Mr. Graves flinched at the sharply-delivered demand. “No, sir—at least, not at first. Mostly she asked about the school.”
“And you did not mark this as strange?”
“No, Mr. Carlisle. I assumed she must have some female relative in need of educating. She only expressed an interest in Miss Cabot once I told her…”
“Once you told her that I intended to marry Felicity,” Ian supplied.
A grim nod. Mr. Graves said, “I volunteered it. I suppose I meant to prove my own importance by the foreknowledge of it, but she—she seemed surprised. Interested.”
“I’ll just bet she was,” Ian ground out. “Have you seen her, since?”
A tiny shift of Graves’ shoulders. “Just once, Mr. Carlisle,” he said. “Sheis—or was—in the city. She came to the office perhaps a week ago and suggested we might renew our acquaintance. I was quite busy at the time, but I told her that I would have an evening available, owing to the fact that you were taking your wife to the theatre. She did not arrive to the place we were meant to meet, however.” He swallowed audibly, wincing with sudden realization. “I told her that, too. I’m so dreadfully sorry. I might have peppered our conversation with any amount of information like that—with not even the slightest inkling that I’d said so much more than I ought to have done.”
Yes, he had. He’d been taken for a fool, used as a convenient source of information. By chance, this mystery woman had happened upon a man she could use to her advantage. And she had exploited that fact to the fullest.
Ian approached the desk, plucked a discarded pen from the surface of it and thrust it out toward Mr. Graves. “Write,” he said fiercely. “Everything,anythingyou can think of. Write all of it down. And then you and I will have a conversation about how you are going to bloody well fix this.”
Chapter Twenty
Once more Ian watched Felicity fumble to fit the key in the lock of the school’s front door in the darkness, her shoulders drawn up tight and tense. Once more she raced for the carriage as if the very hounds of hell were nipping at her heels.
This time, he’d elected to wait outside the carriage lest he frighten her again with his unexpected presence within it. Her obligations to the school did not cease at any prescribed time—so he’d swiftly learned in the month of their marriage—but he’d had the use of the carriage for most of the day already and had seen no particular reason to keep her waiting to learn what he and Graves had accomplished after he’d returned her to the school earlier in the afternoon. He’d been waiting a half an hour already in the bitter cold.
Felicity clambered into the carriage the moment he opened the door for her, and she settled into her seat, her head dropping back with a weary sigh. In only a moment, her head popped up once more as she gave a delicate sniff. “Do I smell—?”
Ian shoved his hand into his coat pocket as he climbed into the carriage himself, withdrawing a paper-wrapped item, which he tossed gently into her lap. “Might not be hot any longer,” he said as he rapped upon the roof of the carriage. “I’ve been waiting a while.”
“ThankGod,” she said, with no small amount of feeling as she peeled back the brown paper concealing the beef pasty contained within. “I’m half-starved.” But even as she took the pasty into her hands, she paused a moment. The carriage rolled into motion, and as they passed a lone street lamp near the closest corner, a sliver of light slid across her face. She stared down at the pasty like it held a long-sought answer to some unknowable question within it, rather than just meat and potatoes and onions.
“Did you not eat at the school at all?” he asked.
The question startled her out of her strange daze. She tore into the pasty with sharp white teeth. “No,” she said as she chewed and swallowed. “I couldn’t. My stomach was in knots.”
He’d feared as much. Probably she would not sleep particularly well this evening, either. “I don’t want you to worry,” he said. “And I know that must seem an impossibility for you—”
“It is,” she said dryly, between bites. “In the history of the world, not once has telling someone not to worry ever managed to produce that effect.”
And yet, she had managed to eatnow. So he assumed that whatever knots might have been wrought of her stomach, they had, however marginally, eased. He said, “Mr. Graves is eager to make amends for his mistakes. Between the two of us today, we’ve managed to visit every publication in the city to inform them that they should consider carefully what sort of gossip they are willing to print.”
“And…beyond the city?” she inquired carefully as she finished off the last of her pasty.
London, she meant to say, most likely. Other than Brighton, it was the place she could most easily, most quickly be made notorious. “It’s a possibility,” he said. “I don’t expect that to be the case, however. The sheer volume of London gossip leaves little room for anything else.”
Felicity folded up the paper wrapper and tucked it into the pocket of her coat. “I wish I could have such confidence,” she said softly. “Have you learned anything new?”
Ian hesitated. “Not much,” he admitted. “I’ve hired a few more men to make inquiries and to search the city, armed with Graves’ description of the woman. Regrettably, because she came to Graves at his office, he doesn’t know where she might be lodging. But I don’t believe it will matter. We know what they want, but not where or when they intend to collect it. They’ll have to inform you if they hope to receive the sum they desire. And the moment they slip a letter through the mail slot, we’ll have them.”
“One of them, at least,” Felicity whispered.
“All we need is one,” Ian said. “There is no honor among thieves. I sincerely doubt one will be willing to suffer the legal consequences alone—most especially if we offer some manner of leniency in return for the capture of their compatriot.” The carriage turned down their quiet street, slowing as it approached the house. “I know it doesn’t feel it at the moment,” he said, “but there is a net stretched across the city, like the web of a spider. The very moment either of them tests it, there are men lying in wait to apprehend them. The house is being watched; the school is being watched. They might think they have the upper hand at the moment, but they can have no idea what we presently know, how much we’ve learned, and how easily it will be usedagainst them.”
She gave a little nod, but it was not difficult to see that she remained unconvinced. Those dark brows were knit with worry, with the strain she’d endured these last weeks. What did it do to a person to suffer such concern for so long?
He grated out, “It’s nearly over. I promise you that.”
As the carriage came to a stop before the grand house, Butler threw open the door…and Felicity’s sisters and brothers-in-law came pouring out of the house to greet her. Ian tried—and failed—to stifle a resigned sigh.
“I’ll skip this evening’s entertainment, if it’s all the same to you,” he said wryly as he reached for the carriage door. “There’s only so much glaring a man can be called upon to tolerate.”
