“Who was that man? The one who just left.”
Tony looked down into three pairs of hazel eyes, all very like Alicia’s. When he didn’t immediately reply, Matthew tugged at his sleeve.
“You promised to tell us.”
He smiled and hunkered down to be more on their level. “Yes, they’ve gone, and they won’t be coming back. They’d been given false information, and thought there were documents hidden here—those letters I found. That’s what they were searching for. And that man who just left was from the government—he came to tell them they’d made a big mistake, and that they weren’t to bother you or your sisters anymore.”
Three pairs of eyes searched his, then all three boys smiled.
“Good!” Harry said. “It might be exciting, but they weren’t nice.”
“And they worry Alicia and Adriana,” David whispered.
Both his younger brothers nodded solemnly.
Smiling, Tony rose, ruffling Matthew’s hair. “You’ll do.” He exchanged a fleeting glance with Alicia; with her eyes, she indicated upstairs. He looked back at the boys. “Now you’d better go and see if they searched your rooms.” He lowered his voice. “You could help Jenkins and Maggs make sure there’s nothing around to upset your sisters.”
The boys exchanged glances. Solemnly nodded again.
They looked at Alicia. “We’re going upstairs,” David said.
She smiled encouragingly. “You can come down for tea.”
Everyone waited while the three boys filed out and closed the door behind them.
“Thank heavens,” Kit said. She looked at the men, still standing in a loose gathering in the center of the room.
“Now! We need to move quickly on this. The damage has to be contained—better yet, turned around.”
Jack and Tristan strolled forward.
Tristan shrugged. “I don’t know that it’s all that serious.” He glanced at the other men. “I can’t see that A. C. is likely to gain much from this—”
“Not your investigation!” Leonora glared at him. “That isn’t what we’re concerned about.”
Tristan blinked at her. “What, then?”
“Why the potential social disaster, of course!”
They were right—that was the most urgent threat arising from Sprigs’s visit; this time, Bow Street had come calling in daylight, and there’d been considerable activity visible from the street. Luckily, their counterstrategy was easy to devise and quickly set in train. Aside from Alicia and Adriana, there were seven of them in the room; each had multiple contacts among the grandes dames, contacts they normally avoided, yet contacts who, in this instance, once they were apprised of the situation, were very ready to come to their collective aid.
By the time that evening’s entertainments commenced, all was in place, the cannons primed.
Tony, accompanied by Geoffrey, made privy to the latest developments, escorted the ravishing Mrs. Carrington and her even more ravishing sister to a formal dinner, followed by three major balls.
They’d barely entered the first ballroom, Lady Selwyn’s, when he overheard his godmother spreading the word.
“It is quite beyond the pale!” Lady Amery’s tones were hushed yet outraged. “This secretive gentleman seeks to manipulate us, those of the haut ton, with rumors and sly tricks, to make us turn on Mrs. Carrington and drive her from town so that her fleeing our wrath will appear an admission of guilt, and so confuse the authorities and hide his infamous deeds.”
Lady Amery twitched her shawl straight, both the action and her expression indicating absolute disgust. “It is beyond anything that a gentleman should seek to use us thus.”
Wide-eyed, the Countess of Hereford had been drinking in her eloquence. “So none of the rumors is true?”
“Pshaw!” Lady Amery flicked her fingers. “Nothing more than artful lies. The reason he has focused on Mrs. Carrington is purely because she had the ill fortune to be the last person poor Ruskin spoke with before going to his death—at this very man’s hands, no less! She was attending a soirée—I ask you, what is one supposed to do at a soirée if not talk to other guests? But now the devil seeks to deceive and deflect the authorit
ies, and to use us to accomplish his evil ends.”
“How diabolical!” The countess looked shocked.