Chapter 9

NINE

I t was his second evening at Brooks’s, and Yates was not regretting that his membership was borrowed—or rather, that he and Merritt were only allowed in as Lord Xavier’s guests. Truth be told, he liked clubs solely because of their benefit to his work and the fact that the clientele of the prestigious clubs was the very one the Imposters needed to cultivate as their own.

But he had to admit that he doubted this particular surveillance would prove as useful as he had at first hoped. Their arrival in London had been greeted with a very unexpected headline—Victoria Rheams was in a coma in hospital, after being beaten and robbed on her way to one of the charities she supported, the article claimed, after meeting a friend for lunch on Monday last.

Monday . The very day she’d been supposed to meet Alethia but hadn’t shown up. The very day Alethia had been shot three times after she was supposed to have met her . Coincidence?

He couldn’t think so. But he also couldn’t barge into her hospital room and demand to see her, to try to rouse her from a coma. He could only spend what free moments he had on his knees, praying for the lady to recover—and certainly not because it would be convenient for him if she did. Mr. A had been planning to call on her this week. Instead, Yates would return to the Tower with yet another bit of bad news for Alethia.

His stomach felt like lead.

Merritt didn’t look as though he felt any better ... though that could well be because they were in a club, and he hated such things. Determined to focus on what was still within their control, Yates tossed his brother-in-law a smirk. “You should really try to look as though you aren’t sizing everyone up like you would an enemy combatant, Merritt.”

Merritt’s expression didn’t soften. “You sound like Xavier.”

“Because Xavier is a wise and worthy friend,” Xavier said from Merritt’s other side. He , who had no reason to be personally affected by the shocking news of Mrs. Rheams, looked happy as the proverbial clam and as comfortable as Franco on the trapeze—and had in fact declared that he was glad to spend his evenings at the club because “his only reason for attending balls” had seemingly left London. Though knowing X, in another week he’d find another fair “reason” for attending whatever gatherings his parents thought he should.

He lounged in an armchair with a snifter of something in his hand and a newspaper open in his lap. “And you’re welcome, by the way. Again. For not only—again—using two of my valuable guest passes for you both, but for being so discreet and circumspect as to not even ask you why you requested something you so clearly don’t want.”

Yates nodded. “He does have a point, Merritt. You couldn’t ask for a better friend. Handy chap to know, too, I have to say.”

Merritt snorted. “Don’t sing his praises so loudly, Fairfax. It’ll go straight to his head.”

Xavier buried a chuckle in his snifter. “Nonsense. I’m fully aware of my virtues. Why, your cousin was singing them herself the other day.” He made a show of closing his eyes. “Ah, sweet Georgette.”

Rather than rise to the bait, Merritt grinned. No doubt because he knew that the cousin he loved like a sister wasn’t truly in his friend’s sights. “I hear she trounced you in tennis again.”

“Shh!” Xavier quickly glanced around. “Don’t say that kind of thing so loudly, old boy. I have a reputation to uphold. And I shouldn’t have even let her bully me into playing. Isn’t fitting, you know, to let the genders mix on a tennis court.”

“He says because he lost,” Merritt said toward Yates, though obviously to Xavier.

Xavier grinned. “I would claim to have let her win, but you wouldn’t believe me.”

“Because she trounces me regularly.” Merritt jerked his head toward Yates. “We ought to let Fairfax have a go.”

Yates usually enjoyed teasing Merritt about his pretty little cousins, two of whom were of marriable age and flirted with him outrageously whenever they were in company, which inevitably made Merritt scowl. But Lord Vernon had come into view. Knowing he had to maintain the facade, however, he tracked the older man without looking away from his friends. “You know I can’t in good conscience defeat a young lady at tennis. It wouldn’t be sporting.”

Merritt had noted Vernon’s arrival, too, but he was getting quite good at reconnaissance. He shifted a bit but looked as though he was merely focusing better on Xavier. “You don’t seem to mind shaming Lady Lavinia in your gymnasium at the Tower.”

