“What have I done to give you cause for any suspicion whatsoever?”
“You must consider how you appear. You’re a well-built gentleman, for one, and that draws attention. But when that attention has been drawn, it seems as if there is something a bit off about you. Something that doesn’t fit with the exterior.”
He leaned even closer. She matched him and upped the ante with a pert smile.
“How could you possibly pretend to know if there is anythingoffabout me, or right about me, or anything at all? You don’t know me, Mrs. Honeycutt—you’ve only seen me here and there.”
“Only seen you here and there! Wedanced, sir! We’ve had entire conversations!”
Oh, but they’d had conversations, and he would never forget them. Conversations about the more absurd and ridiculous things he’d ever heard in his life. “Allow me to put it another way. Why would I come here if I were in any way involved? Would that not tip my hand in some way?”
Her pert smile faded slightly. She considered that, then nodded. “Fair point.”
Yes, of course it was a fair point. He sat back, having dispatched the nonsense easily.
“And then again, you may have come here to intentionally mislead me. How am I to know?” She lifted her shoulders and the pert smile returned.
He could not fathom this woman. But what was she about? What game was she playing? Moreover, why?
“Oh, dear, you do look a bit piqued, Mr. Brendan. Are you sure you wouldn’t like a bit of brandy? A finger of whiskey?”
He gritted his teeth and shook his head. “No, thank you. May I ask where you heard the wordcoup?Or did you very freely come to that word all on your own, as well?”
“Thank you for believing that I could! I heard it at the London Library.”
“The library?” He did not understand. “Did you read it in a book or...?” Or had she invented this complete flight of fancy from some book?
“Iwasreading a book. As it happens I very much enjoy reading and have recently taken a dip into the history of Alucia and Wesloria. It’s a very interesting part of the world. But I didn’treadthe wordcoup, Mr. Brendan, I overheard two gentlemen talking about it.”
Now that gave Marek pause. He tried to think of the reason two men at a library would say or discuss a coup. “I don’t understand. Gentlemen at a library were discussing a coup?”
“I should start at the beginning,” she said.
“Oh, no,” Donovan muttered.
“Mr. Shoreham is the persnickety and onerous chair of the London Philological Society.” At his look of confusion—he didn’t know what those words meant—she said, “It’s a group devoted to the study of language.”
He blinked.
“When I first heard of it, I was eager to join. I would adore the study of language! I do enjoy studying and reading. Most recently, I’ve been engrossed in the works of Shakespeare.” She said this proudly.
“I don’t understand—”
“She’ll get to it...eventually,” Donovan muttered, and leaned back against the sideboard, his arms crossed over his chest.
“But when I made my application to the society I was rejected tout de suite,with a reminder from Mr. Shoreham that a woman couldn’t possibly be expected to comprehend the nuance of syntactic and semantic structures of English, much less any other language, without proper study.”
Perhaps she hadn’t understood his question.
“She fumed for days, she did,” Donovan said.
“Well, it wasegregious.And there is no recourse, no higher power to whom I could appeal. So I took my complaint to the head of the society, Mr. Shoreham, and he’d not give me as much as a glance. But I am not so easily deterred, Mr. Brendan, and I took to waiting outside their meeting room at the London Library every Tuesday and Thursday. I read about Wesloria and Alucia and, I should point out, that it appears I am indeed capable of understanding the subtle nuances of syntax and semantics,andgrammatical structure.”
Marek exchanged a look with Donovan. He returned his attention to Mrs. Honeycutt. “You were saying you overheard...”
“Oh! Yes, I did. One day on my way into the library, I heard two gentlemen speaking about rumors of a rebellion or coup.” She twirled the end of a dark tress of hair idly around a finger. “If I knew who they were, I would have asked them directly who was plotting a coup. One said to the other that the rumors of a coup against the Weslorian king were so credible that the British had kindly assigned more guards to His Majesty and the royal family.”
This news came as something of a shock to Marek. He had a dark feeling that it was true. He’d believed there was something more at work here in London, and these two anonymous men had confirmed it. “You’ve no idea who they were? Were they English? Weslorian?”
