Page 58 of Her Impeccable Scoundrel
* * *
Dear Blythe,
I believe I’ve found the person you’re seeking, though I’ve not spoken to her in person. The house is in Soho on a not quite respectable street. I’ve called there and though I duly paid my coin to the landlady, I was told your quarry was out, and it must have been true, as I went around to the back and peeked in the window. I’ll try again on the morrow and will conduct this negotiation for you. I have found two jewelers in the East End but otherwise have done nothing with the articles you left with me. I have a fair idea of amounts and will represent you accordingly. You need not return to town, in fact I hope you do not. Leave this to me.
Will
* * *
She tossed the letter onto her writing desk and glanced through the other correspondence, finding nothing from Lunetta. Well, she had promised to write in a week, and it had only been a few days.
Time was careening though.
A maid appeared to ready her room and help her into a new gown, and then she went to the nursery. Let the men talk among themselves. The children needed her first.
Morley had not been at White’s, but the footman had tracked him down at a rout in Mayfair. He’d immediately answered the summons and appeared.
Graeme introduced him to Jarrow.
“Glad you returned so quickly,” Morley said, accepting a brandy. “I’ve discovered the name of the surveyor Diddenton used to draw up the claimed property lines. He’s in Hertfordshire, working. I’ve sent a man to follow him.”
“One might infer that Diddenton bribed the surveyor,” Jarrow observed.
Morley nodded. “There’s a young lord looking into some of the marquess’s dodgy practices as well. Heir to Shaftesbury. He’s a reformer type—child labor in factories, climbing boys, lunatic asylums, etc.,. The family are Quakers.”
Graeme took his seat behind the desk. “Thank you, Morley. I’m not sure how that will help us though. Political sway, maybe?”
He sipped his brandy, fighting the fatigue dogging him. Blythe should be here to hear this.
“It’s a matter of the opium,” Morley said. “Diddenton’s a middleman. Has merchants that buy the opium from the Company’s people who grow it, and then Diddenton’s ships smuggle it into China in defiance of the Emperor’s edict. At great profit, of course.”
“And that brings us to that connection I mentioned,” Jarrow said. “There are those in the government worried about a war over opium with China.”
“And those like Shaftesbury’s son worried about opium here, especially in the Fens,” Morley said. “I hear tell the stalls sell a thousand vials every market day in Cambridge. I’m an Oxford man myself.”
The soggy landscape of the Fens was a breeding ground for damp air and the ague that plagued many of the inhabitants.
“The late earl was a Cambridge man.” Graeme drummed his fingers on the desk. “Perhaps he got started on the habit there.”
“Diddenton’s opium trade won’t matter to the consistory court,” Jarrow said. “Too many peers are making money from the trade. On the other hand, if the late earl was given too much, perhaps supplied by Diddenton’s son, we might be able to reopen the earl’s death.”
“Or at least stir a scandal that throws doubt on the marquess’s property claims,” Graeme said. “Perhaps even encourage witnesses to come forward and expose him as a fraud.”
“Reputation is important when a man defies decency and makes the sort of claim he’s made,” Jarrow said.
Blythe had returned to society after her year of mourning for the specific purpose of reestablishing her reputation, her place in the ton, in service of fighting Diddenton’s claims. Otherwise, she would have happily stayed at Bluebelle Lodge where he might have visited her, courted her properly, and got to know his new cousin, Coralie, and Nicholas.
Nicholas.
“Morley, I asked you to come tonight because of another matter. There’s a child we believe may be in danger.”
He told them about the vandalism at Bluebelle Lodge and Nicholas.
“I take it that’s the boy at the heart of some of the gossip,” Morley said.
Graeme nodded.
“I can send men to Hampshire?—”