Xavier’s brows lifted. “Lady Lavinia went home with you and Marigold? Is that where she’s disappeared to? Every one’s abuzz—she’s always vanishing these days, it seems. She and Lady Alethia both leaving Town at the same time, though...” He shook his head, a strange look on his face. “Might as well have declared the Season over. And though Lavinia frequently retreats—for understandable reasons—I’ve yet to hear any convincing gossip as to where Lady Alethia has gone. Half a mind to hire the Imposters to find her.”

Yates snorted a laugh before he could help himself, then covered it with, “X, if you started hiring investigators to find every young lady who decides to leave Town without letting you know first, you’ll soon run straight through your inheritance.”

Xavier scowled at him. “It isn’t as though I expect her or anyone else to apprise me of everything. But I was supposed to be dining with her family in a few days, and it was canceled.”

Xavier, dining with the Barremores? Not surprising, he supposed. She was a leading lady, he London’s most eligible bachelor. No doubt both sets of parents were vying for a match.

But if X could be counted on for anything—beyond being such a handy chap for Yates’s own purposes—it was for forgetting the young ladies he liked so well within a week or two of parting from them.

And neither Yates nor Merritt were about to volunteer that Lady Alethia was at the Tower as well.

Merritt cleared his throat. “As for Lavinia, I believe she means to stay at the Tower until Marigold’s time has come.” His face bore the exact amount of concern over his wife that he always showed—but Yates caught the brief flick of his gaze when Vernon paused with two other men not far off.

Yates nearly forgot himself and looked overlong. He wouldn’t have known what Rheams looked like had a small photograph of the couple not appeared in the article about the attack. But that man there, the one Vernon approached, was most definitely him.

What in blazes was he doing at a club while his wife was at death’s door? If the article was even remotely accurate, she didn’t have long to live. Unless she awoke within the next few days, she’d die from the lack of nutrients—not to mention the horrific wounds that had landed her in such a state to begin with. Were it Yates with a loved one in that condition, he would have taken up residence at her hospital bed, and Lord have mercy on anyone who tried to remove him from her side.

Clearly, Rheams and Yates hadn’t much in common. Or perhaps he wasn’t giving the man enough credit. Perhaps he’d spent all day at hospital and had come to club to grab a bite to eat and receive the support of friends. He did have a few lines on his face that looked etched by worry.

“I was quite relieved to hear Lavinia planned to stay,” Merritt was saying. “I can’t be there the whole time, much as I may like to, what with work. I rest easier knowing she has company.”

“You know,” Xavier said, “you could solve this dilemma by resigning your commission and letting your uncle support you like he insists he wants to do.”

Merritt tossed his friend a scowl. “Some of us like doing something useful with our lives.”

Xavier snorted. “Breathe that sentence around your uncle and you’ll cut him to the quick.”

“I’m not saying he isn’t doing useful things, but he hardly needs my help, and he’s already trained me in how to manage the estate if necessary. I would be utterly superfluous—and I am not cut out to be a man of leisure.”

Yates lifted a hand to his mouth and stage-whispered to Xavier, “I believe the dig’s aimed at you , my lord.” Everyone knew that the second son of the duke lived like a king but with no responsibilities—not yet, at least. He stood to inherit an estate from his mother’s people, but much like Merritt, he wasn’t needed for its running yet.

A luxury Yates hadn’t known to appreciate when he was an adolescent, but which he’d missed every day since.

Who was the third man in Vernon’s trio? He looked to be in his forties, well-dressed, salt-and-pepper hair ... which could have described any number of men in society. Projecting an air of boredom, Yates let his gaze wander the room, passing over the group but not lingering any longer than idle curiosity would dictate.

The third man had a scar tracing from temple to ear—distinctive. And he was fairly certain there’d been a note about a feature like that in one of the dossiers Lavinia had pulled the other day. He sorted through them in his mind for a moment before the name surfaced.

Richard Dunne, brother of an earl. Whose scant dossier he certainly never would have pulled to review before he came to London had Lavinia not done so—assuming he’d even thought to come to London, which he wouldn’t have.

