Sins and Scandals Collection: Whisper of Scandal / One Wicked Sin / Mistress by Midnight / Notorious / Desired / Forbidden. Nicola Cornick
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Heighton shook his head. “Best leave him be. He’ll have run off with an actress, like as not.”
“Or he is at the bottom of the Thames,” Tom said, reaching for a file from his drawer, “if my inquiries into his financial affairs are anything to go by.” He raised his brows. “But you did not call in to act as my secretary, did you, Heighton?”
“No, sir.” Heighton scratched his forehead. “There’s something I thought you should know, sir. Someone has been asking questions. About her ladyship, sir.”
Tom waited. Heighton always took his time in divulging information. Also he had a love-hate relationship with Merryn, whom he thought too grand to work for an inquiry agent. Heighton had strict ideas about rank. Interesting, Tom thought, that despite his disapproval the old soldier seemed to be on Merryn’s side now.
“A rich cove,” Heighton added eventually. “Titled, probably.”
“The Duke of Farne,” Tom said softly. Garrick Farne, it seemed, had not wasted any time.
“Nice clothes,” Heighton said. “Expensive. But not a soft lad, oh, no.”
“Soft lad” was Heighton’s ultimate insult for any man whom he thought a bit of a dandy. Tom repressed a grin. “Go on,” he said.
Heighton sighed. His eyes looked sad, like a dog left out in the rain.
“Took his business to Hammonds,” he said dolefully, mentioning Tom’s most successful rival.
“Well,” Tom said, “he wouldn’t come to us if he wanted information on Merryn, would he?”
“Might do,” Heighton said surprisingly. “Looked the sort of cove who wouldn’t mess around. Dangerous, if you ask me. He carried a pistol, Jerry said.”
Jerry was one of Heighton’s most useful informers and was correct nine times out of ten. Tom sighed. This was precisely what he had feared. Farne had got wind of Merryn’s activities and was out to find out about her and, no doubt, scupper her plans.
“Any idea what questions he was asking, Heighton?” he said, a little wearily.
Heighton shook his head. “Jerry couldn’t hear. Only heard her ladyship’s name—and the sound of money changing hands. Big money, Jerry said.”
“All right,” Tom said. “I’ll warn Merryn to be careful. Thank you, Heighton.”
The old soldier paused. “One other thing, sir.”
Tom looked up at the note in the man’s voice. “Yes?”
“The rich cove—the Duke—was asking after you, too, sir.”
Tom put down his pen very slowly. “Me?” he said. His voice did not sound quite right, even to his own ears. He could feel cold fear crawling up his neck. “He was asking about me?”
Heighton was looking at him with concern. Tom swiftly rearranged his expression. “I expect,” he said, “it was only because I employ Lady Merryn.” He picked up the pen again, noticing that his hand was shaking slightly. “Thank you, Heighton,” he said casually. “I will be out to see Mrs. Carstairs directly.”
Heighton nodded and went out, and Tom paused for a moment before getting to his feet, walking across to the decanter, pouring a glass of the vile sherry and drinking it down in one mouthful. He followed it with a second one.
So Garrick Farne was asking questions, about Merryn, about him. That was at best inconvenient and at worst could prove fatal. Tom returned to his desk, drumming his fingers on the pile of paper that reposed there while he tried to think clearly. If Farne discovered his connection to the Dukedom then everything would go spectacularly wrong. That was the reason he had been hiding behind Merryn from the start, using her, feeding her the information about her brother’s death that he had known would set her off on this blind quest for justice. She did not know the full extent of his interest, of course, and he could never tell her. Equally he could not permit Garrick Farne to discover Merryn’s purpose. The whole matter was delicate, poised on a knife edge. And there was a Dukedom at stake.
Tom ran his hand through his hair. He had already warned Merryn to be discreet and careful. She had thought it was because he was concerned for her safety. In fact it had been pure self-preservation. Unfortunately Merryn was easy to manipulate but difficult to control thereafter, because when she became inspired by a cause it tended to arouse such passionate fervor in her that everything else—caution, discretion, prudence—went by the board. Tom had seen it happen before when she had taken on cases where there had been a miscarriage of justice. In this particular case her personal feelings were involved and so the effect was twenty times the greater. She was proving more difficult to manage than he had anticipated, and he would have to think of a way to rein her in before Farne caught up with her and she ruined everything. If the worse came to the worst, he thought, he would simply have to cut her loose and use her as a decoy to draw attention away from him. He nodded. The idea had some appeal.
He went out into the waiting room. Mrs. Carstairs was sitting patiently, her fingers locked tightly together, a mixture of hope and fear in her eyes as she looked up at him. Tom sighed. On his desk was a fat file detailing her husband’s spiraling debts and the mess he had got himself into trying to pay them off by borrowing from some deeply unpleasant moneylenders. Tom did not care much for his clients’ pain. He had seen and done it all—thwarted eloping lovers, exposed bigamists, found lost heirs, even destroyed inconvenient evidence if the price was right. He had no sentiment left in him. It amused him that Merryn worked for him because she thought she was working for justice. In some ways, Tom thought, Merryn Fenner was extremely naive. But she had also been extremely useful to him. It would be a shame to lose her.
Now he turned his most compassionate manufactured smile on his latest client. Mrs. Carstairs was paying him enough money. The least he could do was give her his undivided attention and some apparent sympathy.
“Mrs. Carstairs,” he said, “I am very sorry. You must prepare yourself for bad news …”
CHAPTER SIX
GARRICK DID NOT have an invitation to Joanna Grant’s ball that evening. He would hardly have expected it. It would take more than one hundred thousand pounds and the handing back of the ancestral Fenner lands to make him welcome in Tavistock Street. But since he wanted to see Merryn again he had no choice other than to arrive uninvited. He left it very late, when all the guests had arrived and the footman on the door was wilting at his post, and then he simply walked in. No one stopped him. No one appeared to notice him at all in the crush.
Garrick went straight to the ballroom, where he saw Merryn almost immediately. She was dancing with a young sprig of fashion, dancing very badly moreover, and with the expression of one who was having a tooth pulled or perhaps whose slippers were pinching. Her partner looked grim and bored. Garrick could not help but smile. Most young ladies at least made a pretense of enjoyment when they were with the opposite sex. Merryn clearly saw no need to do so.
He took a calculated bet that she would soon tire of the ball, helped himself to a bottle of champagne and two glasses from an obliging footman and slipped out of the ballroom and up the stairs. He was aware that he was abusing Lord and Lady Grant’s hospitality quite shamefully since not only had he not been invited, he certainly had not been given the freedom of the house. But he needed to discover how much Merryn knew. He needed to stop her quest for justice. And this was the quickest way.
The first bedchamber he came to quite clearly belonged to Joanna Grant and was lush with exotic drapery and scented with perfume. It had a connecting door standing open to her husband’s dressing room. The second chamber was less easy to apportion to a member of the family and for a moment Garrick wondered if it was Merryn’s. There was a set of very beautiful and very explicit pencil drawings spilling from a folder on the dressing table—nudes in various stages of debauchery with gods, satyrs and nymphs. The drawings were good—and extremely erotic. One of the nymphs,