“I can—”
“Cheddars.” Ath put down his coffee cup and fixed the valet with his most stern and commanding gaze, or at least the most stern and commanding he dared use on his sensitive servant and friend. “You have enough to do looking after me. Besides, Dickie’s family can use the coin.”
“As you wish, sir. You are too good-hearted, sir, if you don’t mind me saying.” Cheddars inclined his head and quit the room.
“I’m a right rotter and well he knows it, the old fool,” Ath muttered. He strode to the bed and dragged the glove from beneath the covers. He dropped it into a small battered pot of clean water on the hearth. He washed his hands in the basin of warm water Cheddars had brought up with his breakfast and returned to his meal just as he heard the clatter of footsteps on the stairs. He picked up the letter, but did not open it.
“Mornin’, Captain. Old Cheesy says you need some laundry done.” The small, thin lad with the rat’s nest of inky black hair stuck his head in the door and grinned.
“Take off your hat and leave off my valet, you cut-purse villain.” He nodded towards the bed. “Can your sister have those back to me by tonight?” Ath broke the seal on the letter and took another long draught of his coffee.
“For the right price she can.”
Ath snorted and folded the letter open. Tucked inside the outer message, folded into a neat square were several pages he recognized at once. Five sheets torn from his journal. She’d sent him a payment for their encounter at the ball. He wadded them up in his fist.
“Who was the lucky lady?” Dickie asked as he gathered the bedsheets and tied them into a bundle.
“What lady?”
“Bed smells like someone had a right romp. Who is she?”
“Do you want me to tell your sister how much money Mr. Carrington-Bowles paid you to sneak into the bookshop on Half Moon Street?” Ath tossed the pages into the fireplace behind his chair and watched them burn.
“No lady then. Frigged yerself. Oiy!” Dickie ducked the spoon that Ath shied at him. “Old Cheesy should have let you sleep in.”
“Did you bring this message straight here?” Ath suddenly asked. She’d sent pages that could ruin a number of lives by a boy Col had saved off the docket of a Bow Street court. Ath would trust the lad with any amount of money, but a letter?
“Course I did. The lady’s maid put it in my hand and threatened to cut off me cods and boil ’em in Thames water if I allowed anyone but you or yervaletto touch it.” Ath choked on his coffee at Dickie’s perfectly aristocratic pronunciation of the wordvalet. God knows he’d mangled the English language to death with the rest of his tale.
“Good. Off with you then.” He spread the one-page message out on the table.
“Want me to wait to take yer answer to the lady?”
Ath glared at him. Dickie raised a hand in surrender, put on his cap and headed for the door. “Come back this afternoon,” Ath said before the cheeky waif closed the door behind him.
“Thought so,” the boy called as he clomped down the corridor.
Ath had delayed long enough. Why, he had no idea. He’d received hundreds of such messages from ladies. He was acting like a boy fresh at university. He read the brief message twice in quick succession. He hadn’t had enough coffee for this request. A dash or two of brandy would not go amiss as he considered the wicked adventure she wished him to re-create with her. No wonder she’d taken a week to decide.
“Who are you, Lady Honoria?” he murmured. Ath slurped down some more coffee and stuffed a raspberry tart into his mouth. He cast his mind back to the date and the woman about which the lady had written. A quick rummage through a stack of drawings on a battered bedside table and he found a piece of foolscap. Ink and a variety of quills always lay on every flat surface in his bedchamber. He’d barely settled back into his chair before his chamber door burst open and CB strode in, impeccably dressed and as fresh and clean as a virgin’s quim. Ath quickly tossed Lady Honoria’s missive into the fire.
“Dickie said the lady has finally summoned you.” He sat on the rickety chair across from Ath and sorted through the pastries Cheddars had fetched from Fortnum and Mason. “Only took her a week.” He tore off a piece of a Bath bun and popped it into his mouth.
Ath smoothed out the piece of paper and began to write. “And that signifies because?”
CB swallowed hard and took a sip from Ath’s cup of coffee. “I assumed if you made an impression on the lady, she would have sent for you sooner.” Ath threw a spoon at him, which his friend ducked with alacrity. “Dickie warned me you are in ill humor today.”
Ath continued to write. “Have you discovered the whereabouts of the person who has your pages, this N. Charpentier?”
CB grinned at him, thearse, but then he grew more serious. “Yes and no. She is apparently a cook for a very exclusive club on Bruton Street. I’m trying to find a member to provide me with an invitation or at least an introduction.”
“What sort of club?” Ath sanded the letter, but neither folded nor sealed the single page closed.
“I’m not certain. Everyone seems very close-mouthed about it so far.” He continued to tear the Bath bun into bite-sized pieces, but did not eat them. “Have you heard from Col or Sythe this week?”
Ath thought about their two friends for a moment. “No, actually. Have you seen or heard from them since they said they were going to visit Goodrum’s?” He and CB stared at each other for a few seconds.
“No. Have you?”
