“Always does. Sets the ladies’ breasts aflutter in sympathy so that they utter every word they ever heard.” Yale sipped his brandy. “Or, always did, rather.”
“He is quite good at it.” In the glow of firelight, Gray’s face was like chiseled marble.
Leam remained on the threshold, eyes half lidded as was his wont even now and here. The habit of years died hard, and he had not yet shaved away the vestiges of his false persona. His costume still clung.
But not for long.
Constance glanced over her shoulder. A sumptuous gold lock dangled along her neck in studied artifice so unlike her actual character. She played a part too. They all did.
As members of the Falcon Club, for five years Leam, Wyn Yale, Colin Gray and their fourth, Jinan Seton, had used their skills to seek out and find missing persons whose retrieval merited a measure of secrecy. For the king. For England. But Leam’s cousin Constance had only entered the game two years ago, when he invited her.
“It is so odd every time,” she said, “seeing them go off like that with Mr. Grimm in the carriage, returning home.” She peered at the viscount. “Colin, how on earth do people find out about us? It’s not as though we advertise in the papers. Do they all know our secret director personally? But then, of course, if that were the case he wouldn’t be very secret, would he? And we might know him too.” Her lips curved sweetly.
“Perhaps if you remain in the Club you might someday,” the viscount replied.
“Oh, you know I could not. Not when Leam, Wyn, and Jinan are all calling it quits.”
Leam studied her. “You needn’t as well, Constance.”
“I shall do as I wish, Leam.”
“Come now, cousins.” Yale waved a hand, brandy swirling in his crystal goblet. “Don’t let’s quarrel. Haven’t yet had enough to drink.”
“They aren’t your cousins, Yale,” came the rejoinder from across the chamber.
The Welshman tilted a black brow and allowed his opinion of the issue to be known to Lord Gray with the barest glitter of silvery eyes.
“I should never have dragged her into this in the first place.” Leam crossed the chamber to his cousin, lowering his voice as he neared. “But at the time I believed you required diversion.” He lifted her hand and gently squeezed her gloved knuckles.
“Oh, don’t.” Constance withdrew her fingers. “You will make me weep with your poet’s eyes. I am quite as susceptible as all those other ladies, you know.”
“Cad,” Lord Gray muttered.
Constance shot him a laughing look. “Weep with affection, Colin. Only slightly greater than the affection I hold for you.”
Lord Gray tilted his head in recognition of the beauty’s gracious condescension.
“You see, Leam? Colin will have your neck now if you cause me to cry.” Her blue eyes twinkled.
“Second that, Blackwood. Never like to see a lady in tears,” mumbled Yale with a sleepy air.
“The lady would not be morose if you weren’t dragging her into retirement with you so abruptly,” Gray commented.
“Tut-tut, old man. Mustn’t scold during our good-bye party.” Yale’s eyes were barely creased open, but that signified little. After working with the Welshman for five years, even Leam did not always know when his friend was truly foxed or merely pretending it.
It mattered nothing—Yale’s acting, Constance’s reluctance, or Gray’s insistence. Leam was through with secrecy and living like a Gypsy. He’d never much cared for it in the first place and now, at thirty-one, he was far too old to be in this game.
“I take it we shan’t see Seton tonight.” Gray’s voice remained even. “Shoddy of him bowing out like this without even appearing to do it in person.”
“Jinan has never been fully the Club’s man,” Leam said. “You are fortunate he sent word even to me.”
“Wyn, what did you mean with that comment about the guillotine?” Constance tilted her head.
Yale’s slitted gaze went to Gray. “Perhaps our august viscount will explain. Have news of French doings, do you, Colin?”
“How you know that I shan’t ask.” The viscount reached to a box on the mantel and drew forth a folded paper. “The director wishes a last task from the pair of you.”
“No.” Leam’s voice fell like an anvil.
Gray lifted a brow. “Allow me to apprise you of the task first, if you will.”
“No.” Leam’s jaw tightened. “I am through with it, Colin. I’ve told you so any number of times. I am going home. Full stop.”
“But French spies, old man…” Yale murmured. “’S what got us into this in the first place, haring off to Calcutta to save England from informers and all that.”
French spies had not sent Leam to India five years ago. His desperation to escape England had.
And they all knew it.
Yale flashed the viscount a glance. “
Lord Gray passed him the paper. “The director and several members of the Board of the Admiralty believe so. Informants to the Home Office have identified Scots—Highlanders—whom they believe to be potential threats for leaking information to the French.”
Constance’s clear brow furrowed. “But the war is over.”
“The concern is not French aggression, particularly, but Scottish rebels.”
“Ah.” Yale sipped his drink thoughtfully.
“Indeed.” Gray’s face remained grim. “Scottish insurrectionists may be currying favor with certain French parties to gain support for a rebellion.”
“What could Scottish rebels have that the French would be interested in?”
“Not much, if they were merely northern rabble. But our director and several members the Board of the Admiralty have reason to think the rebels are being fed sensitive information directly from a member of Parliament.”
Yale whistled through his teeth.
“Unless you believe I am one of those insurrectionists,” Leam said, “then I haven’t any idea what it has to do with me. Leave it to the Home Office where it belongs, or to the fellows in Foreign, like you should have five years ago. It’s none of my business and never should have been.”
“You didn’t mind it at the time.”
Leam met Gray’s knowing gaze stonily.
“It is honorable work, Leam.”
“Believe you’re saving the world all you wish, my noble friend. But since the war ended we are no more than glorified carrier pigeons and I’ve no taste for it.”
The snapping of a log in the fire seemed to punctuate his statement.
“Symbolic nonsense,” Yale mumbled. Without a breath of sound, he stood, brushed out the creases in his trousers, and moved toward the door. “I’m off to the races, then. Evening, all,” he said as though it were any evening and not the last. But the spy clung to him, in his every movement and in the perspicacity of his quick gaze. He had been wasted on the Falcon Club.
“If men like you, Leam, do not continue this work, there may be war again much sooner than we like,” the viscount said soberly.
Yale paused, propping a shoulder against the doorjamb. But Leam felt no responsibility. No need to see matters settled.
“During the war at least we retrieved persons of some importance to England’s welfare.” He shook his head. “Now…”
“Your quarry tonight was a princess.”
“I don’t care if she was the goddamned queen. It was never my fondest wish to go chasing after other men’s runaway wives.”
Silence descended upon the room again, this time heavy and fraught with memory. Yale finally broke it, his voice lightly pensive. “They aren’t all runaway wives.”
Leam stared into the fire, feeling his friends’ gazes upon him. The rest of the world imagined poor Uilleam Blackwood a tragic widower. Only these three and Jin Seton knew the truth.
