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Stewart tipped his hat with another inclination of his head and strode off at breakneck speed. Haggs stared after him in mingled anger and consternation and a sudden dose of distrust. Stewart clearly knew far too much about this whole affair.

What the devil is he up to?

***

PIERS WAS WORKING ON the shutters.

With considerable difficulty, he’d managed to drag himself onto the window sill, largely by hanging on it with his fingertips and walking his feet up the stone wall until he could heave his hips onto the sill. Teetering, he had managed to lever himself upright by grasping the side of the shutter. It had all been very awkward and painful, but he was there.

Unhooking the shutters was as easy as it had looked but separating them was a different matter. The bent nails holding them together had been well driven in and he could not break them apart by force. He had to remove the nails.

He used the handle of his remaining quizzing glass, in particular the sharp prong on a decorative knob. It was slow work, but he had managed to gouge out some of the wood beneath the head of the upper nail. He could now slide his fingernail beneath the head, but he could still not budge the iron nail itself. He only damaged his fingers, and if he did too much of that, the jailer—jailers—would notice. Nor did the useful prong beneath the nail head give him enough leverage to prise the thing out.

Finally, he thought of his watch chain and hooked one of the links over the nail head. Holding it at just the right angle, he began to tug at the nail. It came very slowly, so while he worked, he thought.

Whoever had abducted him knew him. Knew where he lived, knew he would not recognize his captors or be able to identify them afterward. He concentrated on that, rather than on April and how she must feel without him, alone and possibly ill or grieving or...

Whom had he seen in recent weeks? Haggs, his oldest friend, with whom he and April had dined a couple of weeks ago, along with a couple of other guests. Gil Laine, whom he’d left with April. Fosterson, another old and trusted friend who had just joined Laine’s practice in partnership. James Darcy, their snuff-loving neighbour across the square.

Leaving friendship and trust aside, his sheer familiarity with Haggs and Laine surely meant he could safely rule them out. Especially when contrasted with his complete absence of familiarity around his jailers. Haggs could not hide from Piers for long even if he wanted to, and he doubted Laine could either, now that Piers was so focused on him because of April. Fosterson, another old friend, was fair, so unless he had dyed his hair since their last meeting, he was cleared too.

Which left James Darcy from Park Square, and Haggs’s two dining companions—what were their names? Sir Hugo Cauldwell and Mr. Arthur Dangerfield. All three faces were pretty much blank in Piers’s mind.

Darcy rather worshiped April, and Piers had occasionally fallen over him in the house where he might have betrayed that he had no idea who the devil Darcy was. He doubted it though, for he was quite adept at disguising his ignorance in either haughtiness or vague amiability, and April had generally been there to help him out. Of course, the first time Piers had called on him last January, he’d had no idea that they had already met at White’s, but Piers was sure he had covered that lapse. Or had he grown careless, over-confident?

White’s. Piers did not often go to the club, but he had dined with Jeremy there last week. Sir Jeremy Gadsby was his relative by marriage, his cousin Maria’s husband, and he had been in town on business. Piers had been surprised by the invitation to meet, for although they had reached an understanding since the days Gadsby and Cousin Bertie had been happily stealing from him, they were hardly close. Gadsby had seemed a happier man, content with his life, his wife, and his child. Moreover, Piers had been rather touched by the man’s efforts to make things right. There had been genuine shame and, surely, a genuine liking that was the beginning of friendship. But it was more than possible that Jeremy still resented Piers for cutting off funds.

Moreover, Piers did not know him well. Was one of his jailers actually Maria’s husband? Stealing from him once more in a much more blatant fashion? That truly would be betrayal.

Yet Piers couldn’t actually imagine it. But then he couldn’t have imagined this situation either, before it became his reality.

The nail shifted, easing upward, but the link in the chain was out of shape and about to break. He worked it off and began with a fresh one.

So, he must consider Jeremy Gadsby, along with Darcy, Dangerfield and Cauldwell, all of whose faces were more or less blank in his memory. Gadsby was coping but he was hardly a rich man. Darcy, while amiable, lived the expensive life of a rakehell and was chronically short of funds.

Dangerfield and Cauldwell. Oddly enough, both of them, like Piers, had recently inherited encumbered estates and were struggling to know what to do with them. Which was possibly why Haggs had invited Piers and April. Cauldwell had picked his brains as to how he was managing the Petteril estates and had seemed decidedly interested. Dangerfield had appeared more resentful, almost angry that Petteril was succeeding. But with Cauldwell, there had been a definite bond of sympathy, a tug of friendship that had felt warm. For a moment, the echo of that warmth seemed to envelop him; and then it shattered into the icy crumbs of betrayal.

The chain slid off the nail head, unbalancing him. He began again with a fresh link.

Dangerfield and Cauldwell were both Haggs’s friends, gentlemen.

Not that gentlemen always behaved as such. And Piers’s jailers were not obvious gentlemen. Could they be men of his own household? Footmen? Grooms? How would they know about his malaise regarding faces? They never expected to be acknowledged by their employers or by “betters” of any degree. But they did overhear conversations... Had someone heard April murmuring people’s names to him and realized he needed such prompts? No doubt once one had the suspicion, it would be easy enough to confirm.

He didn’t like that idea either. He had grown comfortable with the servants in his employ, both here and at Haybury Court. He paid at the upper end of the expected wage, was generous with days off, and even offered to teach anyone who wanted to read at his own expense and with his own time. Several took him up on it. If one of those pupils had turned on him...

There was a school of thought that servants had to be kept in their place, that they were only comfortable and disciplined when they were. Moreover, laxity could lead to revolution as had happened so disastrously in France. Piers expected his people to earn their salary, but they had seemed to like him. April said they did, and she should know since she had been one of them.

Who might have turned against him through greed?

Stewart, his dark horse of a valet with less than a pure past? He had stolen before, though never from Piers, to whom he had been loyal well beyond mere duty. Besides, surely of all his servants, Stewart was the most familiar? And yet there was always something distant about him too...

Definitely not Park or Benson, his head groom. Apart from anything else, they were too old to match his jailers, and Bernie the stable lad was too young. Again, his lack of familiarity in his captors’ company would tend to preclude any of his own servants.

Park’s son!

Almost as soon as the thought struck, two things happened at once.

The nail pulled free of the shutters so suddenly that he almost toppled from his precarious perch. And he heard the sound of an opening door and footsteps. The precious instants he had to waste in steadying himself, meant there was not even time to replace the hook on the shutters. He just had to hope the jailer wouldn’t notice.