Celeste Bradley - [The Liar's Club 02] (6 page)

Dalton doubted any such thing, but he only smiled at Agatha’s radiant happiness. “You think well of everyone right now, I daresay.”

Simon chuckled. “He’s right, damsel. I even heard you say a kind word about Lord Liverpool yesterday.”

Agatha looked shocked. “I did not!”

Dalton shook his head. “I don’t want to hear this. You know I don’t agree with the opinion you two hold of Liverpool.”

“But only a few weeks ago, he was going to blackmail Simon into a lifetime of service!” Agatha declared hotly.

“Not to mention ruining Agatha’s reputation in public,” Simon added.

Dalton snorted. “And you had nothing to do with that, I suppose?”

Simon said nothing, but Dalton could have sworn his friend’s eyes took on a faraway look of remembered delight. Damn, but the man was in love. “Never mind. No matter how you two feel about Liverpool, you can’t deny that he is the strongest Prime Minister that England has seen in a century. We need him right now, warts and all.”

Agatha grumbled, “Well, if you want to reduce
ruthless
and
manipulative
to mere warts—”

“Damsel,” Simon said softly.

Agatha rolled her eyes. “Oh, very well. I concede that Liverpool is both strong and effective as Prime Minister, but—”

“Let’s just leave it at that, shall we?” Dalton nodded
brusquely. “I’d rather discuss Sir Thorogood before the meeting.”

Simon grinned. “Yes, let’s talk about Sir Thorogood, shall we?” He eyed Dalton’s costume. “What did you do to earn Button’s vengeance?”

Dalton closed his eyes and shook his head. “Don’t ask.”

James cleared his throat. “Actually, I have something for you there, Dalton.”

He moved to a cabinet on the far wall of the “classroom” and pulled out a sheaf of political cartoons. “I’ve noticed that a good third of the caricatures feature Mr. Edward Wadsworth. Once I noticed that, I realized that many of the others depict those known to associate closely with Wadsworth.”

Dalton nodded. “Excellent.” He studied the file for a moment. “James, I would very much like to know who wanted us sent on this fool’s mission. Do me a favor and check out all the subjects, will you? One of them is our offended party. I think it might be useful to know who.”

James wilted just a bit.
“All
the subjects?”

Dalton looked down at the stack. “I think we can limit our search to cartoons that appeared during the last month, don’t you? This seems like a counteraction at best. I think it must have been something quite recent.”

Simon frowned. “Edward Wadsworth … do you know him, Dalton?”

Dalton shook his head. “Not personally. I know of him. He’s an arms manufacturer for the military. Supposedly he has the Midas touch with his affairs, if he is as wealthy as is believed.”

“A merchant, then.”

“Yes, but not a middle-class one. Wadsworth keeps
company with the elite, I’ve heard.” Dalton considered the options for a moment. “I can hardly get close to him socially, now that I’ve taken on Thorogood’s identity.”

James snorted. “Not now that Wadsworth’s been lampooned any number of times. He likely wouldn’t let Thorogood past his threshold.”

“No, he wouldn’t.” Dalton narrowed his eyes. “But there is more than one way to get into a house.”

“Aunt Clara, please may I have a piece of that very thin paper you use for tracing?”

Pulled from the depths of concentration, Clara looked up from her drawing to see Kitty eyeing her hopefully from the doorway. “I’m sorry, dear. Did you knock? I didn’t hear.”

“Yes, Auntie. May I have a sheet of trace paper, please?”

Clara slid the blotting sheet over her latest Sir Thorogood drawing as Kitty approached. Hope sparked within her. Could Kitty be showing artistic tendencies? “If you want to draw, I have some very nice paper—”

“La, you know I hate to draw. But Bitty claimed the Sir Thorogood cartoon today, and I wanted to make a copy for myself.”

Clara abandoned disappointment for artistic pleasure. “You liked it very much, then. What is it of?”

“Oh, it’s most amusing. Aunt Clara. It’s a Society mama and she’s putting her daughters on the marriage mart, only it’s really an auction block, and the daughters are really—”

Cows
. Oh, drat. Guilt beat artistic pleasure on the head and threw it out of the door. That drawing had been the result of a particularly grueling chaperoning session that Beatrice had forced her into. She’d forgotten to take it out of the last packet she’d given to Gerald Braithwaite.

