Page 24 of Every Rogue Has His Charm

While they spoke, Trefrey closed his satchel, donned his greatcoat, and picked up his hat. “I shall call again this evening to see how the patient fares,” he said to Maxim. “But if you have concerns in the meantime, Mrs. Horn knows where to find me.”

Maxim nodded once; Trefrey bowed and was gone. For a moment, the only sound in the room was the slosh of water in the washbasin as Mrs. Drummond refreshed the cloth she had been using.

“If it’s as important as that, you may have the use of my manservant, Your Grace.” She did not look at him as she spoke, and the offer sounded reluctant. “We’ve just come from London, so you can be sure he knows his way around town, and you’ve seen firsthand that he’s both quick and trustworthy.”

Had he seen any such thing? If the young man hadn’t been loitering, half-asleep, he would have been closer when Caro fell. And while he had managed to fetch a physician promptly, a sea bathing town must be lousy with men like Trefrey, so it had hardly been a Herculean task.

Maxim eyed Mrs. Drummond’s bent head uncertainly. His suspicions had not been entirely eliminated by the physician’s performance with the peppermint drop. Still, the loan of her manservant would be a help.…

“Mrs. Horn,” he said, “would you step into the corridor for just a moment?”

Nodding, the housekeeper slipped the bottle of physic into her pocket and left the room. Her eyes grew wide when he followed her and closed the door. “What can you tell me about Mrs. Drummond?” he asked, his voice low.

“Very little, Your Grace. She’s only been in Brighton less than a fortnight. Said to be an army officer’s widow—introduced to Her Grace by a mutual friend.”

“And who is that?”

“A Mrs. Scott, who was here in Brighton all of September…”

Unease trickled down Maxim’s spine, though he tried to stem its progress with logic. Scott was a common enough surname. No reason to assume—

“…with her husband, General Scott,” the housekeeper finished.

A string of curses—an unholy mixture of Breton, French, and English—rose to his lips, but he swallowed them back. With any other man, he might still have convinced himself it was a coincidence. But Scott left too little to chance.

The general would have known where matters stood with the late duke’s health. He must have anticipated Maxim would visit Caro on his return to England. Mrs. Drummond’s presence in Brighton, however, suggested that Scott had wanted to keep an eye on him. But why? And why would he send a woman to do the job? Unless Mrs. Drummond was merely a cover for…

“As for that manservant of hers,” Mrs. Horn continued, her tone sharpening, “you’d be doing the housekeepers of Brighton a favor to send him out of the way for a bit. He’s already a great favorite among the serving girls hereabouts, if you catch my meaning.”

“I understand perfectly.” He knew just how a man in Scott’s service might go about gathering useful information and observing household comings and goings undetected. Mrs. Drummond and her “servant” had obviously been placed here ahead of Maxim’s arrival. Had something happened to make the general suspicious of his loyalty?

And was his wife a witting or unwitting part of Scott’s scheme?

“I need to change my boots,” he said, turning toward his own chamber. He needed a moment to think. He needed some way to test, some way to determine whether he’d lost the general’s trust. If he had, then the message he’d brought all this way would fall on deaf ears, and that could spell disaster.

The message he’d brought all this way…

“Tell Mrs. Drummond I thank her for her kind offer,” he said, abruptly changing direction in favor of the drawing room and its writing desk. “I’ll have things ready for her man in half an hour.” More than enough time to devise and encrypt another message.

Its reception would tell him all he needed to know about where he stood with General Scott.

Chapter 8

“Come in,” Maxim said when a tap sounded on the drawing room door. He’d just sealed the letter to be delivered and now carefully unfolded himself from the delicate chair, more suited to an elf than a man of his size.

Just as Mrs. Drummond’s manservant opened the door, Maxim spied his cipher wheel—two interlocking metal discs that could be set to create a basic encryption, the substitution of one letter for another in a regular pattern—still lying on the desktop. Swiftly he slid open the shallow drawer and dropped it inside. No one in Scott’s camp would have any trouble deciphering a simple Caesar cipher, but best not to be so obvious about his methods that he inadvertently revealed what he knew of theirs.

When he turned from the desk, the other man gave no sign of having seen anything. “What’s your name?” Maxim asked.

“Hopkins, sir. Fitz Hopkins.”

He was tall and well built, ideal for playing the part of a footman, if one were willing to ignore the shock of red hair and freckles, which made him look younger than he really was. On the beach, a quick glance had placed him at eighteen at most, but now Maxim judged him in his midtwenties. Caro’s age. Perhaps an officer, perhaps not. Likely not long in Scott’s service, either way. And yet there were signs—not visible scars, but something in his visage—that said he had faced danger.

He was brave enough to size Maxim up, at any rate, which few men of his acquaintance were. He showed none of a manservant’s deference.

“Mrs. Drummond told you what’s wanted?”

“Aye, sir. Papers delivered to London.”