“The son of a diseased dog was told to shoot both Jamie Bey and the Weasel,” Yousef reported to the group gathered in Father’s study.
“Weasel, too?” James tapped the letter he had received from Aldridge against his hand. “Father, the Marquis of Aldridge says here that Weasel knew of the sharpshooter, but expected him to put Drew out of action—a wound, only, Weasel told Aldridge.”
Father held his hand out for the letter and read it, then passed it to Aunt Georgie. He had invited both his sister and his sister-in-law to join this council, but Aunt Grace had cried off, saying she knew nothing about such things. James didn’t doubt the women would consult later, however.
“The plot smacks of Haverford,” Father said. “Do you tell me his son knew nothing about it? I understand he is his father’s right hand—indeed, that he runs the duchy while his father steeps himself in politics and dissipation. What do you think, Georgie?”
Aunt Georgie shook her head. “Aldridge is the duchess’s son more than the duke’s. Yes, you will have heard of his reputation with women, but you will never hear that he forces a woman or seduces an innocent. And in his other dealings, he is a man of integrity.”
Father looked at her thoughtfully. Given that the aunts supported an entire village of women who had been hurt through their dealings with a man, they would know if Aldridge’s public face differed from his private.
“I thought the young lord was shocked at the attempt,” Yousef said.
James and Drew nodded, and James added, “He started to name the person he suspected as the assassin’s paymaster, but stopped. It sounded like the beginning of his father’s title.”
“Would Haverford kill his own candidate to the Winshire succession?” Aunt Georgie wondered, then answered her own question. “Yes, for we have other distant cousins. Besides, his chief goal is to cause you distress. The case to Lords is merely a device to that end. He hates you, brother. With Weasel dead, supposedly at Drew’s hand, Drew might have been forced to flee the country, leaving you without adult sons to support you.”
All four men nodded. Her reasoning was sound, but led to an uncomfortable conclusion. The younger boys were at risk, too, though still in the schoolroom. James opened his mouth but Father forestalled him. “Yousef, you have warned your wife?”
“We have set extra sentries in the house, Ya’qub,” Yousef reassured Father, “and Patience has agreed to take guards whenever they go out. I suggest we add extra protection for the ladies, too.”
“They planned to leave for the country in a week or two. I shall suggest an earlier date,” Father decided. “We can protect them from any incursions at Winds’ Gate.” Winds’ Gate was the principal estate of the dukes of Winshire, and the family home. “Did the assassin say who paid for his services, Yousef?”
“He does not know who hired his master.”
“You believe him?” Father asked.
Yousef shot James a disgusted look. “He has been promised amnesty and release in return for his co-operation. I think he speaks the truth, though not all the truth.”
Father steepled his hands in front of his mouth. “Your thoughts, Jamie?”
James nodded. “The man is a hireling, and knows little. I thought to make a messenger of him, Kaka.”
Father nodded for James to continue.
“He works for one of those who run crime in the slums of this city. We can cut this head off the hydra, but it will grow another. We can probably even destroy the hydra itself—these English do not know war the way we know war. But the slums will spawn more monsters, who might still take the gold our enemy offers. I thought if we send this assassin back to his lair with a clear understanding of how we will react to an attack…”
“Offer to pay for information,” Drew suggested. “Punishment for an enemy; rewards for an ally.”
Father and Yousef exchanged a glance. They had fought and worked side-by-side for thirty-five years, and sometimes James thought they had developed the ability to speak mind-to-mind. He could read this exchange, though. Father’s lifted eyebrows said, “The boy has a point.” Yousef’s minuscule nod and wicked smile responded, “I shall put the fear of my kagan into the slime eater.”
Father confirmed that James had read the pair of them correctly when he told Yousef, “Lord Elfingham shall offer the reward, since he has already displayed mercy in not allowing you to slit the man’s throat.”
They discussed the details of both threat and offer, Aunt Georgie showing a disconcertingly vivid way with words in articulating the consequences of another attempt.
“If that is all, Father,” Drew said, at last, “Jamie and I should get ready. We are escorting the ladies to the theatre.”
