sleep.”
Without another word, Vincent struck him flat at the back of the head, and he crumpled to the carpet like a dropped sack. Crouching, he searched his pockets, found no pistol, no blade, nothing more threatening than a snuffbox, then dragged him into the nearest linen closet.
If Weaver kept to habit, he would be in his study. Men like him preferred to end their nights pretending to be gentlemen: a fire burning, sherry poured, accounts locked away, and the doors between themselves and consequence firmly sealed.
So it was little surprise when Vincent found him there.
The former steward stood at a cabinet with a Cognac decanter in hand, already dressed for bed in a fine ruby banyan of figured silk. Custor had recompensed him well, then.
“Weaver,” he growled.
The bounder spun so sharply that the decanter slipped from his hand and shattered near the hearth. For one stunned second, he only gaped at the devil mask. Then he lurched for the desk, yanked open a drawer, and fumbled out a knife.
“No,” he rasped, staggering back against the cabinet. “N-no, I know what this is. I paid Shelby last month. Ask him—I paid!”
Interesting.
Vincent stepped inside and shut the door behind him. “You think I came from Shelby?”
“I don’t know who sent you.” Weaver’s eyes darted to the desk, then to the bellpull, then back to Vincent’s mask. “Whatever they promised, I can double it.”
“How generous.”
“I mean it! There is coin in the lower drawer. Look! Banknotes. In the hundreds! Take it and go!”
“Your instinct for enticement is impressive,” Vincent muttered, crossing the carpet.
“S-stay away from me!” Weaver blurted, face gone chalk white. “I’ll gut you!”
“You? Gut me?” Vincent harrumphed as he crept closer still. “You sit on your arse all day and drink all night. You look as though a stiff wind could put you in the churchyard, you coxcomb.”
Three steps from him now, Weaver lunged.
Vincent caught his wrist smoothly, twisted, and sent the knife clattering across the Persian rug. One kick slid it nearly into the fire. Before the blackguard could draw breath to scream, Vincent wrenched his arm behind his back and drove him chest-first into the desk.
Gasping in pain, Weaver’s breath hissed out of his gut. “What do you want? Gold? I-I can give you gold too—I have lots!”
“Custor,” Vincent growled, disgusted by the man’s instant scrambles to bribery. “You carried his letters and bought his silence. What I want is where he is.”
“What? W-who? I don’t know what you—”
Vincent seized a fistful of his thinning hair and yanked his head back. “Don’t insult me by lying,” he snarled in his ear. “You were Custor’s steward for decades. Men like him do not keep pets unless they’re useful.”
A wet, frightened whimper escaped Weaver.
His fingers clawed uselessly at the polished desk, scattering papers.
“Fine, fine!” he cried in pain. “Y-yes, I worked for him. Once, long ago. As a steward—that is all! I kept books. Half the bloody men in England kept rotten books during the war! You can’t seriously expect me to remember every venture, every name, every puffed-up lord who thought himself clever enough to double his fortune—”
“Boreas and Co,” Vincent interrupted.
The struggling ceased.
There. Beneath the panic—recognition.
Vincent pressed him harder into the desk, feeling the old fury rise like a tide in his blood. “The shipping fraud. The shell vessels. The false contracts. The old Duke of Highminster bled dry while Custor and his partners fattened themselves on promises that never saw water.”
Weaver swallowed against the wood. “That… was Ballard’s scheme.”
“You expect me to believe Custor let another man touch his money without keeping a hand in the purse?”
“I expect you to understand that men like Custor don’t leave fingerprints.
” Weaver’s voice turned thin, almost bitter.
“He had everyone convinced it was their idea. Ballard wanted innovation. Walcot wanted influence. Highminster wanted ships. Custor gave each man the words he needed to hear and let their own greed—or trust—do the rest. Highminster was the only one left holding the empty bag.”
Vincent’s grip tightened at the words empty bag. As if that’s all his father’s suicide and brother’s ill-timed death amounted to in this bastard’s eyes.
“Where are the records?” he muttered.
“I burned mine years ago.”
Vincent twisted the cur’s arm higher until his knees buckled. “Try again.”
He shrieked, knees knocking the desk. “I burned them! Christ above, I burned them! The ledgers, the receipts, I burned them all. It was so long ago, we all had to! C-Custor started offing men after the war turned his fortune from borrowed coin to gold by the cartload. I was hardly going to keep a noose in my own drawer!”
Vincent held him there a moment longer, listening for the hitch of a lie. There was panic. Sweat. Coppery Cognac on his breath. But no clever pause and no little flutter of invention.
Damnation.
Releasing only a fraction of pressure, Vincent asked, “Where is Custor?”
Weaver gave a broken laugh that was punished with another painful wheeze. “No one knows where Custor is! He is a ghost with a banker. Even I haven’t seen him in years.”
“You were his steward.”
“I was his steward when Prinny could still see his own shoes.” Weaver turned his cheek against the desk, trying to find air. “I haven’t seen him since. No one sees him unless he wants to be seen. The man is a ghost.”
“Ghosts don’t own half the City.”
Weaver dragged in a ragged breath. “Christ above… Do you—do you happen to know what Chinese year it is?”
The question was so absurd, Vincent almost struck him again.
“What?”
“The Chinese year,” Weaver said quickly, voice cracking. “For God’s sake, I am answering you man! What is it?”
“The Rooster,” Vincent answered, though he had no earthly notion where the fool was leading him.
Weaver sagged a little, sweat shining along his temple.
“Then he would go south or east for summer. Perhaps both. He had twelve houses for fair weather alone, one for each creature in that blasted calendar. Rooster meant pride—he liked the joke of it. Houses with terraces, aviaries, stupid gilded weathercocks, all of it coded so only the household knew which trunks went where.”
Vincent stared down at him.
Twelve summer houses. Twelve. On rotation…
Obscene didn’t begin to touch it.
“Which houses?” he muttered.
“I don’t have them in my head!” Weaver pleaded, panic rising again as Vincent’s silence sharpened. “I swear it! There was a list. Kept in the old household book. I can get it mailed to me and forward it to you. It’s your best bet—but only if you keep me alive!”
Unfortunately, the blackguard was right. Vincent had no records, no address, no sighting, and no living man closer to Custor than the sweating wretch bent over the desk. If a mailed list was the only door left open, then he needed to use it…
“You have a week,” Vincent warned. “I’ll send someone to get it from you. If the list is not there, I come back. If you bolt, I come back. If Custor somehow hears that a devil in a mask is sniffing at his summer houses—I. Come. Back.”
Weaver’s breath juddered through his teeth. “And then…?”
Vincent released him and stepped away from the desk.
“Then I stop asking.”