His shirt was open at the front and his neck gleamed with water. She watched, mesmerized, as a droplet beaded up and rolled down his throat.
She wanted to follow it with her tongue. She wanted—
The door to the office rattled. “Lydia? Arthur? Are you in there?”
It was Georgiana’s voice. Lydia exchanged a surprised glance with Arthur, and he crossed to open the door before she could.
On the other side of the threshold, Georgiana stood, her hands full of papers and her usually pristine ringlets sweaty and tangled beneath her bonnet.
She came into the room and dropped the papers on the desk before yanking the bonnet off her head with a sound of relief. “Goodness. I had to walk the last ten streets. Traffic’s stopped all over because of the parade.”
The parade—yes, that explained the noise in the street, now that she thought of it. Lydia had read of Wellington’s welcome-home parade in the papers the previous day, when she’d scoured Theo’s office for news from the month she’d been away. It was going to take her several dedicated days to catch up on the various political intrigues she had missed. When she moved to Scotland, she was going to have to bribe Ned extravagantly to keep her informed.
Georgiana nudged the papers on the desk closer toward Lydia. “These are for you, from Selina. I was already over there this morning—she’s collected everything she has on your brother, French agents, and the Home Office.” Amusement threaded Georgiana’s crisp voice. “After a clerk shut the door in her face yesterday on King Charles Street, I believe she’s transferred her loyalties from the British government to you personally, Lydia.”
Lydia seated herself at the desk and began to sort through the papers, trying to contain the grin that wanted to break out on her face. The very idea of Selina attempting to manage the Home Office and then being roundly rejected was…
Well, she pitied the Home Secretary, to be certain.
“Where does Selina mean to go next?” she inquired absently, flipping through the papers. They were not terribly enlightening—dates upon which Jasper had received correspondence at Belvoir’s, annotations on the Home Office’s crackdown on Bonapartists, real and imaginary.
“I believe she means to travel on to the Duggleby town houseto visit Iris. Though even Selina cannot redirect Wellington’s parade, so she may find herself run to ground until the bridge clears.”
Lydia froze, one leaf of Selina’s heavy writing paper still clamped between thumb and forefinger.
Georgiana’s words—the notes before her—Davis’s letters. The fragments spun, a thousand bits of colored confetti, and then resolved themselves into a picture in her mind.
Wellington.
Bonapartists.
The bridge.
“I know where he is,” she whispered. “Davis. And the rifle scope.”
Her eyes flew to Arthur’s face. He’d taken a step toward her and then frozen, his hands locked on the back of a spindled chair, his knuckles gone white. “Where?”
“The parade.” Her voice shook. “I saw the route in the papers yesterday. It goes across London Bridge and directly in front of St. Saviour’s Church.”
Arthur looked taken aback. “You think Davis is in the parade?”
“No.” Oh God—she wished she was wrong, shewantedto be wrong. But she did not think she was. “I believe he’s at St. Saviour’s now. I think he means to fire into the parade.”
Arthur’s face had paled, but he did not contradict her, did not demand she explain her thinking. Only… “Why?” he said hoarsely. “Why would he do such a thing?”
“You said you overheard the Thibodeaux mention a duke, did you not? Now that the occupation of France has ended, the Duke of Wellington has returned to England. The parade is in his honor, meant to welcome him home. He’ll be at the end of the parade, in full military dress and on display in an open box.” She lookedup and met Arthur’s gaze, now trained intensely upon her. “Ever since the assassination attempt upon him in Paris in February, Wellington’s gone nowhere without armed guards. But if Davis has the rifle scope, it does not matter if Wellington’s guarded by half the Bow Street patrol. He’ll be defenseless.”
“Why would Davis want to use the rifle scope against Wellington?”
Her throat felt tight. She ought to have seen it sooner. With everything she knew of Davis—with the appearance of the Thibodeaux—with all her political knowledge, knotted into a thousand interlocking webs in her head—she ought to have predicted this.
“The first letters we ever exchanged discussed the participation of Scottish troops in the Napoleonic Wars. Davis said Wellington and his men lured the Scots with false promises, then unfairly compensated them for their efforts. He—”
She twisted her fingers together in front of her. “He never mentioned anything like this. But there is a substantial contingent of Bonapartists who have been exiled from France—the ones who organized the assassination attempt on Wellington in February. It’s possible the Thibodeaux were a part of that group. And it’s possible they brought Davis over onto their side.”
Arthur’s eyes were fixed on her face, his expression tight with suppressed emotion.
He believed her. That fact settled somewhere in her chest, even as anxiety clogged her throat. He trusted her without question.