Had Marigold been here, he’d have given her the requisite I-told-you-so about bringing Lavinia aboard. Even if this lead came to nothing, she’d certainly proven her ability to chase connections through their files, which would be infinitely useful.

Merritt had fallen silent, and Xavier had returned to his paper, which let Yates attune his ears toward the corner in which the trio stood. He knew that no one would think he could overhear them from here, and his eavesdropping wasn’t perfect by any means—interrupted as it was with bursts of laughter and invitations to games of this or that from the rest of the room—but he’d trained himself well enough to pick out much of their conversation.

“...be back?” Rheams, he thought.

“Saturday, I should think.” Vernon? “Have you spoken to your contacts at the papers? Why has no story been run along with your own?”

“I don’t know. They’ve heard nothing. I had Courtney hang about the church again, but the vicar was looking at him strangely.”

“Are you certain Courtney succeeded?” The third voice.

“Three times, Dunne. Who beats that?”

“Yet Tori languishes on, and it was only his fists.”

A tingle washed up Yates’s spine, even as his stomach went tight and hard. Nothing about the first words indicated they were talking about Alethia, but that last bit certainly made it sound like they were. Or at least could be. Three times, three gunshots. And hanging about the church—James’s. Then the mention of Tori—Victoria, his wife. Linking the two attacks together.

Fire ate at Yates’s veins. To his ears, it sounded suspiciously as though Rheams knew exactly who his wife’s attacker was ... and that he deemed the thug’s action something to be “succeeded” at. He needed to figure out who this Courtney bloke was.

He also needed to check in with James. Yates had been a bit concerned about James’s safety, but his friend had assured him that he was in the best possible position. He was frequently gone from the church at that time of day, out calling on parishioners. No one could assume he’d been there.

They’d also discussed at the time what they ought to do about the fact that those men expected Alethia’s body to be found in the church, but they’d decided to simply focus on protecting her . Once they’d stemmed the initial flow and she seemed well enough to be moved, James had cleaned up the blood while Yates carried her to his friend’s carriage.

What could the culprits really do, after all, if her body was simply never found and reported?

Yates had insisted on dropping one of his Imposters’ cards at the scene, next to the confessional, in case the men returned. If they paused to think how odd it was that she’d been in there, they might connect the dots and realize someone was on the other side of the booth. He wanted them to know who—more or less. At the very least, he wanted them to have a reasonable explanation for why she’d vanished.

No one knew who the Imposters were—but everyone, at this point, had heard stories of what they were capable of. Coming and going without being seen, discovering things that couldn’t be discovered, hearing things no one should hear. Why not disappear a girl? Or, it seemed, her body, which was what these men expected to be left.

He kept his face in a vague mask but willed the burst of laughter from the opposite corner to die down so he could listen more.

“I don’t like it. She should have been reported by now....” More infernal laughter. “...housekeeper, at least.”

That definitely sounded like Alethia.

Another duo passed behind his chair, muddling the conversation. When they’d gone, Dunne was the one speaking again. “...stumbling about?”

“I’ve checked. No reports from any neighborhoods nearby. And she’d be recognized.”

Beside him, Merritt drew in a long breath. “It has to be her,” he muttered so quietly that Yates doubted even Xavier heard him.

Yates absolutely agreed. But they would need more than bits and pieces of one overheard conversation to prove anything. And they still didn’t have a clue what they were really trying to prove, other than the obvious. Yes, someone had shot Lady Alethia Barremore and beaten Mrs. Rheams.

But they had no motive beyond the usual one of monetary gain. And these current suspects could lift a brow and have any investigations based on that dismissed out of hand.

Yates stood, making a show of stretching and loosening his neck, as if he’d simply been too long in one position. Eyes focused on one of the paintings hanging on a nearby wall, he meandered a few steps away from his sofa.

