“Thank you for agreeing to meet with me.”
“Please, be seated.” Waiting for Herrick to settle on a carved mahogany chair with gilded serpents on the back, Tipova toyed with a large diamond stickpin tucked in the folds of his cravat. “I fear my besetting sin has always been my curiosity. My mother swore it would be my downfall.”
“And your father?”
The man did not so much as blink at Herrick’s smooth thrust. “My father quite wisely suggested that I be drowned at birth.”
“But he was willing to pay for your education?” Herrick countered. No Russian serf, no matter how intelligent, was capable of speaking such fluent French without a tutor.
“Willing, no.” A sardonic glint entered the golden eyes. “My mother, however, was a formidable lady who harbored great ambition for her son.”
“She must be quite proud.”
“She is dead.”
“Ah.” Impossible to know if he grieved beneath that smooth charm. Herrick sensed that few people were ever allowed to see the true Dimitri Tipova. “My sympathies.”
“Brandy?” Moving an ebony sideboard, Tipova waved a slender hand. “Or do you prefer tea?”
“Brandy.”
Pouring two glasses of the amber spirit, Tipova moved to press one into Herrick’s hand before taking his own seat on the nearby settee. Lifting his glass, he flashed Herrick a mocking smile.
“A votre santé!”
Herrick lifted his glass. “To your health.”
They sipped the perfectly aged brandy, then, setting aside his glass, Tipova stretched out his legs and crossed them at the ankles.
“Now perhaps you will be good enough to tell me what brings you to my modest corner of the empire?”
“It is my belief that we possess a common enemy.”
“Actually, I should say we
possess any number of common enemies.”
Herrick narrowed his gaze, instantly intrigued by the notion of just how valuable an agent among the underworld could prove to be.
“Indeed?”
Tipova waved a slender hand, clearly satisfied by having planted his seed in Herrick’s mind.
“A conversation for another day.”
“Very well,” Herrick graciously conceded, already determined this would not be his last visit with the astonishing criminal.
“Does this common enemy have a name?”
“Sir Charles Richards.”
For the first time, Tipova appeared disconcerted. Then, tilting back his head, he laughed with rich enjoyment.
“I knew you would not disappoint me, Gerhardt.”
“You know him?”
Pulling a thin cheroot from his pocket, Tipova lit it from a candle set on the jade inlaid table.