“One more thing.” The earl might have given up his kaganate, but he had lost nothing of the mantle of power he could pull over himself at will. “You could not have avoided this duel, Drew, without dishonouring your mother and encouraging others to even more offensive statements. I understand that, but I will not have any further such challenges. Make sure that these cubs of Society know how good you really are. Some demonstrations, perhaps? And Jamie, find out why the Earl of Hamner wanted this fight. Had he not repeated Weasel’s words, the challenge might have been avoided.”
Both young men bowed. They had their orders.
At the breakfast table on the day of the duel, Sophia was dreary-eyed from lack of sleep. She had tossed and turned, imagining every possible disastrous outcome. She could not fault Drew for defending his mother, but did men have to be so reckless?
Felicity also looked tired. “I could not sleep for wondering who shot whom,” Felicity said, far more cheerfully than Sophia found appropriate. “I do hope Mr Drew Winderfield will not be forced to flee the country.”
Clearly, her sympathies were not with Weasel.
Before Sophia could answer, a footman brought in a letter—a note, hand-delivered, inscribed with her name in a bold legible hand devoid of fancy flourishes. She had never seen Lord Elfingham’s writing, but she was instantly certain it was from him.
“Open it,” Felicity demanded.
Sophia broke the seal and unfolded the sheet. She read the message, and then read it again out loud. “Drew is unharmed. Weasel has a flesh wound and has apologised. All is well.” He had signed it with his initial. Not ‘E’, which would have been proper, but ‘J’. She traced the letter with her finger.
“Not very informative, is he?” Felicity served herself some bacon and scrambled eggs. “I am sure there must be more to it than that.”
There was, of course. Within the day, the whole story was all over town. Weasel had not waited for the full count, but had shot at his opponent’s back before Drew could turn towards him. He claimed he had misheard the count, which nobody believed.
He had, fortunately, missed—by a country mile, said those who witnessed the debacle. His poor aim met with almost as much derision as his poor sportsmanship.
As a consequence, he was forced to stand still while Drew took his shot. “I mean to take the fob off your chain,” Drew told him. “Stand very still. If you move, you may lose something you would prefer to keep.”
Weasel closed his eyes, they said, and he must have swayed, for Drew’s shot, as predicted, took the fob, but also scored Weasel’s abdomen. “Not more than a graze,” the gossips reported. Still, Weasel used the injury as an excuse to leave Town. Those who claimed to be in the know said it was at Haverford’s command, to give the gossip time to die down.
He worked one more piece of mischief on his way to wherever he went, which Sophia found out about a few days later when she arrived home from a pleasant visit to a friend to find her butler, Pinchbeck, hovering in the hall. As soon as she entered the house, he said, “Lord Hythe has arrived, my lady, and asks that you attend him in his study as soon as you return.”
“Very well,” Sophia agreed. “Tell my brother that I will be with him shortly. I will just go up to my room to wash.” London’s air and its filthy streets always left her feeling grimy.
The butler shuffled, but did not remove himself from her path. “Urgently, my lady, his lordship said.” His tone was apologetic, but uncompromising.
Sophia wondered what could possibly be so urgent. Hythe was not usually so peremptory. She handed her maid her bonnet, gloves, and pelisse. “Very well. Theodosia, take these up to my room, please, and begin to prepare for my next change. Lay out the green dinner gown with the deep flounce.”
The butler was leaving, his message delivered. “Pinchbeck, order tea and refreshments to Hythe’s study, please. Also, a bowl of hot water, soap, wash cloth, and towel. If Hythe wishes me to come to him directly, then he can watch my ablutions.”
“Yes, my lady.”
Sophia knocked and opened the door, catching Hythe with his boots on his desk, leaning back in his chair with his eyes shut. He swung his legs down and stood. “Sophia. Good. I wanted to talk to you.”
“So I understood from Pinchbeck. Immediately, he said. Without an opportunity to wash or tidy my hair.”
Hythe flushed. “I did not demand that you come as soon as you walked in the door. Old Pinchy exceeds his commission.”
“He misunderstood, then.” Sophia rolled her sleeves back, ready for her wash. “I was certain, my dear, that you would not be so discourteous.”
