During that glittering Season in town Joan had been plagued by admirers. However, Alfred had made sure that the gentlemen’s clubs had been rife with talk that the Duke of Thornley considered his sixteen-year-old daughter too young to become a wife and wouldn’t countenance a meeting with any suitor for at least two years. But Joan’s girlhood crush on the vicar had mellowed into a friendship even before the leaves on the trees turned to gold that year, and shortly after her beloved mama’s passing had caused a black cloud to descend on the entire Thornley household.
With a sigh, Alfred wiped a tear from the corner of his eye. He was quite sure that no renewed infatuation with the vicar had made Joan risk the trip to the East End of London. She was a young woman who was too aware of her privileges and society’s injustices, and would help those less fortunate when an opportunity arose.
Alfred dragged his mind back to the pressing matter of the real or imaginary threat that a different fellow might present to his family.
Drew Rockleigh had it within his power to ruin Lady Joan Morland. Their unexpected meeting today might have jogged the fellow’s memory to the value of the information he held against her. Alfred knew the boxer might even now be pondering making contact with him to quote a price for his continuing silence. He would like to think that conscience and morals would prevent Rockleigh ever stooping so low, but an empty belly could make a sinner out of a saint.
Jerking open a bureau drawer, Alfred found a pen and parchment. He was keen to write to the Pryke Detective Agency to have the matter nipped in the bud rather than wait for it to flourish.
‘What is this?’
‘It’s a letter, as you can see, sir.’ The fellow sneered the final word. He peered upwards along his bulbous nose at the tall blond fellow whose sun-beaten profile was presented to him. Thadeus Pryke attempted to swipe five biting fingers from his forearm, but found he could not budge the bronzed digits an inch.
‘I can see that it is a letter. Why give it to me?’ The unaddressed parchment, having been examined, was thrust back at the messenger.
‘Because I believe you to be Mr Rockleigh...although I hear you’re known as the Squire round these parts.’ Again Pryke’s top lip curled. ‘My client has asked me to deliver the letter to you.’
‘And your client is?’ Drew Rockleigh stuck a slim cheroot in his mouth, then lit it from a match flaring in his cupped palm.
‘And my client is...my business.’ Thadeus smirked. He was inordinately pleased with himself to have secured such an illustrious patron. He had been an army corporal in his time, before he’d bettered himself and gained employment in his brother’s detective agency. But what he really wanted was to set up in business on his own account.
The Squire’s precise speech and confident manner proclaimed him to be a man of good stock. The steely strength in his grip, taken together with the battle wounds on his knuckles and cheeks, spoke of his employment entertaining the crowds in a makeshift boxing ring that sprang up illicitly in the neighbourhood, then disappeared equally swiftly. Thadeus knew that the purses could reach quite a sum and attracted talented pugilists from far and wide. There were no holds barred with these men and wily assailants used every bodily weapon they possessed, from head to foot, to gain victory.
‘Stay there, while I read it,’ Drew commanded. Taking back the parchment, he stepped clear of a group of rowdies who had been loitering outside the Cock and Hen. He’d been on the point of entering the tavern when Pryke intercepted him a few moments ago.
A laugh grazed his throat as his eyes flitted over the few lines of thick black script.
‘Have you a pencil?’ he enquired of Thadeus, sticking the cheroot back between a set of even white teeth.
The investigator immediately produced one.
Drew scrawled two words across the bottom of the paper, then refolded it and resealed the broken wax with hot ash flicked from his cigar and strong pressure from a calloused thumb. ‘Return it, if you please.’
From beneath a pair of wiry brows Thadeus watched Rockleigh’s impressively broad back as the fellow strode away into the inn, a pretty blonde tavern wench greeting him eagerly at the doorway.
* * *
‘Where is he?’ the Duke of Thornley demanded to know when the detective returned alone. In his note he’d commanded Rockleigh to accompany Thadeus Pryke to meet him and claim his reward.
Alfred had taken the precaution of garbing himself in a sober suit of clothes and hiring a creaky rig to take him to the Eastern Quarter. He had wanted to blend in with the prevalent atmosphere of lower-middle-class aspiration; lawyers and shopkeepers had colonised an area in Cheapside in which Alfred had instructed his driver to stop. The Duke of Thornley had decided that if his daughter were brave enough to journey into the bowels of the Wapping docks to school children, then he must have sufficient backbone to park on the outskirts to pay the man who had ensured her safe passage home to Mayfair.
His young son and heir was away at school and as much as Alfred adored George, he doted equally on his eldest child, trial that Joan was, because she reminded him of the love of his life—her late mother. He would do his utmost to protect Joan from scandal...and in that he hoped—but was not convinced—that he and the boxer were of a single mind.
Thadeus executed a deep bow, his hat secured beneath an arm. Climbing aboard the rig, he closed the door so they might converse in private. Drawing forth the letter, he proffered it. ‘The Squire returned you a message, your Grace.’
‘The Squire?’ Alfred echoed quizzically.
‘Beg pardon, your Grace... I have inadvertently used the fellow’s nickname.’ In fact, Thadeus had intentionally aired the sobriquet in the hope that the Duke would find the boxer risible. The impatience with which his Grace snatched the missive disappointed Thadeus. Whether he was Rockleigh or the Squire, the man was obviously of great importance to Thornley.
Impatiently Alfred broke the seal and gaped at Rockleigh’s answer to his offer of fifty pounds’ compensation for time and trouble expended on his daughter’s behalf. Nothing required was the sum of the man’s response and he hadn’t seen it necessary to add either his gratitude, or his signature.
Alfred slouched back against the upholstery, feeling miffed by the snub. He was a duke with several lesser titles and a number of ancestral estates established in the countryside from Cumberland in the north to Devon in the south. Yet a man who was rumoured to have lost everything in bad business deals, and was reduced to brawling to earn a crust, wanted nothing from him. And Rockleigh hadn’t even been sufficiently flattered by the Duke of Thornley’s interest in him to come and pay his respects.
Alfred dismissed Thadeus, who on reaching the pavement swivelled on a heel to jerk an obsequious bow. The investigator then rammed his hat back on his head and strode off. Alfred banged on the roof of the rig for the driver to head towards Mayfair. Far from accepting that that was the end of it, he was more determined than ever to have a meeting with Joan’s saviour. Curiosity about Drew Rockleigh’s decline played a part, but overriding all else was Alfred’s prickling suspicion that no impoverished fellow would turn down the opportunity to exploit his secret knowledge. If Rockleigh was playing a long game and heightening Alfred’s anxiety with uncertainty, then the tactic was working. The Duke
