“Quite. But do you recognise him?” And he pointed to the red-haired fellow.
Lynch leaned closer. “Nah. Don’t reckon so. Wasn’t under yer captaincy, fer sure. Dempster might know him as he drank with others in the dragoons a fair bit.”
Miles drummed fingers against the desk and… “Fairfax!”
A softly spoken “Sir?” was mooted from the doorway.
“Tell the new groom Dempster that I wish to see him. At once.”
The butler pivoted neatly and disappeared.
Miles would be damned if he didn’t recognise this man from somewhere.
He stood, turned the canvas to face the room, paced the rug and then glanced back at it.
Lynch watched with dark eyes. “Yer got that feeling?”
“I have.”
That face and those eyes, black as inkwells, gnawed at his noggin.
“Yer wanted me, C’tain?”
Miles twisted to a saluting Dempster. In just the short while since he’d been released from hospital and given lodgings with the other grooms in the mews, his health had improved no end, the pallor having departed his skin.
“Come see this, Dempster.”
He entered with some of the old Dempster swagger. “Gawd, tha’s good.” Stood back a touch. “Maybe too good. Feels as though I’m back out there. And ain’t that Randy Riley?” He waggled a finger at some blond fellow tossing wine back like water. “The lieutenant who used to have a wench in every tent, and two fer–”
“Indeed. But what can you tell me about…him.” And Miles pointed to the red-haired fellow.
Dempster squinted and then scowled. “That sneaky rat.”
“You recognise him?”
“Aye. Under Captain Bowers. Name was…” He scrunched his eyes closed. “Chambers. Martin Chambers. Should have been tossed out when that fella… What was his name? The one who got court-martialled for selling prickers and blankets to the Spanish?”
“Not Cecil Webb?”
“Tha’s the one. Well, that rat were his orderly. Like Lynch to you but not as good.” And he winked at Lynch.
“Well, I don’t recognise him,” muttered Lynch, shrugging off his greatcoat.
“Shifty little bastard, he was. Good at sneaking around and a bit of a playactor, used to mimic the officers’ accents. We all thought he were funny at first, but, I dunno, stuff always seemed to go missing when he was about. The regiment surgeon lost a quart of laudanum and he were the only one hanging around.We all learned to be a bit chary of him.” He scratched his stubbled jaw. “Needed spectacles too.”
“Spectacles?”
“Aye, couldn’t shoot a cow in a field from two feet without them. That’s why he was assigned as orderly. He’d been a valet before the dragoons so was useful for keeping uniforms spruce and such like.”
Miles pinched his brow as that face and those black eyes began to slide into place. “Damn it,” he murmured.
Because this Martin Chambers in the painting was also that odd little valet of Webb’s with the spectacles.
They were one and the same. He’d swear it. Despite the red hair.
And he must have known who Miles was and yet not said a word.
Had played a game with them all.
