‘I set my valet the task of finding me the man I needed. He heard rumours and spoke to the Duke of Calderbrook’s man Flynn and then I had a word with a number of people who were at a certain house party. You made a very definite impression in a most discreet manner, Mr Hunt.’
Michael Flynn was Cal’s valet, their companion on their travels and a very good friend to both of them. He would have vouched for Jared even if Jared had been putting himself forward as Archbishop of Canterbury. But as for anyone else – those must have been the male guests at the house party where Cal almost lost his life and the mystery of the near-fatal illnesses that had sent him abroad as a young man was finally solved. It was troubling that guests had realised there was a situation to be dealt with. Cal’s injuries and the death of another house guest had been ascribed to accidental causes and at the time no-one had shown any sign of believing otherwise.
‘Indeed?’
‘Indeed. Nobody was quite sure what was going on, but something was and they described you as the deus ex machina who ensured that things stayed like that – ambiguous. From the very little Tonkin could glean from Flynn I was more inclined to ask whether you had Italian blood – there was a distinct hint of stilettos behind the arras about the matter.’
Jared kept his expression bland, despite the urge to snort with laughter at being described as the god in the machine. ‘Knives and an arras, my lord? That is as much Hamlet as Machiavelli. No-one was knifed, you have my assurance.’ Poisoned and shot, yes. Knifed, no.
‘I will not ask for details and I know I would get short shrift if did, which is as it should be.’ He shot Jared a sharp glance from beneath unruly eyebrows several shades darker than his hair. ‘Tonkin summed you up as a dangerous man to be on the wrong side of, absolutely loyal and worryingly intelligent. I have great need of a man like that, Mr Hunt, even if you take extreme pains to hide your past.’
‘My past?’ Jared lifted one eyebrow. Absolute stillness was as betraying as fidgeting. ‘It is an open book. I was apprenticed in arms to Monsieur Jacques Favel, then, on his recommendation, secured a position as swordmaster and companion to the young Viscount Castledale, later Duke of Calderbrook. I spent almost seven years abroad with him on his travels and have, within the year, returned with him to England.’
He crossed his legs. ‘His Grace no longer requires a travelling companion and I am therefore free to set up my own salle d’armes.’
‘And before your apprenticeship?’
‘I hardly think my childhood is relevant, my lord. It was not spent in prison, in a slum or engaged in felony, you have my word.’
‘Then why the secrecy?’
Persistent old bugger, aren’t you? Jared considered ending the interview there and then. He could not afford rumours to spread that he was sensitive about his origins, that there was intriguing tale to be told. ‘Because it is my business, my lord.’ He smiled, taking care that the warmth reached his eyes. ‘A certain mystery is part of my persona, my calling card, if you will. If you chose to employ me I will keep your secrets as close as my own. But if my privacy is a stumbling block for you, then I will remove myself forthwith.’
He waited. One heartbeat, two… Ah well, I will just have to hope the old man is not a gossip. He placed his hands on the arms of the chair and prepared to stand.
‘Fair enough.’ The Viscount waved him back into the seat. ‘Either I trust you, or I do not and I find that I do.’ He picked up a folded paper from the table by his chair and handed it to Jared. ‘That is what I am prepared to pay you, in addition to your expenses.’
Jared unfolded it and found himself holding a bank draft. An exceedingly large bank draft. He lifted his gaze to meet that of the old man steadily watching him across the few feet between them. ‘And what would I have to do to earn this?’ It seemed to be about half the going rate for assassinating a royal duke or robbing the Bank of England.
‘Someone is attempting to kill my wife. Find them and stop them by whatever means necessary.’
Chapter Two
Attempted murder. That explained the size of the draft – he was to employ fair means or foul, then. And presumably dispose of the bodies, if any. ‘And what makes you think someone is attempting the life of Lady Northam?’ Jared asked.
‘Other than the shot through the open window of her carriage that missed her by an inch, the handrail almost sawn through on the stairs to the tower room that is a favourite retreat of hers, the adder in her sewing basket and the fact that someone feagued her horse with half a root of ginger while she was visiting a tenant?’ Northam enquired.
Feaguing a horse – stuffing a small piece of ginger into its rectum to literally ginger-up a sluggish or listless animal – was an old horse dealers’ trick, sometimes used on the racecourse. A large quantity used on a placid riding hack with an unsuspecting, elderly, rider could be lethally dangerous.
‘It would appear that Lady Northam has had a number of lucky escapes if she has survived that series of attacks. Do you suspect anyone of this?’
‘They’d be dead if I did,’ the older man growled, his gnarled knuckles whitening as they clenched on the arms of the chair.
‘Who might have a motive? Is your family able to offer any suggestions? I have to admit to ignorance about your relatives, my lord. I have been out of the country for too long.’ If someone was attempting to murder the Viscount, then there was a ready-made motive – a title and, judging by the house and that bank draft, no shortage of money to inherit. But an old lady? Why not wait for nature to take its course?
‘My sons died in infancy,’ Northam said tightly. ‘I have two daughters, one married, one widowed. Susan is the wife of Sir Hugh Grantford, baronet, and Lucinda, the widow of Viscount Knotley. Susan has a son and two daughters and Lucinda also has a son, now Viscount Knotley, and one daughter.’
‘Two grandsons but both of them through the female line.’ Jared took out a small notebook and jotted down the names. ‘Who then is your heir, my lord?’
‘My younger brother Claud, who is ailing badly, I fear, and after him, his son Theo. Claud’s first wife gave him no children and he remarried in his late forties. Theo is only twenty three, the same age as my younger grandchildren and still single.’ He hesitated for a moment and Jared looked up, but all Lord Northam said was, ‘I have no other close relatives, although my grandfather had a brother.’
Jared made a pencil mark against Theo Quenten’s name. There was something there to be followed up. ‘And beyond those two – the ailing brother and the young, unmarried nephew? Your great uncle’s line, for example.’
‘I never knew my great uncle because there was some major family falling-out which is such old history that I know none of the causes. His grandson Charles – my second cousin, I suppose – was my contemporary, but he is dead. I think I must have met him perhaps twice in my entire life, both times at funerals. We were civil enough, but the two lines have grown so far apart he might as well have been a complete stranger.
‘Oddly, it was his own funeral that was the cause of my meeting Guinnie. She is my second wife, you understand. I had attended the funeral to pay my respects and his son Julian sold me one of their houses – he seemed devilish hard up, to be honest and I felt it my duty to help out. I decided to call in on the place on my way home, see whether I’d bought a pig in a poke or not. Guinnie was at the Red Griffin, the inn in the village.’ He broke off and smiled reminiscently. ‘Strange how fate works, is it not? Anyway, to go back to those distant cousins, there’s just Julian, who married a dull woman I did not take to, although no-one is at their best over the funeral meats. They have children I believe.’
Setting aside the distant cousins, this was uncomfortably close to the situation Cal had found himself in when his life was under threat, with his heirs his uncle and his cousin, both with a very good motive to murder him. But this could not be about the title. If it was, then Northam himself would be the target, not his wife.