“You’re the one with literary skills,” Thom pointed out. “What would you do if you were writing this in a book?”
“Arrange for a convenient accident to eliminate him from the plot,” Plum snapped, then sat down and burst into tears. It was useless! As hard as she tried to justify to herself the act of killing Charles, she just couldn’t condone the taking of his life. And now because she was so weak, Charles would tell everyone who she was, and Harry would leave her, and she would ruin the children’s lives, and Thom’s, and her poor babe’s, and life would be horrible, and she would end up in the ditch with the earthworm, and why oh why didn’t Charles drown when everyone said he did?
“I’m so sorry, Aunt Plum. Is there anything I can do?”
“No. It’s hopeless. No one can help me now.” Despite her gloomy words, Plum gave herself a mental shake. She had to think her way out of this horrible situation. She would not allow Charles to ruin more lives. If she couldn’t kill him, what would stop him from blackmailing her? A threat? Bribery? Or what about a scandal so horrible the threat of it being made public guaranteed his silence?
Thom wrung her hands and paced nervously, periodically stopping to pat Plum on the shoulder, murmuring little things about it being all right, but Plum was oblivious to it all as she turned over several ideas of manufactured scandals that might do the job of silencing Charles on the subject of her own past. “I think, perhaps, that is my only option,” she said softly, renewed determination flaring within her. “Yes, it is. But I will need help with the plan…someone to carry out my instructions. Someone unsavory who won’t mind getting his hands dirty, so to speak.”
“Help? Instructions?” Thom’s air of distressed quickly dissipated. “With your plan for Charles, you mean?”
“Yes,” Plum answered, distracted by the sudden fertile fields of imagination that opened before her as she contemplated the many options of coercing Charles into holding his tongue. She was more than a little bit relieved that she wouldn’t have to use threats, or try to find the money to bribe him. Her way was much simpler. She would pay someone to create a potential scandal so hideous in its nature, Charles would be forced to give up his blackmail in order to stop her from enacting the plan.
“I know just the man to help you!” Thom clutched Plum’s hands in hers, pulling her to her feet. “He will do anything you desire. He’s bright, and intelligent, and if you tell him what you want done, he’ll do it!”
“What? Who?” Plum asked, wondering if a brainstorm could strike someone as young as Thom.
“Nick!”
“Who? Oh, your burglar?”
“Yes, him!” Thom hugged herself and spun around again. “Nick is very unsavory, in a savory polite sort of way. He wouldn’t mind doing anything you asked of him, even…er…you know.”
Plum blinked at her niece in confusion.
“What you mentioned,” Thom said in an undertone. “You know, the unsavory things.”
“Ah.” She was referring to the scandal. Plum thought on that for a moment. Thom’s burglar might just fit the role of scandalmonger very well. A man in his line of business certainly couldn’t object to helping her with her righteous cause. “It has merit. I wouldn’t have to effect the act myself, which I will admit has been causing me some worry. Very well, I will speak with this burglar of yours, but I make no promises! It behooves me to keep all avenues open. I will continue to investigate possible men I can employ until I know whether or not your burglar can do the job, or find someone to do it for me. Thank you, Thom! You might just have saved all our lives.”
Harry, returning home from a quick meeting with a couple of handpicked Bow Street Runners, was surprised to learn that there was a person of obviously low repute awaiting him in his study. He was even more surprised when that unsavory person turned out to be his godson.
“Nick! What the devil are you doing soaked to the skin, and in such repulsive clothes?” Objectionable garments notwithstanding, Harry hugged his godson, noting to himself that Nick — who had always resembled his father — was now the spitting image of Noble. They shared the same black hair, gray eyes, and big frame. “You’ve grown since I last saw you,” he added. “You’ve got one or two inches on me now.”
Nick didn’t respond to the banter, although he did give Harry a bone-crushing hug. “Papa said you’d hung up your spy hat years ago. You’re not doing another job, are you?”
Harry, mildly surprised by the serious look in Nick’s eyes, shook his head and waved toward one of two calfskin chairs. Although he hadn’t seen Nick for a few years, it wasn’t hard to see that the young man had done a bit of growing up since last they’d met. He did a bit of arithmetic and was surprised to find that Nick was now twenty-three years of age. Had it really been so long? “No, not really. I’m doing a bit of looking into something that happened years ago, but not a job, not a real job. Why do you ask?”
“Someone tried to kill your children this afternoon.”
Harry shot up out of the chair and was halfway to the door before Nick’s voice stopped him. “They’re all right, Harry. Thom was there, as was I. No one was hurt. I escorted them home, just to be sure another attempt wasn’t made.” Nick frowned and pulled at his lower lip. “I’m fairly certain it was an attempt on their lives, but I suppose it could have been just an accident…”
The word accident resonated in Harry’s mind. Plum had been concerned about the numbers of accidents the children were having of late…but that was foolish. They had been random accidents caused by the children’s heedless determination to do whatever fool thought entered their collective heads.
Or were they?
“Tell me what happened,” Harry said slowly as he returned to his chair, leaning forward with his arms on his knees. “Tell me everything that happened.”
Nick narrated a story that sounded all too familiar — the children sending mice out to sail their wooden boats — but cold chills shivered down his neck at the retelling of the near miss with the runaway carriage.
“You’re sure the horses were under control once the carriage was in the street beyond the alley?”
Nick nodded. “The coachman must have been feigning a swoon. He clearly looked over his shoulder at the alley, and when he saw me, whipped the horses up even harder and tore down the street. I asked Thom on the way home whether it was usual for them to take that alleyway to your house. She said you’d only been in town for three days, but that they’d taken it each day as they returned from the park. No, it couldn’t have been unintentional.” Nick lifted worried eyes to Harry’s. “Who’d want to harm your children, Harry?”
“Someone who has a very long memory,” Harry said softly, thinking of the letter Briceland had shown him. He was cold with fury, a fury so deep he had the unreasonable urge to strike out at something, anything, in response to the threat against his children. He had always accepted the danger to his own person as part and parcel of the jobs he had chosen to undertake, but the thought that his family could be made to suffer for his actions…he closed his eyes for a moment, his hands fisted to keep from tearing the room apart.
“I’ll help you all I can,” Nick said, aware of the struggle Harry was having to keep his temper leashed. “You can count on me and my men.”
Harry opened his eyes, unaware that they were dark with anger. “Forgive me, I hadn’t thought to ask, and I didn’t have time to talk at any length with Noble. How is your work progressing?”
Nick shrugged. “As well as can be expected. There’s another reform policy up for discussion in the House that I’m sure you’ve heard about. Yet another feeble attempt to do away with prostitution without addressing the real issues of poverty and class structure. We do what we can to help the women who sincerely want a better life, but it’s like throwing pebbles in the ocean.”