She evaluated the crowd and the stacks of hops haphazardly piled in the corner near the cellar door. A group of men stomped through the door and the table near the center of the room greeted them with rowdy roars. An older man with silver-streaked hair sat apart from the rest. He deliberately assessed the place Diana and Ian occupied at the bar.
Ian deliberately stared back in a more sinister manner.
“It seems you have a follower,” Diana teased.
“Never met him.”
“Perhaps I’ll go introduce myself,” she offered brightly.
His hand clamped down on her arm so forcefully she thought it might leave a mark, and this made her skin hum in a startling way.
“Approaching him would be foolish, Diana.”
She wouldn’t with an entire pub full of rogues and criminals watching. But Birdie’s presence compelled her to speed along their investigation.
Ian angled his frame between the bar and the tables to block her view of the room. “What are we doing here?”
“Finding out who might have drugged Jared, and with what. To help him recover.”
“If I had recently left the flat of my betrothed’s lover—and hisson—I’m not sure I would possess such generosity of spirit.”
He was still irate she hadn’t told him about Polly and the baby. She didn’t have time to waste on his stubbornness. The instructions in the note she’d received tonight gave her only a handful of hours to find out the extent of the danger Jared—and Ian—were in, and if it could compromise her mission.
“Rives Shipping has a diligent staff of investigators. They told me about Polly and Johnny a few weeks ago.” Her tone was perfunctory. “It’s clear you didn’t know until today, or you would have handled things, like you always do.”
“If you’ve known for weeks, why on earth did you perpetuate the farce of a wedding?”
He posed the question calmly.
She wondered how long he’d practiced saying it in his head that way. “Jared owes money to many people who extract payment by force. I couldn’t call it off without putting him in more danger.”
It wasn’t the full truth, and the deep vee Ian’s brows formed telegraphed his skepticism. “Running from the altar won’t absolve Jared of those threats.”
“No,” she conceded. “I made a fair mess of it, and I must put things right. We have to uncover who Jared was meeting with and limit the damage.”
“If you’d told me sooner, I could have helped you.”
We could have worked together, remained unspoken, but she knew he’d meant it.
She met his gaze, gratified and slightly unnerved by the heat she found in his eyes. “The last time I spoke about the engagement and your father’s wishes, I had to rebuild my entire life. My entire self. I didn’t think I could take that again.”
It was the most honesty she could afford to give him, and she wondered if her countenance betrayed any of the terror she felt about it.
Ian studied her a long moment before he leaned closer and rounded his shoulders as if it would shield them both from an imaginary foe. “You’re not telling me everything. That puts us at risk.”
Diana dismissed the accusation with a sniff; there was no time to bicker with him. She nodded to the table at the center of the room. “The man with the silver hair. Tell me about him.”
“He’s a new face.” Ian slid a glance at the group. “The men at that table run with the Skinner’s Lane Lads.”
The South London street gang had fingers in many pockets. They held a prominent place on the Stags’s watch list.
“That lot handles commissions for hard-to-find items. Antiquities, artifacts. Gems,” Ian added. His eyes flicked to the lace that hid the necklace. “There’s a rumor they are working for peers who are advocating for Parliament to repeal the Pharmacy Act. Many sitting members of the House of Lords have significantinvestments in Indian opium. They stand to gain millions if there were fewer regulations on where people can get the stuff.”
If the repeal succeeded, it would make the Stags’s mission more difficult. And treacherous. “Suppliers who deal in opium often traffic in other things,” Diana ventured.
Neither of them saidpeople, but the word hung between them.
“It’s probable then,” she went on, “that Jared could have met one of those men here last night, and they slipped him the drug. By compromising his judgment, they could gain the upper hand in their dealings.”