The men didn’t even pause to see where he went—which proved, to his mind, that they were either amateurs at anything underhanded and didn’t know how to make certain no one was spying on them ... or they were old hands who had been lulled into a false sense of security thanks to successful conversations before. He couldn’t say which, not yet.

And then there was this Courtney character. Who beat one woman nearly to death and then shot another three times and didn’t verify their victim was dead before leaving? An amateur or a professional?

From his new vantage point, he could pick up on a few other details about the men. Vernon looked as though he’d come straight from Lords. Rheams still wore normal day attire, though it was a bit rumpled—perhaps he had been at hospital all day. Dunne was in full evening dress, tuxedo and bow tie included, which surely meant that Brooks’s wasn’t his final destination for the evening. But he had his hand in his pocket and was jingling something. Coins? The faint sound he strained to pick out didn’t sound right.

Rheams sighed. “We still have two days before his lordship returns. I daresay I’ll be in mourning by then.” He didn’t sound broken up about it. “It should prove a distraction.”

“And I think Jackson is ready to be invited.” Dunne jingled the coins in his pocket again. “And perhaps Mason too.”

Vernon glanced at the man’s pocket. “You have them with you?”

Even from his off angle, Yates could see the smirk. “I grabbed a few. If you approve?”

“They will make good patrons. Better allies.”

Yates’s nerves snapped and sizzled. Invited to what? Had what with him? Something, it seemed, by which said invitation was extended.

He’d long ago learned to trust his instincts when they told him to follow what could well be a rabbit trail. And his instincts were screaming that this was far more than that. He turned back to his friends, nabbed a canapé from the tray of a passing waiter, and lobbed it at Merritt’s head. It ricocheted off and landed in Xavier’s lap, which was absolutely perfect. They both leapt to their feet, cries of outrage on their lips.

Xavier’s was probably real.

Merritt had been listening, too, though, so he’d know exactly what Yates was about. Still, he did a smashing imitation of outrage as he exclaimed in his best Coldstream Guard voice, “I swear, Fairfax, sometimes you are so juvenile it confounds me. When I was your age—”

Yates laughed, charged toward him, and knocked him into Xavier. “Lighten up, old man,” he said as he eased back into a sparring stance. “This place is as boring as a tomb. I told you we should have stuck to the Marlborough.”

Under normal circumstances, Lieutenant Colonel Sir Merritt Livingstone never would have engaged in something as juvenile as a scrum in an exclusive club—but he knew what was at stake. He handed Xavier his glass of port, which he hadn’t taken more than two sips of. “Hold this, will you, X? High time someone teach this pup a lesson.”

Laughing again, Yates danced away like he was in a boxing ring, fists raised into a defensive posture. By his estimation, they had less than a minute before some mustachioed old-timer either trundled over to intervene or called the club’s officiants to do the job for them. He didn’t have time for as subtle a dance as he would have chosen otherwise, so he aimed his back toward the trio he was targeting.

Merritt made a show of cracking his neck toward the right.

Yates adjusted. And taunted him with another smirk and a curl of his fingers. “Bring your worst.”

He’d sparred with his brother-in-law often enough in the last year that he could anticipate exactly how he’d move, just as Merritt could him. It made it easy to throw a few harmless punches, laughing and grunting like he was some overconfident pup, exactly like Merritt had accused. He outdid Merritt in mass, but his brother-in-law really had managed to knock him over a few times, so they played out the move that had best achieved it.

Merritt sent Yates stumbling back into the trio. Yates’s laughter turned to exclamations and a few senseless apologies as he knocked Vernon into Rheams hard enough to send them both crashing down and took Dunne out himself, tumbling onto him in a heap.

He held there for a split second, as if the wind had been knocked out of him, knowing well that his weight would be crushing. Then he gasped and clambered off, pasting the same look onto his face that had gotten him out of trouble with Father countless times. A lad being a lad , that’s what the look said.

“Blimey! So sorry, sir.” Sometimes it was handy being the youngest man in Lords. As soon as people recognized him, they expected him to be as green as any other spoiled young man. And in his case, everyone knew Father hadn’t sent him off to school and thus expected a bit of backwardness to boot. Served him well. “Did I hurt you?”

