Chapter Seven

T he inquiry agent had his office in a terraced house on the outskirts of Mayfair. Five steps led up from the street to two green doors, one of which had a brass plate that read "Wakefield and Wakefield".

Bran plied the knocker. The man who opened the door said, "Good morning. Sir Jowan Trethewey and Mr. Hughes? Come on in. I'm Wakefield."

They followed him into an entrance hall and then through to an office that might at one time have been a parlor. Wakefield waved them in the direction of a couple of chairs and took a seat behind one of two desks in the room. "Your note said that you had been referred by Lord Snowden and that you are hunting for your father's solicitor. Can you tell me what has happened, in your own words, and what you want me to do for you?"

Jowan and Bran had discussed how best to describe the situation they found themselves in, and why they had allowed four years to pass before pursuing the matter. They had agreed that they should start at the beginning, and so Jowan did.

"My father…" He glanced at Bran and corrected his words. "Our father died when I was still seven months shy of my twentieth birthday, and my brother here had just turned nineteen."

He waited for Wakefield to comment or show any reaction to the disclosure that he and Bran were brothers. Wakefield did not turn a hair but merely nodded.

"Father had never permitted either of us to be involved in his business dealings, and we had, in any case, been away for two years at university. The executor of his will sent for us to return for the reading of the will. It was simple enough. Father left everything to me." His indignation at the man's self-centered arrogance colored his voice. There had been nothing for Bran, whom he had recognized as his son. Nothing for the housekeeper, Mrs. Roskilly, who had managed his house for fifteen years and warmed his bed for at least a decade. Nothing for any of the other servants.

Correcting those oversights had been one of Jowan's first tasks once he turned twenty-one. Or, at least, he tried, though Bran refused to take his fair share. And Mrs. Roskilly was then in her last illness and already living as his pensioner in one of his cottages. He settled it on her and gave her an income for life. He didn't like the woman, and he was certain she had been complicit in taking Tamsyn from him, but the way Sir Carlyon had treated her was unjust. As it was, she died three months later.

"I take it someone was appointed to manage the estates during your minority?" Wakefield asked.

"The local earl was appointed my trustee. He thought to leave the day-to-day management to those my father had employed—the mines to the mine manager, the land to the land steward, and other matters to the local solicitor. As for me, he told me I was an adult and could do as I pleased."

"The path of least resistance," Wakefield commented.

The shrewd comment summed up Lord Trentwood very well. "Exactly. His lordship is a pleasant fellow, much given to the joys of the table and disinclined to trouble himself. When I told him I wanted to find out how matters stood with my inheritance, he roused sufficiently to write letters to each of my stewards telling them I had his authority."

He sighed, remembering his own reaction to what they had discovered. "What Bran and I found was a mess. The land had been neglected—the steward said that my father refused to invest or to change to more modern practices. Some of the tenancies had fallen vacant because the cottages were unlivable. The same with the two tin mines—wages that could not compete with our neighbors, housing that was tumbling down, and old equipment that was increasingly dangerous. Our fishing villages were not much better."

The grim look on Bran's face was undoubtedly mirrored on his own, as he and his brother both remembered the shocking revelations from the manager and the steward. "Our income from tenancies, mines, and fishing catches had dropped and was barely enough to keep things going as they were, let alone to make the investments needed," Jowan explained. "Yet our father had continued to spend lavishly on clothing, wine, horseflesh, house parties, and his mistresses." His anger at the old man rose again to choke him and he paused to take a calming breath or two.

"He had other sources of income," Wakefield surmised.

"So we assumed," Bran volunteered. "And so the local solicitor confirmed. It took some persuasion to find out exactly what he had invested in, but we are Cornish boys, Mr. Wakefield, born and bred. My mother was a fisherman's daughter and I lived in her father's house until my grandmother died. Jowan ran with miners' sons from the time he could toddle. Both of us know what kind of enterprise is available to a man who cares about making high profits but who has no morals to speak of."

Wakefield nodded. "Smuggling, I take it?"

"Ess," Bran nodded, dropping into Cornish.