“Of course not.” Hythe was blushing still more, his eyes turned away from his sister’s scandalously exposed arms. “I only told him I wished to speak to you as soon as possible. When you returned, I said.”
“I collect that you told him it was urgent. You may be pleased, Hythe, that your butler is so eager to obey you.” While inconveniencing and potentially offending the woman who had been mistress of this house in the ten years since her mother died. The servants saw as clearly as Sophia that her reign would end when Hythe took a wife.
“It can wait if you wish to…”
Hythe trailed off when a footman came in with a bowl of water, followed by Sophia’s maid Theodosia, carrying a towel, wash cloth, and soap.
“Not at all, Hythe. I have taken the liberty of sending for what I require.”
She sat on the sofa, and gestured to the footman to put the bowl on the table in front of her. Hythe, who hated anything out of order, looked at the arrangement with horror. To distract him, she asked Hythe, “Have you had a pleasant trip?” They conversed while she swiftly washed her face and then her hands. He had been to their estate in Sussex—to escape the social round, as she well knew, though he had clearly used the time to good effect, as he shared with her the decisions he’d made with his land steward while he was there.
Another pair of maids arrived with the tea service and a tray of tidbits. Sophia nodded to the footman to remove the bowl, and Theodosia took the towel Sophia handed her and wiped the table with it before the others put down their trays in front of Sophia.
Hythe paled at the misuse of the towel. Poor Hythe. It had been unkind of her to show her pique at his command by disrupting the order he imposed on his study.
Without asking, she made him a cup of tea. The last of the servants left and he took the chair near to where she sat, dropping into it gracelessly. “Really, Sophia, I wish you wouldn’t… Well. Never mind that. That isn’t what I wanted to say.”
Sophia handed him his cup, and then a plate with two of his favourite savoury tarts.
“What did you wish to discuss with me, brother? Is there a problem?”
He hesitated, examining his tea as if words were written on the surface of the brew. Sophia waited.
“Sophia, I had a visitor at Four Oaks. Winderfield called there on his way to rusticate while he recovered from being shot.”
“Did he, indeed?” She was pleased the man felt well enough for social calls. The injury must have been as trivial as Lord Elfingham had claimed. Not that she doubted his veracity, but in her experience, men frequently tried to ‘protect’ women by keeping them from any unpleasant knowledge.
“He told me he had been attacked by Lord Sutton’s sons because he objected to them courting Felicity. Is that true, Soph?”
“No, Hythe, it is not.” Sophia put down the cup she had prepared for herself, uncertain she could discuss Weasel’s calumnies without hurling the innocent porcelain object across the room.
“He has his arm in a sling and made a great fuss about the injury,” Hythe told her. “Said he might lose the use of that hand entirely, and it was his cousins’ fault.”
Sophia wrinkled her nose. “Mr Winderfield was wounded, not in the arm, but a graze across his,” she could not immediately think of a polite word, so indicated by waving across her own stomach. “It was a duel, Hythe, in proper form. The Marquis of Aldridge was his second. The man conducted himself so poorly that Aldridge told the duke his father he will never again be available to lend Weasel Winderfield the least countenance.”
Hythe frowned. “Poorly? In what way? And if he is wounded, how is his opponent? Was it Sutton’s sons, as Weasel claimed?”
In a few words, Sophia explained about Weasel shooting early and then standing sideways to make as small a target as he could, while Drew Winderfield calmly shot a fob off his chain.
“And only scratched him?” Hythe said. “I would have liked to see such shooting! I heard the man was a good shot, but that is a marvel.”
“I am told Mr Drew Winderfield was upset that Mr Weasel Winderfield could not stand still, and so spoiled the shot. According to gossip, he has since repeated the trick four times at Manton’s with volunteers of stouter courage, who have all come out of the experience unscathed.”
“I should like to see that.” Hythe was shaking his head in wonder.
Sophia took a sip of her tea, relaxing now that Hythe had changed from interrogator to enthusiastic shooting aficionado.
Her relief was premature. In the next moment, Hythe remembered his grievance. “Surely now Society will see that those barbarians are unfit for civilised company. One cannot just call a man out for no reason, not to mention that duelling is illegal.”