He must have, in fact, knocked the air out of Dunne, because he gasped, blinking in clear shock. Yates patted his arms, his ribs, his hips, as if searching for injury. He heard Merritt apologizing to the other two, saying something about his idiot of a brother-in-law, heard Xavier making quite a bit of noise behind them, apologizing for bringing such a disturbance to Brooks’s.

Yates focused on nudging free one of the metal circles from Dunne’s pocket that was already trying to fall out anyway and swiping it into his palm. He wasn’t the best pickpocket in the world—hence the need for the rather loud distraction—but he got the job done and had the thing safely in his own pocket before he hauled Dunne forcibly to his feet.

Yates held his eyes so wide they were starting to hurt. “Sir? Are you all right? Did I do any damage?”

Dunne finally regained himself and huffed out what could have been either anger or amusement. “Fine. Blimey is right, young man. Are you half elephant?”

Yates let his lips turn into a very real grin. “No. But I do have a special fondness for them. I couldn’t believe it when old Eli didn’t return with the circus last time. Still miss the big fellow.”

Dunne wasn’t looking at him as though he recognized him, but someone—most likely Lord Vernon—would. Which would mean, in turn, that they’d know his father. They’d know that the Fairfaxes had wasted countless pounds on entertainments. Whatever they thought of him for it, they would write it off as a quirk and dismiss the incident as one to be expected of a gent who chased frivolities. He was simply leaning into the story Vernon or someone else here would tell Dunne after Yates left.

He clapped a hand to Dunne’s shoulder. “Sorry about that. Really.” He sent a sheepish look toward the stern-faced Merritt. “Think I landed myself in trouble with my sister’s husband—though I still say a spot of trouble’s more fun than sitting about all night. What’s the point of a club if you sit here drinking and reading, anyway? I could do that at home.”

Dunne chuckled, and it sounded authentic. “Ah, such youth.” He clapped a hand to Yates’s shoulder now and turned him toward Vernon and Merritt and Rheams. “This young man needs to be introduced to some true entertainment, Vern. Which gaming hell should he try? Or perhaps he’d prefer some fairer company?”

Yates’s stomach soured. He would, at that, but not the sort this man meant.

Merritt still wore his uniform, having come here right from the office. He tugged at the red jacket and straightened his spine. “What the young man needs is a stint with His Majesty’s finest. That would whip him into a shape worth holding.”

Xavier must have appeased the powers-that-be because he joined them now and gave Merritt’s shoulder a friendly shove. “Do relax, Sir Merritt. The army wouldn’t know what to do with Lord Fairfax.”

He had to give it to Xavier. He couldn’t have any idea what they were about, but he knew how to roll with the punches. Yates grinned. “I can always count on you for a champion, LordX.”

He tipped an imaginary hat. “At your service, my young friend. Anything to needle this one a bit.”

Merritt shrugged away from Xavier’s next cuff and strode toward Yates, looking every bit the authority figure. He pointed toward the door. “Out. Now. You’ve disgraced us enough for one night, and when I tell your sister how you’ve behaved, she’s going to have a few things to say to you.”

Yates winced, as if what she’d say wouldn’t be “Quick thinking, little brother.” “Must you tattle to Marigold about everything ?”

“Must you still act as though you’re thirteen instead of twenty-three?”

Yates let himself be corralled toward the exit. “Must you act as though you’re one hundred instead of thirty?”

“He’s been acting that way since he was thirteen,” Xavier assured them. He darted in front of Yates to open the door to the corridor and shut it resolutely behind them after they passed through, his face shifting from amusement to frustration and back again. “I can’t take the two of you anywhere. Do I even want to know what that was about?”

“No,” Yates and Merritt said in unison.

Xavier huffed and led the way toward the building’s exit. “You’re lucky I’m such an easygoing chap. And that those three pompous prats were so hilarious-looking, sprawled on the floor like that.”

