Charles noted Dalziel didn’t clarify whom he would be protecting, Amberly alone, or Penny, too. That, he understood, was left to him to define.
“What Fothergill won’t know is that I’ll be there as well.” Dalziel met Amberly’s eyes. “I’ll remain with you for the rest of today, just in case—no sense taking any unnecessary risks. We’ll leave tomorrow morning—I’ll travel down in your carriage. Easy enough to slip into the house after we arrive.”
Dalziel’s gaze grew harder, colder. “Fothergill knows Charles—he’ll be expecting to have a guard he needs to distract to get to you, and Charles will obviously be that person. Once Charles is decoyed away, Fothergill will come in—from all we’ve seen of him to date, he’ll be overconfident. The last thing he’ll expect is to walk into me.”
Dalziel’s lips lifted in a faint, cold smile. Penny quelled a shiver.
“That,” Dalziel said, glancing at them all, “is how we’ll catch him.”
“And stop him,” Charles said.
There’d been a degree of finality in Charles’s tone, echoed in Dalziel’s murmured affirmation, that seemed to set the seal on Fothergill’s fate.
Once again in Charles’s town carriage rocking steadily back to Bedford Square, Penny thought of Gimby, Mary Maggs, and Sid Garnut—remembered Fothergill’s expression when he’d been about to slit Nicholas’s throat—and couldn’t find any sorrow for Fothergill in her.
One point puzzled her. She stirred and glanced at Charles. “Dalziel—I’m surprised someone in his position would…how do you phrase it? Go into the field?”
Charles glanced at her. After a moment, he said, “I would have been more surprised if he’d left it in my hands alone.” He considered, then went on, “We’ve always spoken of Dalziel as if he simply sits behind his desk in Whitehall and directs people hither and yon. Recently, we’ve known that isn’t the case—in fact, it’s probably never been the case. Our view of him reflected what we knew, and that wasn’t the whole picture. Still isn’t the whole picture. We’ve always recognized him as one of us—he couldn’t be that without similar background, similar training, similar experience. In this instance…”
Charles paused, then glanced at her. “I told you whoever corners Fothergill has to be one of us.”
Penny nodded. “You or someone equally well trained.” She slipped her hand into his. “Like Dalziel.”
“Indeed.” Grasping her hand, Charles leaned his head back against the squabs. Of all those he knew who were “like him,” prepared to kill when their country demanded it, there was none other more “like him” than Dalziel.
They reached Lostwithiel House to discover Charles’s mother, sisters, and sisters-in-law all waiting to pounce. Not that his mother pounced; directed by Crewther to the drawing room, Charles ushered Penny in—his mother immediately saw them and held out her hand, compelling him to cross the room to her side. Clasping her hand, he bent and kissed her cheek.
Her gaze lingered on Penn
y, who had stopped to talk with Jacqueline and Lydia, who had squealed and pounced on her—the reason he’d made sure she preceded him into the room. Seated nearby, Annabelle and Helen were eagerly listening to Jacqueline’s inquisition and Penny’s replies.
Smiling, his mother looked up at him. “Business?”
Dragging his eyes from the scene, his mind from wondering how Penny was coping, he nodded. “We’ve just come from Amberly House.”
His mother’s eyes widened—the marquess was the titular head of Penny’s family. He rapidly clarified, “It’s the same business that took me away.” Pulling up a chair, he sat beside her. “Arbry was at Wallingham.”
He hesitated, then lowered his voice. “I haven’t yet told Elaine—we need to keep the whole quiet, at least for the moment, but…” Briefly he explained how the Selbornes had been involved in a long-running scheme providing incorrect information to the French, and how some French agent was now intent on exacting revenge.
“Good God!” His mother’s gaze went to Penny. “Penny will remain here, of course.”
His frustrated sigh had her glancing back at him. He felt her eyes searching his face, but kept his gaze on Penny. “I would, quite obviously, prefer she remain here, with you or with Elaine, but I doubt she’ll agree.”
A moment passed, then his mother merely said, “Hmm…I see.”
When he looked at her, she was studying Penny.
“Still,” she mused, “at your relative ages, it’s to be hoped you both know what you’re doing.”
He did. It didn’t make the doing—the adjusting—any easier.
“So.” His mother turned to him. “How long will you be in town?”
“Just tonight—and no, we won’t be attending any events. We’ll be leaving for Amberly Grange in the morning.”
He stood, intending to go back down the room and greet his sisters and sisters-in-law. The twinkle in his mother’s eye made him pause. “What?”
At his suspicious tone, she smiled—gloriously smug. “I’m afraid you won’t be able to hide away here, not tonight.”