A Fine Passion (Bastion Club 4)

Watching Teddy, Jack saw the resemblance to Anthony manifest more clearly; a determined light filled Teddy’s eyes.

“I’ll watch Humphries and see what I can learn. Of course, he knows my relationship to James, so I’ll have to be discreet.” Teddy met Clarice’s eyes and grinned. “He ordered me not to speak to James of the allegations, but I’d already sent Anthony off by then.”

“Did you tell Humphries that?” Jack asked.

“No, but…” Teddy grimaced. “The porters report to Humphries, and they knew I’d sent for Anthony and that he’d come and we’d spoken.”

Jack studied Teddy for a long moment, then said, his tone making the words an order, “Don’t follow Humphries out of these grounds. Not in any circumstances. What you can do is try every avenue possible to learn the identity of Humphries’ informer. Cultivate the porters, see what they know. Ask whoever cleans Humphries’ rooms if they’ve seen a note with a name or address. Does he ever ride out, or only walk? Anything that might give us some idea of this informer and where he can be found.”

Teddy nodded. “I’ll do that.” He looked at Clarice. “How’s James taking this?”

Clarice assured him that, in typical James fashion, James was somewhat less exercised than they were.

Teddy grinned. “He always excelled at ignoring what he didn’t want to concern himself with.”

Parting from Teddy, they went out of the gates, then turned toward Lambeth Bridge to find a hackney.

Eyes down, frowning, Clarice paced beside Jack. “Why did you warn Teddy not to follow Humphries outside the grounds?”

“Because we’ve already had one Altwood with a close to broken head.” Jack glanced around. The area surrounding the palace and its gardens was well-to-do, genteel, and stultifyingly neat, but just blocks away in multiple directions lay stews and squalid tenements where not even clerics would be safe. “I don’t want another one, and I don’t even want to think about what might occur if Teddy meets your almost-a-gentleman with a round face, and you and I aren’t there to scare him off.”

“Ah.” Clarice lifted her head; her lips set in a determined line. “In that case, I suggest you and I repair to the Benedict and over luncheon sort out what we need to do to disprove these allegations.”

A hackney came clattering over the bridge; Jack waved it down, then with a flourishing bow, waved Clarice into it. “Your charger awaits. Lead on.”

The look she threw him as she entered the carriage was elementally superior. “Are you sure there’s not some deeper problem with your head?”

Jack laughed and followed her.

Chapter 13

The following morning, Clarice sat at the little table before the window in her suite, sipped her tea, crunched her toast, and considered calling on her brother.

She really should call on her modiste. If she was to go out among the ton at the height of the Season, she would need at least one or two new gowns.

Glancing at the mantelpiece clock, she confirmed it was close to ten o’clock. She’d risen late, long after Jack had left her in a sated tangle of limbs and sheets at sometime close to dawn.

Yesterday, they’d returned from their audience with the bishop and had immediately set to work, nibbling on luncheon dishes while they correlated the details of the three meetings cited in the allegations with James’s lists of journeys and interviews. Their first setback had occurred when they’d discovered that the dates of the three incidents did indeed align with three visits James had made to the capital, three visits during which he’d interviewed various soldiers and commanders.

Her heart had temporarily sunk, but Jack, reading her expression, had remarked that it would have been more surprising if disproving the allegations had indeed been that easy.

She’d acerbically replied that she would have been quite happy to be so surprised.

With the meetings established as possible, they’d turned their attention to the people involved, both the witnesses and those James had interviewed. There seemed little correlation between those interviewed and the information James had allegedly passed on.

“We’ll have to check,” Jack had said, “but even if the substance of the interviews doesn’t match the information supposedly passed, that won’t really help. James could have amassed the information by some other route, or through earlier interviews.”

“But there does have to be reasonable cause to suppose James actually knew the information he passed, surely?”

Jack had nodded. “True. So we’ll investigate both aspects—the witnesses and the information passed. We’ll need to learn the specific facts supposedly passed at those three meetings. So far, Humphries hasn’t revealed that, but that will be the most crucial point for James’s defence to attack.”

It had taken them until dinnertime to decide precisely how they were going to refute the allegations, to list all the points they could challenge and then define every avenue that might lead to the contrary evidence they sought. All in all, the possibilities were extensive, but Jack cautioned that they would need more than one contrary fact, possibly more than two, for each of the three incidents to be sure of laying the allegations to rest.

At eight o’clock, they’d called a halt and went down to dine in the hotel’s dining room, in an atmosphere more commonly found in the most august of the gentlemen’s clubs. Quiet conversation and total blindness as to the other occupants was the unwritten rule; even Jack, who’d initially balked on the grounds of calling unnecessary attention to their association, had had to admit there was no danger there.

Returning to her suite, they’d reviewed their work and agreed that Jack would initially devote himself to finding and speaking with the witnesses. Clarice, meanwhile, would inform her family, rally them to James’s cause, and establish what connections they had that might prove useful in influencing the bishop, investigating the courier, and also in verifying James’s movements. And one way or another, they would extract from Humphries the details they required.

That decided, Jack had risen and given every indication of departing. She’d quickly made plain, in the most effective manner she could devise, that she expected him to remain and share her bed. Aside from all else, as she’d astringently remarked, there was his injury to consider. In furthering James’s cause, it clearly behooved her to do all she could to ensure Jack’s brain was functioning as incisively as possible. She hadn’t wanted him spending another day with a throbbing head.