Page 10 of Deceiving an Earl
“Your turn, Armbruster.”
But Oliver was reading the note.
Urgent business. Please come right away–O’Leary
What in the hell would O’Leary want from him this late in the day—or early in the morning?
“Armbruster. Are you going to play or not?”
Oliver stood. “My apologies, gentlemen. It seems there is an urgent matter to which I must attend.”
The servant was hovering nearby. Oliver asked him to call for his carriage as he stubbed out his cigar.
All the way to Scotland Yard he tried to determine what the hell O’Leary needed. Never had the man summonsed Oliver before. Their friendship was based on drinking ale and speculating about current cases the Yard couldn’t solve.
He hopped out of his carriage before it stopped completely and was surprised to find O’Leary waiting for him at the door.
“I apologize for the lateness.” O’Leary looked Oliver up and down, noting his formal attire. “But I’m glad to see I didn’t get you out of bed.”
“It’s rare that I am in bed before the sun rises,” Oliver said.
“I hope I didn’t take you away from any…fun activities.” The hint was that Oliver might have been with a woman, which was the furthest from the truth. It’d been a few weeks since his last woman and, while he had been feeling itchy for another, that feeling had gone away after Ellen’s salon. He refused to contemplate the reason for that. It certainly had nothing to do with Ellen. Past nostalgia, nothing more.
“Just a spot of whist and a good cigar.” He missed the cigar more than he missed the women.
“Ah. Well, then I feel slightly less bad for dragging you here.”
“WhyamI here, O’Leary? Certainly you don’t have a case you would like to discuss.”
“Nothing like that. Truth is, I didn’t know who else to call. It’s a bit of a delicate situation.”
Now Oliver was even more intrigued. They were winding through the convoluted halls of the Yard. He’d never been here at this hour, and it was eerily quiet, their shoes echoing off the walls.
“I have in my possession a certain Lord Fieldhurst. He’s a bit inebriated. Very inebriated.” O’Leary sighed. “He’s far gone. Can barely speak.”
For a moment Oliver’s mind went to Ellen’s husband, forgetting that the man had been dead for three years. Then he recalled that the current Lord Fieldhurst was Ellen’s son.
Ellen’s son went on a drinking binge, and O’Leary had calledhim?
“What am I to do about this?” Oliver asked, not thrilled that O’Leary had summonsed him for a youth’s folly. Damn it, he’d been about to win that hand.
“I didn’t want to embarrass Lady Fieldhurst by dropping her son off at her front door. Neighbors would see, and we all know what that would bring.”
Gossip.
“And I certainly didn’t want to call such a woman of means to the Yard. That would be unseemly. So I thought you might be kind enough to drop the lad off at his home.”
By now they were standing outside a door that Oliver surmised was some sort of holding room for inebriated individuals.
“Is he being charged with anything?”
O’Leary hesitated. “There was a…skirmish. Over a dice game. A window was broken and a man’s eye blackened. More than likely, if he pays for the window, this will blow over.”
Oliver had never met Ellen’s son, and he was suddenly curious. His antics this night sounded like something that any boy feeling his oats would get into. Oliver tried to remember how old the lad was. Fifteen? Sixteen?
Why wasn’t he in school? Oliver was certain that this week was not a school break.
O’Leary opened the door, and Oliver was taken aback by the stench that assailed him. Vomit, urine, and alcohol.