Well, if she had ever considered sharing her secret life with her in-laws, she could forget it now.

Kitty left with her trace paper and Clara returned to work, but the interruption had ruined her concentration. As fond as she was of Kitty, and even Beatrice, at times there was nothing she longed for more than a place of solitude and silence. It need not even be a real artist’s studio, though that was her ideal. Merely a place that she could truly call her own, from which she could rule her own destiny.

That was what she had thought to achieve by marrying Bentley in the first place. A home of her own, a future, a family.

As the indignant shrieks of a sisterly argument penetrated the walls, Clara snorted and began to pack up her drawing supplies in defeat.

She’d certainly acquired the family portion of her dreams.

A reminder to oneself—be careful what you wish for.

James found himself wishing he’d waited until after the meeting to allow Kurt to pound him into the floor. Sitting in the chair was allowing his muscles to stiffen abominably and he was aware that his aroma was none too fresh.

James forced himself to look away from the empty chairs that would be filled if not for him.
My life for yours
.
The promise wasn’t worth much, but it was all the amends he could make. His life for the Liar’s Club.

If that club lasted the year.

The ragtag bunch that half-filled the meeting room was of the old club, the men hand-picked by Simon Raines and some even by the spymaster before him.

Men who had yet to truly give the new spymaster their support.

James watched as Dalton led the meeting—saw how the refined Lord Etheridge had to draw grudging answers and suggestions from the men as if with hooks and line.

“There has been an increase in French recruitment efforts among the merchants and manufacturers, according to our informants. Some are suborned with financial promises, some with French imperialist propaganda.”

“What—some poor draper sellin’ out his country ‘cause he wants to be as good as the toffs? Can’t imagine it.” The dry comment came from behind James, its originator probably not intending it to reach Dalton’s ears. James hoped it hadn’t.

Dalton’s gaze flicked to the heckler without hesitation. “Dissatisfaction with one’s station should not excuse treason, justified though it might be. Don’t you agree, Mr. Rigg?” His voice was cool, not rising in the slightest, but James felt the ridiculous urge to duck out of the line of fire.

Rigg blustered his way through a sort of agreement and James relaxed slightly. Open defiance and insubordination did not seem to be on the menu today, thankfully. Still, there was no comparing this stiff, uncooperative gathering with the camaraderie and teamwork of old.

He wanted to jump up and shout at them all, these men who had seen him through years of working together,
who had searched for him when he’d been imprisoned, who had taken him back without a word even after his revelations under capture had cost several their lives …

He didn’t say a word. Not for him to order them to listen. Not for him to force their loyalty when his own hung by a damaged thread.

Dalton must forge his own chains of loyalty to the hearts of these men. James looked around the room, gazing at each recalcitrant face in turn.

God help him.

That meeting had been an improvement, Dalton told himself as the men moved from the room. This time there had been no bloodshed between arguing factions. In addition, not a single stick of furniture had been broken. Nothing that a bit of glue wouldn’t fix, at any rate.

All in all—another worthless attempt to bring the Liars together.
Patience
.

Unfortunately, Napoleon wasn’t going to wait while Dalton ironed out insubordination and inter-faction rivalry.

Dalton straightened his peacock finery and donned his plumed hat. Time to leave the club for the outside world and the smarmy existence of Sir Thorogood.

Dalton walked from the club with a tip of his hat to Stubbs, who was minding the door while he anxiously waited to begin saboteur training with James Cunnington. Unfortunately, until the Griffin recovered, the Liars were still drastically undermanned.

Once Dalton had settled the ambiguity of his place with his men, he was going to have to look into serious recruitment. Agatha was pushing to recruit some women.
While Dalton wasn’t averse to the idea, he had no idea where to even begin. If he couldn’t seem to find a suitable woman for himself, he didn’t see how he was supposed to locate them for intelligence training.

Simon had found Agatha while searching for her brother.

Then again, Simon had given up everything for Agatha. Dalton couldn’t picture himself throwing away the Liar’s Club for anyone. The club was his now, if he could hold it.

