Alfred’s teeth as he imagined all manner of disastrous consequences following on from that dratted calamity in Wapping. He dismissed his daughter with urgent finger flicks, pondering on whether the vicar or Rockleigh or both of them might present him with a problem.
When she’d been about fifteen Joan had been soft on her best friend’s cousin. Vincent Walters, for his part, had encouraged Lady Joan’s attention more than was decent for a fellow of his calling or station in life, in Alfred’s opinion. His late wife had reassured him that there was nothing to worry about. Girls blossoming into womanhood liked to flirt at such a tender age, she’d told him, because they were fascinated by the new power they had recently acquired over gentlemen. She’d maintained that Vincent was simply being courteous and kind in his mild responses. By then the Duchess had been quite poorly and Alfred had not wanted to worry his wife by overreacting. Privately he had let the Reverend know by glowering look and barbed comment that he wasn’t happy about the situation. In hindsight, Alfred accepted it had amounted to little more than Joan fluttering her eyelashes and the vicar and his relations being entertained to tea more often than was usual. Within a few months his daughter had turned sixteen and had made her come out at her mama’s insistence. The doctor had warned that the Duchess might not survive the coming winter weather and his wife had dearly wanted to see Joan launched into society.
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
