The Emperor's Conspiracy (16 page)

He had decided that if he couldn’t be in Charlotte Raven’s company, he would poke at the new problem that was Dervish.

“Durnham.” Dervish looked up in surprise as Edward approached him in his quiet corner. He nodded toward the empty leather chair facing him in invitation.

Edward sat, glad they were a little away from the other members. It was long after midnight, but the place was no emptier than usual.

He waved the waiter away before the man had taken two steps in his direction.

“What on earth happened to you?” Dervish’s gaze was on the bruises on his face, his eyes wide.

“I had a little meeting with the crime lord I was told killed my men. Neither of us came away looking very good.”

Dervish took a sip from his drink, and Edward noticed his hand shook. He looked even worse today than he had when he’d learned Edward’s men had been killed while asking questions around Mayfair. There were dark circles under his eyes and his clothes had been thrown on either in haste or without care.

“Did you make any progress, at least?” Dervish asked.

Edward shook his head, watching the way Dervish pretended calm while his foot tapped beneath the table and his fingers drummed on the arm of his chair.

The morning after he’d worked out that Dervish was somehow complicit in the gold smuggling, Edward had hired four men to watch Dervish in teams of two. One man to stay with him at all times, the other to follow anyone Dervish might meet. The other team took over at night.

He hoped he’d offered them enough to ensure their loyalty. There’d certainly been nothing out of the ordinary in Dervish’s movements yet, though. With any luck, the next report would be waiting for him when he got home.

“I learned today that my brother-in-law was shot dead.” He had not thought for a moment this would mean much to Dervish, other than in a general way, but Dervish sat forward so suddenly, he knocked his glass to the floor.

“Shot?”

A cold hand brushed across the back of Edward’s neck. Dervish didn’t look shocked, or even surprised. He looked terrified.

“Yes.” He leaned back in his chair, watching.

“Do they know by whom?” With a shaking hand, and completely unconsciously, Dervish bent down and picked up the glass. It was the action of a man who liked to clean up his own messes, and it pulled Edward to his side, a little.

“They don’t. There is a possibility it was suicide.”

Dervish stared at him. “Is that likely?”

“My sister thinks not. There is a chance it was, but she suspects murdered.”

“My God.” Dervish fumbled about in his pockets and came up with a pristine white handkerchief. “She all right?”

Edward nodded.

Dervish nearly wiped his forehead with the handkerchief, then at the last minute leaned down and patted the rug where he’d spilled his whisky.

When he rose up, his face was vulnerable, softer than it had been, and he opened his mouth as if he were about to confess to something.

Edward held himself still, but the eagerness must have shown on his face, because Dervish leaned back against his chair sharply.

They stared at each other.

“You know, don’t you?” Dervish kept his voice even. “My reaction to your men’s death gave me away.”

“Yes.” Edward tapped his fingertips together. “I thought I hid my response well, on that occasion. I didn’t think you realized I was suspicious.”

“I didn’t.” Dervish gave a short laugh. “I hire people to watch and see if anyone tries to watch me.” His lips quirked at his paranoia. “You sent some people to watch me. Gave me a bad moment, before I discovered they were from you. Just got the report twenty minutes ago that they were followed to your house.”

“There seems to be a lot of watching going on, right now.”

There was a long stretch of silence, during which a waiter came past and replaced Dervish’s empty glass with a new one with two fingers of whisky in it.

Dervish looked at it longingly but did not reach for it.

“What do they have over you?” Edward asked. “And who are they?”

Dervish gave a short, humorless bark of a laugh. “I thought at first you knew that better than I. But like everything else with this affair, that was only what they wanted me to think.”

Edward frowned. “What do you mean?”

Dervish sighed. “This doesn’t paint me in a good light, but I swear they made me believe you were already theirs.” He reached for the glass of whisky, fingered the rim, then pushed it away.

“Before I asked you for your help with this gold smuggling puzzle, I was stumped. I was sending out agents to ask questions, getting the customs men to report their findings, but I was nowhere. But it seems even that was too close.” He pushed the glass again, so it was out of his reach. “I got a note, telling me certain things about me would be made public if I didn’t stop looking into it.” He shrugged. “I didn’t believe there was anything they could tell. I thought they were fishing, and the only thing I didn’t want known …” He shuddered. “I thought only two people knew about that. Me and one other. And that person would never say anything for fear of incriminating himself.”

“So you ignored it?”

Dervish gave a nod. “I felt encouraged, truth be told. I thought I must be close to something, to force their hand like that. And it also gave me a clue that men in the nobility were not only involved, but actively aiding the smugglers in this affair. My reports were only discussed in the highest circles of government. The chances of someone untitled having access to my progress was minuscule. So I had that, at least. That it wasn’t just a number of independent smugglers, who all happened
to have the same cargo, it was an organized operation.”

“What happened?”

“When they realized their threat had no effect, I got a face-to-face meeting one night on a dark street.” He reached again for the glass, and almost lifted out of his seat to get hold of it. Then sank back, empty-handed. “He was not a gentleman, but he worked for a gentleman, would be my guess. A big, muscular man in good clothes, putting on a roughness of speech that he may have been comfortable with but no longer spoke. I couldn’t see his face in the dark, and he had me face-first up against a brick wall quick enough anyway. He told me … told me what they knew, and it was the secret I thought they could not know.” He shuddered. “The way he held me down, the suggestions he made …” Dervish buried his face in his hands, and Edward felt the squirming discomfort of wishing himself far away.