“No reason!” Sophia saw red. “Is that what that nasty little—” she fished for words and settled for the man’s nickname, “weasel told you. He insulted their mother. In public, in front of a ballroom of people.” A slight exaggeration, since Weasel had not intended his victims to overhear, but he had made the slur in front of Hamner, who had used it to stir trouble. For what purpose, Sophia had been unable to ascertain. Hamner had been playing least in sight ever since the duel.
“Good L—. Goodness. Are we to expect them to call out Haverford, then? And everyone who supports his appeal to the Privileges Committee? If they are so sensitive about their parents’ marriage being called into question, they will be fighting a number of duels.”
“As far as I am aware, Hythe, whatever your peers may say in private, they do not stand in a crowded room and call Lord Sutton’s deceased wife an oriental whore.”
Hythe opened and then shut his mouth. “Oh,” he said at last.
Sophia could not resist a slight twist of the screw. “Weasel did not tell you that?”
“I see. Are you certain, Soph? If so, I can understand why Winderfield—Andrew Winderfield, that is—took exception.” Hythe fought a valiant rear-guard action. “But you know how gossip exaggerates.”
“I was present at the time,” Sophia told him. “In fact, Weasel interrupted a conversation I was having with Hamner in order to make the remark, and it is not language I am accustomed to hearing in my presence, and in front of Felicity, too. I daresay if Mr Winderfield had not already dealt with his cousin, you would have needed to do so yourself, Hythe.” There. Let that give his thoughts a different direction.
“He really is a weasel, Soph.” Hythe sighed. “But a man might be a scoundrel and still inherit a title.”
If Sophia had the power to pick between Weasel Winderfield and Lord Elfingham as heir to the Winshire title, she would not be picking Weasel. “He is horrid,” she agreed.
“I have some sympathy, Soph,” Hythe argued. “He has spent his life thinking he was Winshire’s heir, and then Sutton turned up with all these children. Sutton has six sons, you know. He left two of them back in the East. If the Lords find for Sutton, then Weasel is out on his ear.”
Sophia cast him a disbelieving stare. “Weasel must have known for most of his life that the Duke of Winshire had more than one son, and the eldest had a son of his own. Even after the previous Lord Elfingham died three years ago, his father might have had another son. Weasel could not possibly have thought himself in line for the ducal coronet for more than the bare year it took Lord Sutton to arrive to take his brother’s place.”
Hythe shrugged. “True enough, but he is still disappointed.”
“And badly in debt,” Sophia suggested.
Hythe sighed again. “Haverford says—well. Never mind that.” His tone became brisk. “What about Weasel’s claim that Sutton’s sons are after Felicity? I hope you can tell me that that is a lie, too?”
Sophia had wondered the same thing. For a fleeting moment, she considered prevaricating, but Hythe was Felicity’s guardian. Even if he did leave her mostly to Sophia’s care, he had a right to enquire. “Whether the Winderfield men admire Felicity, I could not say,” she said, calmly. “They do not flirt or make cakes of themselves, like some of her admirers. But they often,” almost always, in fact, which was telling, “attend the same events as us, and they usually speak with us—dance with us, if the occasion has dancing. One dance each. Nothing untoward. They have the best of manners. I have never had any concern about either of them.” Which was perfectly true. Her silly fascination with Lord Elfingham was her own fault, not his—her own affair, too, and nothing to share with her brother.
Hythe made a dissatisfied grunt. “Is Felicity as taken with them as you seem to be?” he asked. Sophia managed to show no reaction. Hythe mostly ignored what was going on around him, his head full of being the perfect earl and a credit to the father he had imbued with near-divine virtues, but when he bothered to pay attention to other people, he could be disconcertingly insightful.
“Felicity shows no more interest in them than in anyone else, which is to say that she is thoroughly enjoying her Season and all the attention, but has not yet seen anyone who has caused her to rethink her position on marriage.”
“I will not have either of them hanging after Felicity!” Hythe declared. “You must put a stop to it, Sophia.”
Quite what Sophia was to do, when the behaviour of both Winderfield brothers was beyond reproach, Hythe did not say, but Sophia was confident their pursuit would end with the Season, which was only a couple of weeks away.
