David and Gren easily found the men assigned to trail Selby and Annesley, and keep note of where they went and who they met. Annesley’s watcher, loitering in the street keeping watch over the office door, told them the man set to follow Selby had gone for food and drink.
“I figured they was settled in for the house party. Got me a job in the stables, casual-like, and Bert, he got took on at the house. They needed the extra help. Lots of guests, and the ladies not respectable, if you gets me.”
David refused the conversation cul-de-sac. If they stood here for long, they would be noticed. Gren’s elegance stood out, and besides, he was known to the Magstows.
“Go on, Jake. How did you come to be here?”
“Got a letter,” Annesley’s tracker told David. “Stroke of luck, that. Bert took the mail in, and next thing, Selby orders him to have the carriage put to. So Bert comes out and tells me, and I sends him for our horses while I get the gents’ set up. They come straight up to Liverpool, and us taking it in turns to keep them in sight all the way.”
“They travelled through the night?” David asked.
“They stayed last night at some geezer’s place just out of Warrington, then came straight here. Must have been powerful strong news, but we could not make sense of it, Bert and me.”
David smiled. “Jake, well done. You read the letter?
“Bert, he swiped it. Got it in our bags, back with the horses.”
Bert arrived with pies and mugs of beer, and David sent Gren with him to fetch the letter that had set Annesley and Selby on their journey.
“Anything else I should know?” he asked, as he and Jake took turns to watch the door, while giving the impression they were two working men taking a break to eat.
“That earl can’t keep his falls buttoned. T’other sampled the light women at the house party, Bert says, and I seen a bit of it myself, but yon Selby is a ram, right enough. Don’t much care about what they wanted, neither. The maids at that house? Wouldn’t do out his room, ’less they went three at a time. Two weren’t enough protection, seemingly.”
Jake shook his head in disgust before going on.
“Place they stayed at last night belongs to a chap name of Barnstable. Sir Henry Barnstable. He weren’t there, but they let our gents stay anyways. Isn’t Barnstable one of the gents you was asking questions about?”
David nodded. No surprise they were known well enough at their friend’s house to be given houseroom.
The letter, when it arrived, was oblique but revealing.
“Sel. Need to buy from the cits. T’s price too high. Must deliver mid-April latest, or it’s Egypt for me. Or worse. No chance of leave. Can you do it? Tiv.
Magstow and Sons would be the cits, presumably, and Tiv was Tiverton, of course. But what was to be bought, and how it would prevent the army from posting Tiverton overseas, was still a mystery. ‘T’s price too high’? Captain Talbot?
Staying together was just going to attract attention. David told the trackers to contact him through Atkins, and he and Gren sauntered back to the hotel.
“Should the Grenninghams make some kind of an excuse to Magstow for staying, to see what he knows about his uncle’s dealings with Selby and Annesley?” Gren wondered.
David shook his head. “Good manners might make him appear to accept whatever excuse you offer, but you are no longer ‘my good friend Gren who plans to marry my sister.’ Not immediately, anyway. He won’t trust you. So, the Grenninghams disappear as planned.”
David gave the maid her promised fee, and packed his clothes and Gren’s, while Gren made arrangements for a stagecoach ticket to Leeds, asking loudly as he did about the frequency of north-bound coaches from London to Edinburgh.
The maid faded into the streets without fanfare, but Grace and Gren made a show of boarding the coach, so if anyone investigated, they would learn the Grenninghams had left Liverpool. A more careful investigator would follow the coach’s route and find they disappeared at the end of the first stage, the Ship’s Inn at Rainhill.
Disappeared entirely, going up to a room David had rented and never coming down. The young farming couple who did descend, to join their brother for the journey into Liverpool, bore little resemblance to the fashionable pair of aristocrats who had climbed the stairs.
Between the visit to Magstow and the trip to and from Rainhill, most of the day had gone before they arrived back in Liverpool.
“Where would you like to be taken, Grace?” David asked.
