Tristan met her gaze, then looked at the landlady. “Did he have any visitors?”
“No, and that was strange. Usually, young gentlemen like that, I have to have a strong word about visitors, if you take my meaning.”
Leonora smiled weakly. He drew her back. “Thank you for your help, ma’am.”
“Aye, well, I hope you catch up with him and he can help you.”
They stepped back off the tiny front porch; the landlady started to close the door, then stopped.
“Wait a minute—I just remembered.” She nodded at Tristan. “He did have a visitor, once, but he didn’t come in. Stood on the pavement just like you’re doing and waited until Mr. Mountford came out to join him.”
“What did this visitor look like? Did you get a name?”
“He didn’t give one, but I remember thinking as I went up to fetch Mr. Mountford that I wouldn’t need one. I just told him the gentleman was foreign, and sure enough, he knew who it was.”
“Foreign?”
“Aye. He had an accent you couldn’t miss. One of those that sounds like they’re growling at you.”
Tristan stilled. “What did he look like?”
She frowned, shrugged. “Just like any spic-and-span gentleman. Very neat he was—I do remember that.”
“How did he stand?”
The landlady’s face eased. “Now that’s something I can tell you—he stood like he had a poker strapped to him. He was that stiff, I thought as how he’d break if he bowed.”
Tristan smiled charmingly. “Thank you. You’ve been a great help.”
The landlady turned a soft shade of pink. She bobbed a curtsy. “Thank you, sir.” After an instant, she shifted her gaze to Leonora. “I wish you good luck, ma’am.”
Leonora inclined her head graciously and allowed Trentham to steer her away. She half wished she’d asked the landlady what she was wishing her good luck with—finding Mountford, or keeping Trentham to his supposed wedding vows?
The man was a menace with that lethal smile.
She glanced up at him, then tucked the t
hought away along with the rest the day had brought. Better not to dwell on them while he was beside her.
He was pacing along, his expression impassive.
“What do you make of Mountford’s visitor?”
Tristan glanced at her. “Make?”
Her eyes narrowed, her lips thinned; the look she bent on him told him she was more than seven. “What nationality do you think he is? You clearly have some idea.”
The woman was annoyingly acute. Still, there was no harm in telling her. “German, Austrian, or Prussian. That peculiarly stiff stance plus the diction suggests one of the three.”
She frowned, but said no more. He hailed a hackney and helped her in. They were bowling back to Belgravia when she asked, “Do you think the foreign gentleman could be behind the burglaries?” When he didn’t immediately answer, she went on, “What possible thing could attract a German, Austrian, or Prussian to Number 14 Montrose Place?”
“That,” he admitted, his voice low, “is something I’d dearly like to know.”
She glanced sharply at him, but when he volunteered nothing more, she surprised him by looking ahead and keeping her counsel.
He handed her down outside Number 14; she waited while he paid the jarvey, then linked her arm in his as they turned to the gate. She kept her gaze down as he swung it open, and they passed through.
“We’re giving a small dinner party tonight—just a few of Humphrey’s and Jeremy’s friends.” She glanced briefly up at him, faint color in her cheeks. “I wondered if you would care to join us? It would give you a chance to form an opinion of the sort of secrets Humphrey or Jeremy might have stumbled upon.”