It was more efficient, he told himself.
More discreet.
And if tracking Groby gave him something useful to think about besides Beatrice Beckman—her mouth, her eyes, the feel of her waist beneath his hand?—
Well. That was hardly a disadvantage.
So Gideon prepared to follow him.
Not openly. Not as Lord Hawkins, the man known in half the better drawing rooms in London. But he left off the top hat and proper attire. Even in his nondescript coat, however, he was under no illusion he’d be rendered invisible. If Groby or anyone else looked closely enough, he would be recognized eventually.
It wasn’t a disguise, precisely, but an effort to become less worth remembering.
It was enough.
Unfortunately, for all his efforts, he was learning very little—only that Groby’s habits were almost insultingly ordinary.
Extravagant, certainly. Careless with money. He lingered over meals, drank freely, visited tailors, shops, and once, a gunsmith. Aside from one visit to his lauded solicitor, there was nothing in his movements that suggested conspiracy.
By night, Groby was less respectable, but no more openly incriminating.
Gaming rooms. Taverns. Clubs where he was tolerated rather than welcomed. Always spending. Always losing. Always behaving like a man with pockets deep enough that it didn’t matter—or like one who expected them to be soon.
For five days and nights, Gideon watched.
He could not point to one suspicious act. No secret meeting. No furtive exchange. No letter passed in a darkened doorway.
But a pattern emerged all the same.
Groby spent money like a man who believed a fortune was coming to him. Not hoped. Believed.
Only once did anything give him pause, and even that had nothing to do with Lovington’s title.
Across the crush of a gaming room, through the smoke and noise and shifting bodies, Gideon thought he saw Hatherleigh.
The prominent forehead. The absurdly high shirt points. The pear-shaped silhouette.
Then the man turned, slipped through a side door, and was gone before Gideon could cross the room.
Perhaps it had not been him.
It was easy enough to mistake a face in a place like that.
Furthermore, Hatherleigh had been ordered out of London after the incident with Beatrice. If he had returned, it was at considerable risk to his… health.
By the sixth morning, after watching Groby stagger back to his lodgings in the pale hours before dawn, Gideon was prepared to hand the duty back to one of his men.
He had uncovered not a single act of treachery. No secret meeting, no suspicious correspondence, no exchange that could be named and condemned.
But Groby’s spending told its own story.
Whatever evidence Groby possessed, he trusted it. Completely.
By the time Gideon turned onto his own street, the first pale light had begun to touch the windows. Somewhere nearby, birds had started their infernal singing. A milk cart rattled faintly at the far end of the square, but most of the houses still slept behind drawn curtains.
He crossed toward his townhouse, already thinking of a bath, a shave, and several uninterrupted hours of sleep.
Then, as he mounted the steps, he caught a whiff of himself.