From where Dalton stood across the street, he could see the two of them leaving the school. He watched as Simon handed Agatha into their carriage with such tender solicitousness that Dalton’s throat tightened.

Then Simon looked up to see him loitering outside the club. Dalton nodded to him, and Simon nodded carefully back, as if he were greeting a slight acquaintance, although there was an admonishing cast to Simon’s brow. Dalton could almost feel Simon’s thoughts, that Dalton was not careful enough in hiding his trail to and from the club.

Dalton shook his head at the notion as he turned to be on his way. As if anyone would suspect anything from Sir Thorogood’s presence at a extravagant gentlemen’s retreat like the Liar’s Club! In truth, it fit this persona perfectly.

As he walked down the crowded street, Dalton struggled with the unfamiliarity of his new identity. Not for Sir Thorogood the subtle passage of an anonymous gentleman. No, thanks to Button, Dalton found himself in full rainbow grandeur, complete with shoot-me-now pantaloons and a monocle. Every eye was upon him.

Then a prickle up the back of his neck gave him pause. Instinct cut in, making him slow his pace and
extend his senses. That feeling meant only one thing.
Trouble
.

Dalton paused to let pass a boy with a barrow full of coal. Then he turned into a tobacconist’s shop as if it had been his destination all along.

He spoke to the proprietor for a moment about his latest shipment from the West Indies, and about the woe-fill loss of American trade lately. All the while, he kept one eye on the front window. The street was full at this late morning hour. Servants and gentry, merchants and vagrants, all passed before the large shop window in the subsequent minutes.

Yet only one person glanced at the interior of the shop as he passed. A tall man, fair-haired, of perhaps thirty years of age. A gentleman by his fine boots, although by the workingman’s cap pulled low and the casual knotted neckcloth, there had been an obvious attempt at a more disorderly ensemble. Still, there was a certain something in his carriage … was it military training?

No. Dalton smiled slightly. The fellow’s walk reminded him of the sort of posture and carriage drilled into the students at some of the finer schools. A gentleman, indeed.

The fellow passed on by, but Dalton remained within for a moment more. The shopkeeper had a truly fine array of cigars. Soon Dalton was strolling from the establishment with a box of excellent smokes under his arm.

Instead of hailing a hack he decided to walk a bit more, purely to see if his shadow returned to task. As he left the mercantile district to head back to Mayfair, he turned down a less crowded side street. Perhaps he could isolate the fellow from the crowd again.

The cobbled way was more of an alley, he realized as the high buildings on both sides cut off the daylight. Suddenly the city sounds seemed far away and his own boot heels rang loudly in the near silence.

Until he heard the slight grate of a shoe on the stones just behind him. Swiftly he turned, flinging the wooden cigar box up before him like a shield.

The point of a blade splintered through the printed lid of the box to gleam just before his eyes. The impact caught him in mid-turn and cost him his balance. Leaving the impaled box behind, he fell with a roll and was back on his feet in an instant.

There was no one there, only a dark shape at the far end of the alley rounding the corner and the fading sound of running footsteps on the cobbles.

A box of very fine cigars lay forlorn on the ground before him, stabbed through the heart.

Dalton rubbed his own chest in sympathy. That had been entirely too close. He stooped to recover the knife from the box without much hope of using it to identify his attacker. After all, the fellow would hardly have left it behind had it been engraved with his name.

He was quite correct. It was an ordinary knife with a Sheffield stamp, the sort that was available from any number of shops in and out of London.

The assailant could simply have been an ordinary footpad as well, simply seizing a likely moment.

Or perhaps Simon had a point about concealing one’s trail.

“Clara! Claaa-ra!”

Clara cringed at the yodeling up-note in her sister-in-law’s call. She didn’t waste time answering, since Beatrice
knew precisely where she was. Instead, she used the few seconds of warning to blow softly over the still-wet ink lines of her latest drawing.

As the door to her room opened Clara casually laid a blotting sheet over it, then turned to face Beatrice.

“Good morning, sister.”

Beatrice stood puffing loudly and fanning her face. Clara remained unmoved by the guilt that she was supposed to feel about putting her sister-in-law to the trouble of climbing the stairs.