even more so when it was blood that he himself had shed. With a sudden burst of anger he brought his hand down and scattered the deeds across the floor.
He threw himself down into his chair and tried to think. He had been back in society for fifteen months, long enough to know that the eldest of the Earl of Fenner’s daughters was the famed hostess Joanna, Lady Grant, married to the equally famous Arctic explorer Alex Grant. The middle sister, Teresa Darent, was notorious, a widow who had run through four husbands already. Naturally enough he had not met either Lady Grant or Lady Darent socially; they would scarcely invite to their balls and routs the man who had murdered their brother in a duel. Ton society might be extraordinarily flexible, but it was not that flexible. He thought there was also a third girl, the youngest, but he knew little of her. She was unmarried, reputedly a bluestocking, almost a recluse, if gossip was to be believed.
Garrick reached for pen and ink and began to write. After he had finished the letter, sealed it and addressed it, he picked up again the papers relating to the Fenner estate but after a moment he let them drift from his hand down onto the desk before him.
Stephen Fenner had been his best friend at Eton and Oxford. He had been a rake, a gamester and a noted whip. His handsome face and winning charm had allowed him to cut a swath through the bedrooms and boudoirs of a number of ton ladies. It had been amusing to be one of Stephen’s friends, part of a dazzling raffish crowd who had lived for pleasure. Garrick had been seduced by the glamour of it all. It was such a far cry from the life of service and obligation that he had been raised to embrace. But then Stephen had chosen Garrick’s bride as his latest conquest and friendship had disintegrated into betrayal and disgrace …
There was a knock at the door; Pointer, Garrick thought, had evidently overcome his disapproval sufficiently to resume his duties.
“I have ascertained that a window in the east wing has been forced, your grace,” the butler said, looking with disfavor at the scattered pile of papers. “It is possible that an intruder may have found ingress into the house that way.”
“She broke in through a window,” Garrick said. “I see. Thank you, Pointer.”
“I have made the house secure,” Pointer finished grandly, “so your grace need have no further concerns.”
“I am confident to leave the matter of household security entirely in your hands, Pointer,” Garrick said. He held out the letter. “If you would be so kind as to see this is delivered to the offices of Churchward and Churchward, the lawyers, in Holborn please?”
“Of course, your grace,” Pointer said, bowing with exquisite precision and proffering a silver tray on which Garrick could place the missive.
“And then,” Garrick said, “I would like you to find me an inquiry agent.”
Pointer’s long nose twitched with shock. “An inquiry agent, your grace?” He repeated, as though Garrick had asked for something so outrageous he had no idea how to respond.
“Your esteemed father,” he added, “would never have required such a person, your grace.”
“I know,” Garrick said, grinning. “You are going to have to get used to some changes, I fear, Pointer. If you could expedite the matter,” he added, “that would be appreciated. There is someone I need to find urgently.”
When he had found his midnight bibliophile, Garrick thought, he was going discover exactly what her business was with him. And this time he would not let her run away.
“THANK YOU FOR YOUR CUSTOM, Lord Selfridge. It was a pleasure to be able to provide you with the information you required.”
Merryn sat in a dark corner of the waiting room while her associate, Tom Bradshaw, ushered the peer toward the stairs. Selfridge barely noticed her and certainly did not recognize her. Merryn would have been astonished if he had. In her daily life, as the frightfully studious bluestocking sister of Joanna, Lady Grant, celebrated ton hostess, she was practically invisible. She seldom attended the high society events that both her sisters loved and when she did she hardly ever danced. Those people who took the trouble to engage her in conversation usually regretted it because she was only interested in erudite subjects and chose to have no small talk. Most young men were afraid of her, bored by her, or both. She was known as the Simple Ton by those society fashionables who deplored her bookishness and her lack of social graces.
Such insignificance made it far easier for her to live as she wished, pursuing an interest in all manner of scholarly activities on the one hand and working for Tom on the other. If her sisters had known that she worked for a living they would probably have had the vapors. If they had known she was employed by an inquiry agent the strongest smelling salts would not have been able to revive them. And if they discoverd that sometimes she stayed out at night to do her work and invented fictitious friends to cover for her … But then, Merryn thought, they never would find out. They would not guess because such thoughts were unthinkable.
Except … except that she had made a mistake last night. It was the sort of mistake that could lead to the unmasking of what she liked to think of as her secret life. She had committed the cardinal sin of being caught, and by Garrick Farne, of all people. If there was one time that she should have been particularly careful, it was when she was working against the man who had killed her brother and ruined her family. But it was too late now. Farne had seen her. Farne had kissed her. A little of ripple of disquiet, mixed with something more deep and disturbing, edged down her spine.
“Are you coming in or are we to talk out here?”
Tom was holding his office door open for her, his head tilted inquiringly to one side, eyes bright, a smile curling his lips. He was cocky, but Merryn liked him for it. Tom, the son of a stevedore who had worked on the Thames loading ships, still kept his offices within a stone’s throw of the river. He was one of the most successful inquiry agents in London, finding everything from missing heirs to servants who had absconded with the family silver. She had worked alongside him for the past two years.
Merryn uncurled herself from her seat and preceded Tom into the office. There was a chair but she knew from experience that it was uncomfortable so she remained standing. Tom propped himself against the edge of his desk.
“So did you find any papers relating to the duel?” Tom said. “Any servants paid off around that time, any proof of a cover-up, anything suspicious at all?”
“I’m very well, thank you, Tom,” Merryn said tartly. “How are you?”
Tom grinned, his teeth a flash of white in his face. “You know I have no manners.”
“Clearly,” Merryn said. She looked at him. No one would mistake Tom Bradshaw for anything other than what he was: the self-made son of a working man. The well-cut clothes could not conceal his innate toughness.
“No,” she said. She turned her face away. “I didn’t find anything.”
Three weeks previously Tom had come to her with some information that he had said he thought would interest her and when she had read it the shock and outrage had gripped Merryn like a vise. Tom’s information had been a tiny entry from an obscure local Dorset newspaper. He said that he had found it quite by accident when he had been working on a different case. The paper was twelve years old and there, between references to pig rustling and theft at a country fair, had been the report of an inquest into the death of Stephen Fenner.
Merryn could remember the piece word for word. She thought she would never forget it.
“The