Grace slid her eyes sideways to look at Gren.
“Grace and I planned for her to come with us, David. But if that doesn’t suit, we can find our own hotel,” Gren said.
David scowled. Just because Grace worked for a thief taker didn’t mean she was worthy of less respect than any other lady.
Gren stiffened at the unspoken disapproval. “You said if we became intimate, it might show in the way we treated each other, David. We discussed it and thought you might be right, so we waited. But it won’t affect the investigation now, so—not to be rude—but it is not your business, David.”
David ignored Gren and spoke to Grace. “You do not have to do this. I don’t know what Gren has promised you, but…”
“A good time,” Grace interrupted. “Life is short, Mr. Wakefield, and this is a chancy business. A woman should take her pleasure where she may.”
It was an unexpected point of view. “I would not wish you to be hurt,” David told her.
Gren and Grace exchanged a glance and a smug smile.
“It is not your business, David,” Gren repeated. “But if it will set your mind at rest, she knows I’m leaving when we’ve finished our work here in the North.”
“I’m not looking for a man, Mr. Wakefield,” Grace added. “I’ve had one, and he thought he owned me. I won’t be owned again, but I miss the bed sport. And if I let a Liverpool man at me, he’ll want to stick around, or others will find out, and I’ll be fighting them off. I don’t want promises.” She grinned at Gren. “I want his…” She slid her eyes to David and laughed, “I won’t shock you. I can still play the lady, if I did run off with the music teacher when I was seventeen.”
David shrugged. He still thought it a pity, though, and said so to Gren in private before he left to go to meet with Atkins.
“We each want a warm body and no complications, so where is the harm? I like Grace, and she likes me, and we have been honest with one another. You are not to judge me, David. I haven’t criticised you for bedding Prue, you know. Some might say you took advantage of a weak moment, but I have more respect for Prue than that. I think she knows her own mind and can make her own choices.”
That is different, David wanted to say. He cared for Prue, and she for him. Certainly, neither had spoken of the future. It was, as Grace said, a chancy business. But they were not just warm bodies to one another.
As David walked over to his next meeting, though, the thought kept nagging at him. He knew how much Prue meant to him, but how much did he mean to Prue? Was she just looking for his… for her pleasure where she may?
Atkins had news on Talbot. The traders he was dealing with shipped mainly timber.
“Nothing there, then,” David said. “He’ll be buying for the navy.”
“Yes, so my sources tell me. The thing is, there’s a mismatch between the ship’s log and where the manifest says the timber came from.”
Now, that was interesting. “Baltic timber?” Timber from the Baltic attracted a much higher tax, to encourage the Canadian trade, which was under British control. The Baltic trade could be disrupted by Napoleon at any time.
“Not according to the records. But I’ve talked to crew from three different ships, and the timber was loaded in Sweden.”
So, someone took a bribe to change the records. And Talbot undoubtedly pocketed part of the profit that had not been eaten by the longer Atlantic journey.
“Interesting,” David said. “I don’t know how it fits, if it does, but it is interesting.”
“I can keep my ear to the ground, and if anything comes up, let you know.”
That made sense. No point hanging around Liverpool waiting for an innocent man to do something suspicious.
“And you have finished the Magstow case,” Atkins added. “Grace told me you’ll be leaving in a day or two.”
“Yes. One small thing to sort out. You might be able to help. You have that clerk in the Magstow and Sons office?”
Atkins pressed his lips together, disclaiming ownership of the clerk. “Say, rather, I know who can be bribed in the Magstow office.”
“I want to know what a couple of London gentlemen were buying from one of the Magstow partners today. Clive Magstow.”
“I’ll find out. You’ll be staying a day or two, then? Grace will be pleased. She is staying with you and your young lord?”
“With the young lord, anyway,” David growled.
“You disapprove?”
“Don’t you?”