Yates and Merritt exchanged a look, both their mouths quirking into smiles. “Prats, you say.” Yates slung an arm over Xavier’s shoulders. “Tell us more.”

Xavier looked between them again but then shrugged. “Father knows them and likes them well enough, but ... I don’t know. They always struck me as insincere. You know the type—on the boards of the charities, holding those under them to the highest standards, but they know those ‘best’ gaming hells and are good friends, shall we say, of Mrs. Jeffries.”

Yates frowned, trying to place the name.

Merritt didn’t even try, it seemed. “Who is Mrs. Jeffries?”

Xavier ran a hand down his face. “Sometimes I forget that you’ve spent most of your adult life out of country. A madam, Merritt. She runs a brothel that caters to the aristocracy.”

Watching Merritt’s face wash pale might have been amusing if Yates didn’t feel the same revulsion. He glanced over his shoulder. “Those men? Rather glad I bowled them over.”

“And they have the audacity of frowning at me for not settling down yet.” Xavier’s usual good humor simmered into genuine annoyance. “As if it would be better to follow in their footsteps, marry for convenience, and then do whatever I please behind my wife’s back. Some people do make a mockery of what they espouse. And Rheams! All of society has heard him grumbling about his wife, yet to show his face here while she’s near death?” Face in harder lines than Yates had ever seen it, Xavier shook his head. “Pompous, heartless prat. And worse. Were he a common man, Scotland Yard would be pointing the finger at him for hiring someone to supposedly rob and beat her.”

A theory they would certainly do well to entertain, horrifying as it was. After a check to make sure no one was nearby, Yates plunged a hand into his pocket, frowning anew at the metal that met his fingertips. It wasn’t a coin, that was certain. It had a circular side, yes, but the opposite side wasn’t flat. It was bumped, almost like ... He pulled it out for a better look. “A pin.” And now that he was looking at it more closely ... “Tie pin. The other two were both wearing them.”

“Let me see.” Merritt took it from Yates’s fingers, tilting it toward the nearest sconce they passed. “Something’s inscribed, but I can’t make it out.”

Xavier motioned them toward the coat check to reclaim their hats. It had the added bonus of being better lit than the corridor.

They waited until the attendant had taken their claim stub and vanished into the back before Merritt lifted it toward the light. “The Empire House.”

Yates pursed his lips. “One of the charities on our list.” He looked at Xavier, not bothering to explain what list he meant. “Have you heard of it, X?”

Xavier, good sport that he was, gave it a moment’s thought but said nothing until after he took his hat from the man behind the counter, then passed theirs each to them and led them out the doors. “In passing, at least. One of those that seeks housing and opportunity for displaced women and children who end up in London from around the empire, isn’t it? I seem to recall Mother attending some gala and telling us about the woman she’d met from British Guiana or Borneo or some such.”

Merritt handed the pin back to Yates, so he took his turn examining it as Yates put on his hat. Letting the questions roll about. The pin itself was simple enough—a gold circle, embossed with a classically styled building, the words around the circumference.

“I’m missing something,” Yates said. “Why would Dunne be carrying pins for a charity in his pocket, as if they’re some sort of invitation to a ‘good ally and patron’?”

With a shrug, Xavier merely stepped aside rather than moving directly to the valet who’d fetch his car. “That sort? They seek out those positions as trustees and board members for the status of it. Given the gala Mother described, that place has sponsors and donors with deep pockets. Being associated with it could be a kind of badge of honor. Literally, perhaps. Could be that they seek out certain chaps and dangle a position before them in return for a favor for something else.”

Yates grimaced and put the pin back in his pocket. “Doesn’t seem like the proper point of a charity, does it? When it’s more about being seen helping than actually giving any aid?”

“Welcome to society, old boy.” Xavier finally lifted a hand to get the attention of the valet stationed outside, a white ticket in his fingers. “Nothing’s ever about what you do—only about how you look doing it. And how many people see you.”

The summer night was warm and close and made him wish for the North Sea. Yates sighed. “I should have run away and joined a circus.”