A Gentleman’s Position(52)

“I doubt he’d give that weapon up,” Francis said. “How can Gabriel make him? He holds all the cards.”

“What about getting the letter back anyway?” Mason asked.

“How would you propose doing that?”

Mason shrugged. “Steal it?”

There was a short silence.

“I like it,” Francis said. “Is it possible? Are you a thief?”

Dominic gave him a thunderous look. Mason rolled his eyes. “I’m a bookseller.”

“Yes, well, that’s the problem,” Julius said. “We can’t bring in a thief and request him to find this damned thing without exposing ourselves to further blackmail. None of us have admittance to Maltravers’s house; Ash is not welcome there—”

“Cyprian,” Dominic said. “He knows everything already. I’ll wager Cyprian could do it.”

Ash nodded frantically. Mason said, “He’s the man I’d ask, but he ain’t here.”

“Quite,” Julius said. “He no longer works for Richard. Does he?”

He did not, and Richard couldn’t imagine how David would react to being asked to do so now. “I can’t ask him that.”

“For God’s sake, you had him spirit this fellow off the scaffold. You can tell him to find a letter,” Francis said with impatience. “Unless you have any better ideas?”

“I cannot go back to him now and inform him his services are required.” Richard’s jaw ached with tension. “I am no longer on those terms with him.”

“He’s a valet. What possible terms does he need? Double his salary.”

Richard looked at Dominic. He was looking at Mason in intense silent communication, and Richard glanced from them to Ash, wretchedly huddled on the footstool, and then at Harry’s hunched shoulders. Harry had looked like that when Richard had plucked him, ragged and wary, from Mason’s political bookshop a year ago. All of them were afraid.

Richard did not want to ask David’s help now, felt sick considering how he might respond, but he couldn’t think of anything else to do.

“Hell and the devil,” he said under his breath. “Julius, Mason, go and get him.”

“I beg your pardon?” Julius said.

“I can’t do it, and he likes you both. Go to Cricklade and get him. I shall give you a note—no, that won’t do. Just tell him I need him, and offer him anything. You may tell him that from me. Anything.” Mason was giving Richard a look. Richard met his eyes. “If you have thoughts, you may share them.”

“Within reason,” Dominic added swiftly.

“Anything is all very well, your lordship. I’m wondering what I tell him if he asks me why he should bother.”

Richard ignored the glances around the room. “Tell him…” He couldn’t think of anything that would salve David’s pride without seeming a cheap manipulation; any message that might be worth his listening to. He couldn’t think why David should bother. “Tell him that I am in need of his skills. That I require him, and a gentleman will not do at all. Tell him that I am quite specifically in desperate need of a redheaded bastard.”

Julius blinked. “And that will help, will it?”

“Got you, your lordship.” Mason nodded at Julius. “Coming?”

“At your service, citizen.” Julius swept him a bow. “I don’t think I’d miss this for the world.”





Chapter 11


Mason and Julius left at dawn the next morning. It was ninety miles to Cricklade, a full day’s hard journey even with a curricle built for speed and unlimited changes of horses. David could not be expected back in London before the following night at the very earliest. If he came at all.

If David did not come…

If he did not come, it would mean that he was truly no longer Richard’s man, and the thought was so intolerable that his mind flinched from it. If he had made such an accursed tangle of things that David no longer cared to come to his aid, the cascade of impending disasters would be his fault.

“You place a lot of reliance on Cyprian,” Dominic remarked as they sat in the book room the following day. “He’s a clever man but not a magician.”

“He has other ways of seeing things,” Richard said. “That’s what we need. None of us had even considered stealing the letter back before Mason suggested it.”

“And what if he doesn’t come?”

“I don’t know.” Richard put his hands through his hair. “I can’t think of any way around this damned business. We can’t pay Maltravers off, can’t threaten him or appeal to his better nature. I have no idea what we can do, except pray Cyprian is more ingenious than I and that he is willing to help.” He smiled without mirth. “Ironic, isn’t it? I spent so long telling myself that I might not touch him because I have all the power and he has none. It does not feel like that now.”