Davis was shaking his head, his black curls falling over his brow. “How did you know where to find us?” he asked Arthur.
“We found your papers in the boardinghouse in Haddon Grange, and Lydia figured out where you would be. We thought—we all assumed you meant to fire into the parade.”
Jesus. Arthur felt a confused welter of emotions tangled in his chest. Guilt that he had believed Davis part of the assassination plot; relief that it was not so. Outrage, still, at the way that Davis had deceived Lydia.
And yet—had the deception of Lydia been part of the Home Office’s plan as well—part of Davis’s intelligence gathering?
I’m sorry, Davis had written to her, a letter he had never sent.I don’t know how to tell you.
Davis, meanwhile, looked as though he had taken a blow tothe head. “Lydia? My Lydia? She knew about the rifle scope? She believed that it—that I—”
“Enough,” Jasper said. His voice now contained neither the rich tones of Joseph Eagermont nor the frustrated affection of an older brother. He was clipped, fully in command. “We need to go. They’re not coming.”
“Whom do you mean?” Arthur asked. “Whom did you think to find here? The Thibodeaux?”
The silence that greeted his words was so complete that Arthur could pick out the individual sounds of the parade below: horseshoes striking the ground, a shout, the hoarse cry of a gull.
“What do you know of the Thibodeaux?” asked Jasper carefully.
“We know they’re after Joseph Eagermont, the spy they uncovered in Kilbride House. We came to London together to warn you—we tried to contact you through Belvoir’s Library.” Anger met guilt and frustrated relief in him, rising to a boil. “For God’s sake, if the two of you had only told us what was happening—do you realize the danger that you put Lydia in? She might have been targeted because of her connection to you—tobothof you—and she had no idea of the risk.”
Jasper’s face had gone a sickly shade of white. “I told Lydia—Itoldher to go back to Strathrannoch Castle with you.”
“She was worried for you,” Arthur said. “If you supposed she would read your note and remain quietly at home when she believed you to be in danger, then you do not know Lydia as well as you think.”
“Arthur.” Davis’s voice had a strange calm tone to it, an evenness that raised the hairs on the back of Arthur’s neck. “Where is Lydia now?”
“She’s at the library,” he said, “waiting for her thrice-damned brother to show up so she can tell him about the French agentsafter him—the agents that the two of you already know about! The duchess left your signal in the office window yesterday and Lydia has been waiting there ever since.”
“The book?” Jasper asked. “The red book?”
“Aye.”
Davis lifted the rifle in one quick movement. Jasper flung open the door to the stairwell. “We have to go,” Jasper snapped, vaulting easily through the small opening. “We have to goright now.”
“Why? What the devil—”
Davis threw himself after Jasper, his dark head disappearing after Jasper’s fair one. “The Thibodeaux know about the signal,” he said. “They’ll know how to find her.”
Chapter 26
… she felt all over courage…
—from Lydia’s private copy ofPERSUASION
“Wait,” Lydia said again. “A moment longer.”
Georgiana stood anxiously at the door by which Arthur had left a quarter of an hour ago. She wanted to be gone—to take the news of Lydia’s revelation to Selina and the Home Office.
But Lydia did not want her to go, not yet, not until she had something tangible to show the Home Office. Without Jasper, all they had were Lydia’s insights, and she feared that, once again, speculation would not be enough.
She knew she could put together something that would convince them. Between Selina’s notes and Davis’s papers, there had to be a way.
If only her cursed fingers would stop shaking so! She blew out a frustrated breath.
“I think this might work,” she said finally. She dipped her quill, making a quick annotation on one of Selina’s records and circling a parallel in Davis’s hand. “Take these and the drawingof St. Saviour’s that Iris excavated. And the parade route in the papers. I think it might be enough.”
Georgiana nodded and crossed the room to gather Lydia’s documents. As she did, she passed by the window that overlooked the back alley. She paused, arrested, her face turned to the glass.