Dervish let his hands drop and lifted his head, then continued in a steady voice. “I told him the truth of it. The matter had gone too far. That I was being ordered to place someone on the problem full-time. It was out of my hands. I had to choose someone by the following week, or Whitehall would choose someone for me.”

At last he looked up. “The man left me, but another letter was under my door the next morning. Telling me to keep quiet, and …”

Edward leaned in close, excitement a hot, sweet rush inside him. “And?”

“They told me to choose you.”

20

“M
e?” Edward realized he’d all but shouted, and leaned back in his chair, his fingers stiff and spread out on his thighs, while he waited for the shocked silence in the room to give way and the usual murmurings and conversations to start up again.

Dervish lifted a brow. For the first time since their meeting he was more at ease. Less guilty. “Naturally I assumed they had you already. That you were a plant.”

“What changed your mind?”

“You genuinely seemed to be looking into the matter. And I heard from the foreign minister how loath you were to come across to me and leave the work you were doing for him. He told me you said no twice, before he pulled rank on you.”

Edward blew out a breath. “I could have been lying. Pretending.”

Dervish shook his head. “I’ve been double-checking your facts.”

“You think they have something on me? That one day soon I’ll get a letter like you?”

Dervish nodded. “My only question is, why have they waited so long?”

“Because they don’t have anything.” Edward said. “The only way they could get to me would be through someone else—” He stopped. “Geoffrey.”

Dervish stared at him.

“Why did you look fit to faint when I told you Geoffrey had been shot?” Edward asked the question slowly, his eyes on Dervish’s face.

Dervish looked at his drink. “That second letter said they had decided that rather than reveal my secret, they would shoot me if I didn’t comply. When you said Geoffrey had been shot, the first thing that jumped into my head was that he had been in the same situation as me, and had fallen foul of the men behind this.”

“Geoffrey didn’t have any influence in London. If he was involved it would be on their side, not ours. Or they set him up for ruin. They may have thought I would pay to save Emma’s reputation. It is possible that he was already dealing with them when they sent you that first warning, which is why they gave you my name. They thought they could dangle Geoffrey’s misdeeds over me. But if this does involve him, it has to involve one other man that I know of. Frethers.”

Dervish gaped at him, his eyes wide with horror. He tried to speak, but nothing came, and suddenly Edward recalled the evening he had come to Dervish and told him what Emma
had said about Frethers. How Dervish had reacted on that occasion.

“Frethers is what they have over you, isn’t it?”

Dervish looked away, completely stiff.

“You said the only way they could know your secret was if the other person involved had spoken, and to do so would incriminate himself. But if Frethers is one of them, that would explain it.”

The silence ticked by in the noisy movement of the common room grandfather clock and the murmur of voices as men discussed business and pleasure in their quiet nooks.

“How old were you?” Edward asked quietly.

Dervish shook his head, his mouth a thin, taut line. He shifted away, almost facing the wall, and did not speak for more than a minute. Finally he turned back, and he was devoid of any emotion. “If Geoffrey is dead, that leaves them with nothing over you. I wonder what they will do now?”

Edward heard the fear in his voice that they would come at him again. While they had thought they could manipulate Edward, they had left him alone, but if Geoffrey had been involved, and was now no longer of use, the focus swung back to Dervish.

“If Geoffrey was their man, this only lends weight to the idea that he took his own life. They wouldn’t murder him if his death ends any plan they had to blackmail me. I may have hated the man, but there is no doubt he truly cared for Em. If he realized they were planning to use him to hurt her and get to me, perhaps he did the honorable thing, for once.”

“It would be wise to find out for certain. One of us should go up to Holliday’s place and ask some questions.”

Edward nodded. “I’ll speak to the magistrate. Emma and I will be going up tomorrow anyway, to deal with the house and the servants. She doesn’t know the extent of Geoffrey’s debts, but the estate is entailed, so that’s safe. Above that, she thinks there’s nothing left. Nothing left of her dowry, either.”

“What will you do?” Dervish threaded his hands together.

“I’ll pay any debts he has outstanding, and put some money into the estate so James has something to inherit other than a crumbling pile of rock.”

“And if the magistrate thinks it was murder?”

“Then we have a puzzle. Unless Geoffrey was being as bloody-minded with them as he was with everyone else. It would have been just like him to tempt one of them to murder, even if it went against their plans.”

Dervish began shaking his head, then stopped.

“What?” Edward watched him, watched the play of thoughts across his face.

“I was going to say that it was unlikely. These men have shown themselves to be cold and calculating. And with nerves of steel. To siphon England’s gold right out from under their own countrymen’s noses—it almost defies belief. But then I remembered they had your brother-in-law as a cohort, most likely, and Frethers.” He said Frethers’s name on an exhale. “Neither of those two men is rational, and I would characterize Frethers as an egotistical, sadistic hedonist, rather than a cold-blooded traitor. So they are like groups everywhere.
Some are no doubt steady and nerveless. Others are in it for the thrill. And it will be the latter men who give the others away.”

Neither of them said anything for a while, thinking through the implications.

“Frethers is the weak link,” Edward said at last. He was content, he realized with a start. He’d walked into the club angry, dismayed, and suspicious. But Dervish had told him the truth, and knowing he could trust him again made all the difference.

Dervish nodded, but his face was pinched. Just the mention of Frethers’s name could do that to him. “He seems to get away with whatever he does, though.”

“Not this time.” Edward thought of Charlotte. Of his nephews. And of Dervish, sitting white and stiff where he’d been relaxed a moment ago. “We’ll find a way to get to him.”

Dervish gave a snort. “How? He obviously has someone in Whitehall in his pocket. And he’s one of the richest peers in England.”