her hands on the lilies. This sacrifice had been the most bitter because it’d been for nothing.
‘It’s true. After all, with your husband’s estate and the bulk of his wealth having gone to his nephew, gentlemen won’t pursue you for your fortune,’ Aunt Agatha proclaimed and Moira snapped a brown lily off its wilting stem and laid it on the table, biting back a few choice words. Her aunt’s candidness was growing more vexing with each passing year. ‘Besides, with Freddy ready to face society again, I don’t expect him to remain unmarried for long and then you will be nothing but the widowed aunt, and we can’t have that. But let’s not fret about it now. We have the whole Season to worry about it.’
Having dropped her truth, and careless of the craters it left, Aunt Agatha patted Moira’s arm, then headed down the hallway.
Moira stared at the blue willows painted on the vase, the reality she’d suspected since leaving the country revealing itself a little too loudly for her liking. If Freddy did remarry, his new wife would become the mistress of Fallworth Manor and Nicholas’s care would become her responsibility, and not Moira’s. Should Moira fail to take this Season, she might find herself without purpose at Fallworth, with no real place and nothing but endless and lonely days to fill. Having Aunt Agatha state it with her usual bluntness didn’t help ease her concerns. Neither did seeing Mr Dyer again.
She frowned at the memory of Mr Dyer rather than the tilting flower arrangement. When she’d crept along the hallway, her heart racing while she’d carried the weapon after hearing the raised voices downstairs, she’d never imagined it would be Mr Dyer she’d meet. Moira’s cheeks reddened at the memory of her aunt, in this very hall, laying out to him in blunt terms how his lack of station made him an unsuitable suitor. During her aunt’s tirade, Moira had stood by, unable to meet Mr Dyer’s eyes. With her father’s health failing, she hadn’t been willing to cause him more grief or to throw the house into further turmoil by defying him or her aunt.
Except her father was gone now and Mr Dyer had returned. The flicker of life which had been dormant for so long flared inside her, growing brighter at the thought of him.
He didn’t come here to court me. She walked back to the study to retrieve the pistol and return it to its box, trying to put the encounter, and his proposal, out of her head, but she couldn’t. What he’d told her, like his confession about his work, had changed everything she’d come to believe about him since their failed engagement.
In the study, Moira slid the pistol off the table and turned it over in her hands, admiring the fine scrollwork on the metal. Even after she’d treated him like a common thief, he’d had enough confidence in her to believe she could assist him with something as important as saving England.
I wonder if I could help him? It wasn’t her habit to deny anyone seeking her assistance, but she couldn’t involve herself in something like this. She’d returned to London to re-enter the world, not to entangle herself in the affairs of state, but if Mr Dyer was right, then even innocent diversions had the potential to embroil her in a great deal of danger.
No, I can’t get involved. Her place was here with her family, not out pursuing traitors. Turning on her heel, she made for upstairs. Helping Mr Dyer was a ludicrous idea and one she could not shake.
‘Bart, I didn’t think I’d see you in Rotten Row today.’ Richard, Bart’s eldest brother, the heir and the only Dyer son who could do no wrong in their father’s eyes, laughed as he manoeuvred his horse beside Bart’s. ‘I didn’t think you one for the fashionable hour.’
‘I’m not, but I ride here from time to time to meet with clients.’ Court business didn’t bring him here tonight. He sat on his mount off to one side of the crowded Row and watched the merry parade of titled men and ladies to see who was meeting with whom and the connections they revealed. With the Rouge Noir planning something, the members might be working to recruit more converts or make arrangements with one another. Rotten Row was a good place to do both. So far, he’d seen nothing but an overabundance of velvet and horse droppings.
‘Mother said she hasn’t heard from you about coming to their soirée the night after tomorrow,’ Richard chastised, his horse shifting position. It blocked Bart’s view of the Row at the same moment the Comte de Troyen entered in his red phaeton, his pretty, brown-haired daughter, Marie, on the seat beside him. The French émigré enjoyed the top place on Bart’s list of suspicious people. The Frenchman had been observed meeting with the young Marquess of Camberline more than once over the last few days in parks or on street corners when they thought no one was watching. Bart’s men had noticed, but none of them had been able to get close enough to hear what the two men discussed.
‘Mother hasn’t heard because I haven’t responded.’ Bart clicked his horse to one side to watch the Comte as his carriage paused. A man approached the Comte’s conveyance, a beggar to all assembled, one of the many who lingered by the gates in search of a penny, but Bart wasn’t fooled. The man’s quality breeches beneath his dirty coat betrayed his disguise. These two were meeting about something and Bart needed to find out what.
‘Mother will be disappointed if you aren’t there,’ Richard pressed.
‘And Father will be disappointed if I am.’ Bart’s father’s concern for his sons decreased the further down the line they were from inheriting the title. It was a wonder his father even knew the names of his last two progeny. ‘He doesn’t want to pollute his drawing room with a mere barrister.’
Bart watched as the Comte slipped the beggar a piece of paper Bart would bet his horse was a note. He needed to discover who it was for and what it contained.
‘Father doesn’t disapprove of what you do, but he would prefer it if your cases were not so well known,’ Richard continued, trying like their mother often did to mediate between father and son.
‘If Father wants me to have quieter cases, he should tell his aristocratic friends to stop trying to swindle widows out of their inheritances. Now, if you’ll excuse me.’ Bart kicked his horse into a trot and rode over to one of the benches lining the row. The man sitting on it and reading a newspaper looked up over the top of the print at Bart. ‘Follow the beggar walking away from the Comte de Troyen’s carriage, the one with the stained coat and fine breeches. See where he goes and who he might meet with. Get a look at the letter the Comte gave him if you can.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Joseph, one of Bart’s best men, folded up the newspaper in his fine hands. He was the kind of man blessed with the ability to blend in and deal easily with the merchants he sometimes impressed or the dockworkers he might drink with. Joseph tucked the paper under one arm and made for the beggar, following him at a discreet distance as he left the gates of the park and blended into the crowd in the road.
The Comte manoeuvred his phaeton into the endless stream of riders and conveyances. He drove at a leisurely pace, casually offering waves and greetings to many of the people he passed. Bart wasn’t among those. They’d never been formally introduced and he couldn’t simply approach him or his daughter and strike up a conversation. The most he could do was follow him and see who else he spoke with. Bart raised his feet a touch, ready to tap his horse into a walk and get closer to the Comte, when a female voice stilled his boots in the stirrups.
‘Mr Dyer, I didn’t think you one for Rotten Row.’
Bart shifted in his saddle to watch Lady Rexford bring her piebald mount up beside his with the admirable skill of a woman accustomed to riding. She wore a deep blue velvet habit, the skirt