"Smuggling," Jowan confirmed. "While we were at war, mark you. He had other investments, too. Shares in manufacturing a mine pump, a row of houses in Truro, and a few other things. Enough so we could drop the smuggling and still raise enough to begin the improvements on the land and in the mines. And one more investment we could find little about. We discovered income payments over the past four years, and two years before that a couple of large payments from the Trethewey accounts. The local solicitor confirmed that Father had another investment or investments but knew only that someone in London was handling it. Any papers to do with that investment, Father had kept himself. He was his own secretary, and if he had a system, we have yet to figure it out."

"It took us months to even find the name of the man in London," Bran said. "Jowan wrote to him and had no reply."

"I wrote several times," Jowan confirmed. "No reply."

He handed Wakefield the papers they had found regarding the solicitor and the investments—precious little, but enough to hint that there might be some money somewhere. He'd also included their notes about their actions to date.

"You did not come to London once you had this name," Wakefield noted, a statement rather than a question.

"We have had much to do in Cornwall," Bran explained. "Fortunately, Lord Trentwood was only too willing to let us—or Jowan, rather—make the decisions and take the actions needed to put our affairs to rights, but it has taken years of hard work to make the land, the mines, and the fishing catch as productive as they should be."

Jowan cautioned, "We're not there yet, but we are at least far enough along to make this trip to London. We called at the address we had for the solicitor who was handling Father's investment, whatever it was, and he has been gone from there for at least four years."

"We realize that it may be too late to do anything about the money that has gone missing," Bran acknowledged, "but we would like to at least try to find the culprit."

"I will see what I can do," Wakefield answered. He waved the stack of papers. "This gives me a good start."

"There is another matter," Bran said, with a nod of encouragement to Jowan.

Wakefield raised an eyebrow.

Jowan wasn't sure where to start. "The singer, Tammie Lind. I need to know… That is, could you find out…" What? If she was a prisoner? It sounded ridiculous to his own ears, and he could only imagine what Wakefield would think of it.

"The lady is actually Tamsyn Roskilly, the daughter of our father's housekeeper," Bran explained. "She left Cornwall when she was sixteen, promising to keep in touch. She failed to write, even to her mother. When her mother died, shortly after our father, we informed her through the Earl of Coombe, her patron."

Wakefield, who had been toying with his pen looked up at that, his focus sharpening.

"We received no reply even to that," Bran continued. "When we called on the Earl of Coombe five years ago, and again on this trip, we were denied entry. It is possible that the lady has brushed the dust of her homeland from her feet and wants nothing to do with anything from her past. However, my brother fears that letters from home might have been kept from her, or that she is being suborned in some way, or both."

"Bran puts it very well," Jowan agreed. "We will leave her alone if that is her choice. But we owe her a rescue if she needs one."

"The Earl of Coombe has a dark reputation," Wakefield told them. "I can tell you that without any investigation at all. How much it is still deserved, I do not yet know. When he was last in England, he was infamous for his parties and his liaisons and known in certain circles for dissolute behavior beyond that normally expected of even a young British aristocrat. I have not followed his activities on the continent, but I know who might have done so. I can ask. Also, I have another client who has asked me to investigate his current activities. I can report on what I find to you if you wish."

"If you would," Jowan said.

"As to Miss Roskilly, or Miss Lind, as she is now known, I should be able to find out what you want to know. You might not like any answers I find for you, however. Coombe was well known for his ability to corrupt innocence, and I cannot imagine that any young woman in his power would escape his attentions."

Jowan shut his eyes against the roaring in his ears. His sweet Tamsyn in the hands of a villain! He didn't want to imagine it but was besieged by a kaleidoscope of scenes of her calling for help while a malign presence assailed her.

"Jowan?" Bran's voice anchored him back in the present and allowed him to catch his breath. He used it to give the investigator his answer.

"Find out, Wakefield. It is better to know the worst rather than be haunted by speculation."

*

Lady Snowden set a good table, and her guests were an entertaining lot. Jowan found himself taking a Mrs. Ashby into dinner. She was accompanied this evening by her husband, a Mr. Elijah Ashby, and when Jowan asked if he was the famous travel writer, she smiled and blew a kiss at a gentleman halfway down the other side of the table. "He is, Sir Jowan," she told him.

