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“Except customers, I imagine.” He suspected she meant that no beaux came for her anymore, as the club’s majordomo and junior spy, Nate Wilde, had done. The lad had been unable to resist Miranda’s lush chestnut beauty from the first time he’d seen her. “Where’s Wilde?” he asked.

Miranda tossed her curls. “I’m sure I don’t know. You should look among his fine friends.”

Harry nodded and went on arranging the jars on the shelf. She meant the Jones brothers, a trio of one-time bastards who’d risen in the world by taking on the powerful Duke of Wenlocke to save their youngest brother. The middle brother, Will Jones, had plucked Nate Wilde from a life of thievery in the darkest streets of London and made him into a first-rate aide on their cases. Harry didn’t usually work with a partner, though Wilde might be useful. Wilde had a knack for disappearing in a crowd like one more London workingman.

“Thanks, Miranda. Shall I find Wilde and send him your way?”

She came around the counter and started to rearrange the jars and tins he’d displaced. “Of course not. I’m sure I’ve no thought of him in my head.”

Harry grinned at her. The girl was a terrible liar.

She handed him a jar of scent. “Here’s what you’re looking for,” she said.

He raised an eyebrow.

“I can take care of the captain’s purchase, Father, if you want to have your tea.”

Her father nodded and disappeared through the curtain. They could hear him shuffling along the hallway to the rear of the shop.

“Captain, I saw Mr. Goldsworthy go into the club this morning. Wait til Papa’s at his tea, and I’ll get you into the club,” she whispered, and added in a louder voice, “And that’ll be six and four.”

“Thank you, Miranda.” Harry stepped out of the little shop to wait.

The girl was as good as her word. Minutes later she led Harry through the shop and across the sodden garden to the rear of the club, using her own key to let him in.

She put a hand on his sleeve as he went to slip past her. “Can you get Mr. Goldsworthy to open the club again?”

“I mean to try,” he said.

Inside the club cold and darkness reigned. Though they had been few in number, their band of spies had kept a kitchen and a small staff active. And always there had been the sound of hammers and saws as the work of perpetual renovation, part of the club’s disguise, went on. Harry groped his way along the dark passage from the kitchen to the servants’ stair and up to the first-floor coffee room. Velvet curtains drawn over the tall windows reduced the room to a shadowy cavern. Harry turned away from the empty couches and the cold ashy hearth. His glance caught on the leather gloves he and Blackstone had worn to spar with each other just days before the end. Blast Goldsworthy and the whole lot of them in the Foreign Office!

He took the wide center stairs up to the big man’s office and opened the door.

By appearance and temperament Goldsworthy belonged more to the Tooth and Nail than to any gentlemen’s club in London. Tall, bluff, and hearty, like a stout country farmer or a rich London merchant, Goldsworthy had a presence that filled a room. Behind his vast desk, he appeared as rough-surfaced and immovable as an ancient oak. The desk itself was more intimidating than a hillside gun battery with a sixteen-pounder trained on all who approached.

“Lad,” Goldsworthy said, looking up, his big hands lying slack across the paper-strewn desk. “What brings you back? You can see we’re quite closed down.” A single lamp burned.

Harry stepped into the room. It was colder than the servants’ stair. “Not me, sir. I’m still on assignment. When will the club reopen?”

Goldsworthy shook his great head with its russet locks. “These things take time. Government, you know, moves slowly.”

Harry did know. He knew how often the army in Portugal or Spain had been left waiting for needed supplies promised to Wellington—men or horses, weapons, or even pay. It was a wonder that Wellington had won as many battles as he had. “What can we do to move the government along? Do we need to talk with Chartwell?” Lord Chartwell was the Foreign Office official with whom the spies dealt most directly.

“What we need, lad, is a big success.”

“Shutting down a Russian agent and sending his British accomplice fleeing was not big enough for Chartwell?” Harry thought the spies had done quite well in their last adventure.

Goldsworthy’s face didn’t change, but Harry detected an uncharacteristic slump in the big man’s shoulders. “It’s true enough, lad, that we got Malikov, but Chartwell’s convinced there’s someone still out there, papers still going missing.”

“And you sent me after a blind man?” Harry felt duped. He’d been hungry for action, and he’d been sent on a fool’s errand.

“Did you find him?” Goldsworthy sat taller in his chair, an arrested look on his face.

“If I did, what would be the point?”

“All threads weave together, lad.” Goldsworthy pinned him with a sharp gaze and repeated his question. “Did you find him?”

“I did.”