“Why should I? Grace is a sensible woman. She likes bed sport, but limits herself to out-of-towners. Makes sense. If the people ’round here knew she took lovers, they would think her a whore and treat her like one. Besides, men get possessive, and she doesn’t like that.”
“But you know.” Had Grace and Atkins been lovers? Atkins was much older, but still lean and healthy. However, Atkins disabused David of the idea.
“She tells my wife. She stayed with us for a bit a few years back, and Nelly is like a mother to her. I only mention it to you because you came in here with a sour taste in your mouth, and I guessed it was about the two of them. You needn’t worry. Grace knows what she is doing.”
When they left Liverpool three days later, they were close behind Annesley and Selby.
“Naval stores,” David said, for perhaps the seventh time since Atkins had reported. “What on earth does Tiverton want with naval stores?”
Gren ignored him. He had declared himself exhausted and was currently propped in his corner of the post chaise with his eyes shut and a smug grin on his face.
A canal boat loaded with barrels of pitch and tar and turpentine was on its way to London from the Magstow warehouses. It would take at least two-and-a-half weeks, even travelling night and day, to make the trip through the canal and river systems, putting Tiverton’s timetable at risk. For whatever reason he needed the stores.
The answers would be in London, and so, perhaps, would Prue. But on the chance she might still be in Bedfordshire, they would stop in her village.
They arrived at Tidbury End the late afternoon of the following day. “Shall I book rooms at the inn?” Gren asked.
“Let us see if she is here,” David suggested. “We could make another ten miles tonight if she is not.”
They told the postilions to hold the change of horses, and to get themselves some dinner, and walked down from the village to Mrs. Stocke’s cottage.
The door was opened by the same young maid, who blushed and stammered when asked if Miss Virtue was still in residence.
“Do you mean Miss Hope Virtue or my mama?” asked a voice from the stairs. The child who spoke moved into the light. She was small, around five years old, and there was no mistaking she was related to Prue. She had the same brown hair, the same collected gaze, and her nose and chin showed every promise of taking the same form.
David saw familiar hazel eyes under level brows: he had seen them before on his two half-brothers, not to mention every day in the mirror. “Is your mama Miss Prudence Virtue?” he asked, barely managing to retain his outward calmness.
The parlour door was opened with emphatic force, and the woman who erupted into the entrance hall glared at the two men before saying, “Antonia, what are you doing on the stairs? You were told to stay in your room until you had written your lines.”
Antonia. As if the eyes were not confirmation enough. No one ever called the Marquis of Aldridge by any of his string of Christian names, but David had seen the family Bible from which his own name was absent. Aldridge had been christened Anthony, after his father.
“I have finished, Aunt Hope.” The child’s seeming meekness held a strong thread of resentment. She held up several sheets of paper, each covered with neatly printed letters, each line the same.
“I must be grateful and modest,” David read, indignantly.
“Hmmph.” The aunt was not impressed. “Go to the kitchen then. Cook has saved you some tea.”
Clearly confident she would be obeyed, she turned on the men, and her eyes narrowed as she examined them. “Well?” she demanded, rudely.
“Miss Virtue, allow me to make introductions. I am…”
“I can see who you are. It is in the eyes… one of you is the seducer of my poor sister and the father of that child. Go away. You are not welcome here.”
Little Antonia had not moved from her place on the stairs. Her eyes opened wide, and she took a step down and toward them.
“I am David Wakefield,” David continued smoothly, as if the lady had not spoken, “and this is Lord Jonathan Grenford. You are mistaken in your assumption. If you will just let your sister know we are here, she can explain.”
Hope Virtue shook her head. “No mistake. Prudence is not here, and we do not want loose-living aristocrats in this house. I know what your kind are like. You are not fit to be around innocent children.”
Antonia brushed past her aunt, eluding the fingers that grasped for her as Hope recovered enough to reach out. “Are you my father?” she asked David, then went on to Gren. “Are you my father?”
“No, Miss Antonia,” David began. “No,” said Gren, “but I rather think we are your uncles.”