Wherever James and Drew went, they were sure to be questioned about the duel, so it was easy enough for James to bring the conversation around to the circumstances that made it necessary. He discovered that the Earl of Hamner was well-enough liked, had no larger helping of vices than most of the ton’s single gentlemen, and was moderately well-heeled.
He was also a satellite in the orbit of the Duke of Haverford, which was probably explanation enough for why he repeated Weasel’s slur in Drew’s hearing, but did he know an assassin would be waiting to kill both James and Weasel? If he did, the man was an enemy. If he didn’t, convincing him of the treachery might remove a tool from Haverford’s reach.
The best way for James to know Hamner’s motives would be to talk to the man, but Hamner had left London, cancelling several engagements with the excuse of estate business.
“His main estate is near Gloucester,” James pointed out to his father the evening before he was due to leave, with a party of servants and body guards, to escort his cousin Charlotte and his brother Thomas to the duchy’s mountain fortress. “We could detour past there on our way north.”
The evacuation was not only in response to the attempt on James’s life. He and Drew had twice beaten off assailants in the streets, and the whole family was still recovering from a runaway brewer’s dray that would have wiped out the schoolroom party as they crossed the road on their way home from Hyde Park, had it not been for the quick thinking and even quicker reactions of 15-year-old Barnabas and Yousef’s wife Patience. None of them thought it an accident.
Drew had already left for the fortress with Sarah and Rosemary, and Yousef would follow in a couple of days with Barnabas and Aunt Grace.
Father, in the act of reaching for the cup of rich dark coffee his daughter Ruth had just prepared for him, paused briefly, then continued the motion. He took a cube of sugar between his teeth, then lifted the cup for a sip before commenting.
“You will see your party safely to home first,” he ordered, “check that the place is well secured, and wait for Yousef to arrive to hand over command. After that, visit Hamner by all means. Take Jeyhun and two of his men.”
Jeyhun was the commander of the men who had come from Para Daisa to serve their retired kagan as armed retainers. At home, the men had been clan. Sutton made it clear to the class-conscious English servants they answered only to him, James, and their own commander, who was to be treated as family, as were Yousef and his wife Patience, and Ruth’s friend and body guard Zyba.
Jeyhun had led the party that escorted Aunt Georgie and her companion to their home in Somerset to collect items they said they must have to make a stay at Winds’ Gate tolerable. Aunt Georgie argued that she and Aunt Letty were safe to stay in Somerset. “I am in no danger, Sutton,” she insisted. “My existence cannot affect the succession one way or the other.”
“Haverford wants me to suffer, Georgie. Losing you or any of the girls would serve his purpose as much as losing one of my sons.”
Georgie shook her head. “He would not make war on women,” she insisted. “Seduce, abandon, and neglect them, yes. Those things, his code allows. He would not kill a woman of his own class to punish a man, though in other ways he is not to be trusted with a female.”
Nonetheless, the earl insisted that they make a brief stop at their home and then headed north. Aunt Georgie capitulated when Father said, “I cannot demand it of you, Georgie, but I will beg if I have to. I need to know you are safe.”
Sutton was less successful with Ruth. “I would be easier in my mind if you would go with your brother,” Sutton commented to Ruth, but she shook her head.
“I will not leave my patient, Kaka,” she insisted, for perhaps the twentieth time. Ruth’s gift was healing. She had studied with every healer her family could tempt to sojourn in their mountain kingdom, had been apprenticed to a renowned hakim, a woman physician, and was currently the only person her grandfather allowed to attend him, though he saved his miserly favour for her sister Rosemary, who had somehow managed to charm him.
“I will not let her out of my sight, Lord,” Ruth’s friend Zyba assured Sutton. “We think the danger to your daughter is little, but we are taking every care, nonetheless.” Zyba’s English accent was almost perfect, but here in the private rooms of the Winderfield family she looked every inch the mountain warrior she was, in a flowing divided skirt caught at the ankles just above indoor shoes and a fitted tunic bound by a sash from which poked the jewelled hilts of a couple of knives. Ruth, too, could more than hold her own. Any assailant who made the mistake of discounting them as weak females would be fortunate to live to discover his error.