She was an early reader of the popular books, she told him, and they discussed some of their favorite anecdotes from the volumes for the rest of the remove.

After the servants cleared the plates and brought in the next collection of dishes, he turned to the lady on the other side, a Lady Stancroft. They had been briefly introduced at the musicale . Once again, she was wearing an ornate mask that covered one side of her face. Given the minor scars on the visible side and the somewhat more unsightly scars on her neck, he guessed the mask covered damage she did not care to show in public.

"My husband tells me he is considering investment in your mine, Sir Jowan," she said after he had greeted her. "What is your position on employing children?"

Once again, Jowan found himself defending his stance of allowing those over the age of twelve to take up jobs in the mines. Lady Stancroft saw his point but insisted that families would never be able to drag themselves out of poverty if their children were not given the opportunity for education.

They had the opportunity, he explained, since he and Bran had funded a dame school. But, he told her, neither they nor their families could afford, in most instances, to take full advantage of it. Still, Jowan hoped that insisting on the little ones staying in school might change things over time. Surely a mother and father who had at least basic reading and numbering skills might see a benefit in encouraging a budding scholar if one of their brood showed talent.

He tried to express some of that to Lady Stancroft. Again, she was surprisingly sympathetic. "I see your point. It may take a generation or two, you think, to change minds and attitudes."

"Not always," Bran spoke across the table. "Two of our boys started apprenticeships in Plymouth this year, and one of the girls is being kept on at the school to train as a teacher. Jowan paid for the articles for both boys and is paying a weekly stipend for the girl."

"It is good business," Jowan protested. "The village lost its blacksmith several years ago. In time we'll be able to provide a living for one of the boys, and the wheelwright is growing older and has no sons to inherit his shop. If the village is to continue to thrive, we need to provide options for our young people. And a thriving village is good for me, as a landowner and a mine owner."

"Well said," commented a man from farther down the table. "I wish more landowners and industrialists took that view. So many see education as a threat to their positions, rather than as a way of bringing wealth to their area."

"Prosperity and happiness," commented one of the women, and the conversation became general, some supporting Jowan's standpoint, some wanting even more radical changes, and some espousing a more conservative, cautious approach.

It was far from the evening Jowan had expected in such high reaches of Society, and so he said to his host.

Snowden laughed. "You cannot judge all of Society by my friends, Trethewey, any more than you can judge them by the friends of, say, the Duke of Norfolk, or Viscount Sidmouth. The upper classes are not a single group in London any more than they are in any other part of the country, and though we meet one another at large events such as balls, we tend otherwise to gather with those of like mind. Indeed, even clubs and coffee shops attract Whigs or Tories or those with other interests such as fashion or horses."

"Birds of a feather flock together?" Jowan asked. "Does that make you and your friends Whigs?"

Snowden pressed his lips together and narrowed his eyes in thought. "Not exactly."

"I suspect we are too radical for the Whigs and too conservative for the radicals," Lady Stancroft interjected. "Not that we all agree, as you have seen, Sir Jowan. I should like to see better education for children, particularly girls, a reform of the voting system, and regulation of child labor. Most people in this room would say the same, but the details of what each of those means and of how to achieve those ends might have us arguing from now until the end of time."

"Legislation lags behind the dreams of reformists, whatever their views on the detail," said Mrs. Ashby. "Thank goodness for practical people like you, Sir Jowan, and others here. People who simply make the changes that kindness and justice demand without waiting for politicians." She nodded at Snowden. "Snowy's wife Margaret offers her services as an herbalist to a free clinic that provides medical services to those who cannot afford to pay for a doctor."

A second nod was for Lady Stancroft. "Arial and her husband Peter have established dame schools in their villages, to name just one of their innovations. I think I'm correct in saying that all the ladies here support the Duchess of Winshire's efforts to provide opportunities for women, and also the Dowager Lady Sutton's to provide a refuge for women in intolerable circumstances."

"And would you say you are typical of London's ladies?" Bran asked.

"Sadly, no," Lady Stancroft replied. "No more than our husbands are typical of London's gentlemen. Far from it, in fact."

In that case, Jowan thought, he and Bran had been fortunate to find themselves in a community of like minds.