“Well, then.” Lady Salter folded her lorgnette with a snap and glared at Emm. “If that’s going to be your attitude.”
“It is.”
The old lady gave a brisk nod. “Excellent. Couldn’t be better. Keep that up. I’ll do my part and we’ll see what we can do. Storm in a teacup. Stupid Oates woman got the wrong end of the stick. Family solidarity. Ashendon, your arm.”
Emm blinked in shock as her husband helped his aunt rise. Had Lady Salter just said she would support Emm?
At the door, the old woman paused and turned back. She pointed her cane at Emm. “Never apologize, never back down. Show one shred of shame or fear and the vultures will be on you in an instant. Ashendon, my carriage.”
As the carriage steps were let down, Aunt Agatha turned to Cal. “She might be a nobody, but at least she has a spine.”
Chapter Twenty-one
But having done whate’er she could devise
And emptied all her Magazine of lies
The time approached...
—JOHN DRYDEN,IPHIS AND IANTHE
“Cal, would you frank some letters for me?”
“Letters, Rose?”
She gave a careless shrug. “Just writing to a few old school friends, exchanging news, that sort of thing. But if you don’t want to frank them for me—” She held a slender sheaf of letters, half a dozen or more.
“No, it’s all right, I’ll take them.” There was something about the way Rose had asked—the almost ostentatiously casual nature of the request that raised his suspicions. Was she up to something? Had the weeks of good behavior come to an end?
He took the letters into his office and checked them. They seemed harmless enough: all addressed to females, and most of them in London—Mayfair, actually, so there was no need to put them through the postal service, let alone frank them, which strictly speaking was for government business. “I’ll send them off with a footman,” he told Rose, who was hovering in the doorway.
“So they’ll arrive today? Good. Thanks, Cal.” She hurried off.
He blinked. Regular exercise, shopping and a social life seemed to have wrought a miracle in his sisters.Long may it last.
Speaking of government business, it was time he checkedon the status of the assassin affair. He handed the letters to Burton on the way out, who promised to have them delivered immediately, and headed for Whitehall.
Joe Gimble and his family were not Cal’s only concerns this time. He wanted to ask Radcliffe’s help in dealing with these vile rumors that were causing his wife sleepless nights. The Braxtons’ party was the following night. Radcliffe knew everyone. He was discreet and could keep confidence.
“No news of Gimble,” Radcliffe said the moment Cal arrived. He was deep in paperwork. “One thing you might be interested in, though—your drunken sharpshooter friend is dead.”
“Dead? How?”
“No suspicious circumstances. Fell down drunk in a gutter the other night. It’s a toss-up whether he froze to death or drowned in a puddle. The state he was in, the fellow wasn’t long for this world anyway.”
Cal agreed.
Radcliffe looked up from his papers. “Something else you wanted?”
“Yes, but it’s personal.”
“Ah, those rumors about your wife, yes. Nasty stuff.”
“Bloody hell, that spread fast.”
Gil looked complacent. “Everything comes to my ears. Now, what can I do to help?”
***
