Desire (Notorious 3)

Lucian frowned. “One of our clerks might have accomplished it,” he said slowly. “Who wrote out the copy of the schedule?”

“None of the clerks, my lord. On your orders, I myself copied the original, but I had not yet delivered it to the bank. Both schedules are locked in my desk.”

“Locks can be picked, Philip. Which clerk usually performs such tasks?”

“Normally Jenkins,” Philip murmured, clearly dismayed.

“So he would have known the plans for the gold shipments that were stolen earlier this year? Before we took the responsibility from him?”

“It would seem so.”

Lucian turned abruptly on his heel.

“Where are you going, my lord?” Philip called after him.

“To hunt down our traitor.”

Evening had fallen by the time they researched an address and located the flat of Mr. Charles Jenkins, a senior clerk employed in the intelligence section of the Foreign Office. Lucian planned to withhold judgment until he could conduct an interrogation, but any doubts about the clerk’s complicity were dispelled the instant the door was opened; Jenkins took one look at his callers and bolted.

He reached a window and managed to raise the sash partway before Lucian caught him. Spinning the man around, Lucian threw him up against the wall and took hard hold of his cravat.

“Did no one ever tell you it is bad form to turn your back on visitors?” Lucian queried, his silken tone edged with steel.

Jenkins’s face contorted with fear as he panted out a question. “What… do you want, my lord?”

“I believe you have something to confess.”

“Confess? I don’t… know what… you mean-”

His grip tightening, Lucian twisted the cravat. Jenkins clawed at his throat but was no more forthcoming.

“Who paid you to forge the letter?” Lucian demanded, losing patience.

“What… letter?”

Enraged by the clerk’s brazen equivocation, Lucian hauled the man back to the window and shoved his head through the opening, giving him a good look at the dark cobblestone alley three floors below. “You’ll find it a long way down.”

Jenkins made a mewling sound.

“Tell me who hired you.”

“I can’t! He will kill me…”

“What do you think I intend to do to you?”

When the clerk only whimpered and shook his head, Lucian lifted him by the belt and shoved; his torso went through, then his hips. Lucian stopped shoving at midthigh, holding his victim solely by one ankle.

Jenkins screamed in terror as he found himself dangling over the precipice. “All right! I will tell you what I know!”

Lucian waited another moment before pulling the terrified clerk back inside. Jenkins sank to a trembling heap on the floor, holding his throat and eyeing his assaulter with dread.

“I advise you to keep to the truth,” Lucian said after a moment, when his rage was better under control. “You’ll be hanged for treason unless I can be persuaded to show leniency.”

The clerk visibly swallowed and nodded his head.

“Was it you who divulged the schedules of gold shipments months ago?”

“Y-yes, my l