Chapter Twenty-Seven
THE OLDER MAN, tallish, but lean of build and with the beginnings of a stoop, had strolled past the discreet entrance to Squire’s three times in the space of half an hour. Sidney first noticed him yesterday, leaning against an oak in the square opposite.
“Was here this morning, too, doing the same thing. Don’t look like trouble, but then trouble never does until it’s cosied up in your best chair by the fire, sipping your favourite brandy, and trying to bamboozle one of our young nobs out of ten guineas. Shall I invite him in, ask him his business?”
“Why not,” Mickey replied, returning to his dull accounting. Seated at his desk in Tommy’s study, he worked alone. Tommy was somewhere on the floor below in his private rooms, entertaining Ashington and inadvertently fuelling Mickey’s sense of aloneness even more.
His gaze drifted beyond the window to the trees in the square, now bearing blossom. Sidney’s interruption should at least have stirred something—anything—within him. But there was nothing, only the usual vague indifference, still hanging around him since Valentin left. “Send him in here.”
Sidney rarely needed to strongarm people. Once he’d flexed his muscles at them, they tended to come willingly. This man was no exception. As Sidney suggested he take a seat—the unspoken threat apparent if he didn’t—Mickey made a point of disinterestedly not lifting his gaze from his accounts.
“There are no laws forbidding members of the public from loitering outside this establishment, sir,” Mickey observed, crossing a line through an item in red ink. “But it tends to make our Sidney here nervous.”
“I’m not looking for trouble, Mr Maurice,” answered the man placidly.
Mickey couldn’t place his pleasant accent. Not town—west of town, perhaps, or down near the coast.
“No?” He crossed a line through another item, annotating the margin with a date.
“No,” the stranger repeated. “I’m here to find a man who goes by the name of London. Important fella here at this highfalutin club; rubs shoulders with the bigwigs. By all accounts, he’s a good-looking devil, too, though he doesn’t know it.”
London. Mickey’s hand hovered over the inkwell as the page in front of him twisted and blurred at the edges.
His quill, still between his ink-stained finger and thumb, felt heavier than it had a second ago.
Slippery too. Carefully, he placed it on the desk, and only then did he trust himself to properly look up—into a pair of moss-green eyes, cloudier than the pair filling his restless dreams, but a remarkable moss-green, nonetheless.
The visitor nodded at him. “I’ve been watching the coming and goings, and I reckon you fit the bill, Mr Maurice.”
A rush of images spilled into Mickey’s consciousness, images he’d tried to hold at bay. The older man wasn’t as handsome as Valentin, his nose too large for his face, his chin weaker. He lacked the Frenchman’s poise. But there was no mistaking who he was.
“Sidney, could you leave us for a few minutes?” The words tumbled from him, too sharp, unformed, causing Sidney to hesitate.
“It’s quite all right, Sidney. Mr Roberts is known to me.”
*
PACING, MICKEY DISCOVERED, helped his equilibrium. No wonder the duke employed it so often. “Your son is…is well?”
“Blooming, sir.” Roberts gave a satisfied smile, seeming more at ease without Sidney at his back. “Always done right by his old pa, that’s for sure. His business here in town brought him a tidy sum. Worth the journey.”
“Do…do you understand the nature of your son’s business, Mr Roberts?”
“Trading,” he said. “On behalf of gentlemen needing a few bob in a hurry; they use Val to sell things on, and he takes a cut.”
He certainly does. Mickey recalled the story of Bonaparte’s Devil’s Diamonds. Cut every single one of them out of the tiara, if the tale were true.
“Only quite small items of value,” Roberts continued. “Paintings, bits of jewellery, and the like. But they soon add up.” His voice was full of admiration. “That’s my understanding. He was always clever.”
Roberts dug a hand in his coat pocket and produced a small parcel tied with brown paper and twine. “He asked me to give you a little something.” Roberts hesitated before placing it on Mickey’s desk. “You are London, sir, aren’t you?”
Yes, if London could be defined by its weather—fogbound, melancholic mornings cut through with memories of unexpected sunshine.
Yes, if London was clothed in layers of contradictions—the grimy stews rubbing shoulders with Mayfair, dreams of adventure threading through its heart.
And yes, if London was nothing but a sharp edge of pride barely holding itself together.
“I am London,” Mickey said around the lump in his throat. He eyed the small package, wondering what on earth could be inside. Hoping he didn’t sound too desperate, he added, “Did your son have a message for me?”
“Only that he is safe at his home in Verdille and that his offer of paying him a visit still stands.” Roberts shook his head slightly, bemused.
“Funny old place. Nothing to do there but till the fields and chop firewood. And yet my boy loves it, for some reason. And the Frenchies—he loves them, too, God bless him.”
“I believe he does,” Mickey agreed politely, hoping Roberts didn’t catch the crack in his voice. “And this place…Verdille…” He threw out the name carelessly, as if it wasn’t an incantation on his lips each night and morning. “’Tis difficult to find?”
Roberts chuckled. “I’d say so. Two days ride from the west coast, three days from the south, and a life away from the rush of Paris. Flat as a man’s chest too. Fields and fields and nothing else. No shade from the heat of the sun. The nearest market is over half a day north.”
Mickey almost smiled. Roberts described an approximation of heaven.
“You’ve a decent map of the place, anyhow, according to our Val. Not as vague as most, he says.”
For a few seconds, Mickey was perplexed before a jolt of clarity coursed through his veins.
You should take a look at that book sometime.
Some of those old maps are truly fascinating.
He exhaled, the lump in his throat swelling as yet another obstacle fell by the wayside.
If only he could muster the courage to ask Tommy’s permission to leave, Verdille and Valentin were waiting for him to claim them.
He sat down, rearranging the papers on his desk until he was himself again.
“You have plans, Mr Roberts, whilst visiting England?”
Roberts chuckled. “Oh, I’m not visiting, sir. I’m staying. I’ve been in town a week. Catching the stage to Alton tomorrow. I have family there, cousins and a sister I haven’t seen for nigh on three decades.”
Alton. A small Hampshire market town not far from Ashington’s estate. The duke spoke of the place often. “And then what are your plans?”
Roberts shrugged. “Don’t know for sure. I’ve plenty enough coin to take lodgings. I’ll stay around Alton though. It’s home to me. I won’t want for much.”
Mickey checked his fob, then pushed back his chair.
“There is someone here who would very much like to meet you, Mr Roberts, if you can spare another five minutes. First impressions can be a little overawing; the gentleman would be the first to admit he’s not the most fluid of conversationalists.
But persevere, and I think you may have much to talk about.
I believe you were once in the employ of his grandfather. ”