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Chapter Seven
Nicholas paused under the portico over David Chadbourne’s porch before reaching for the bellpull, hearing footsteps approaching from behind him. He recognized Chadbourne’s house guest by his silhouette and movement even before the gas street lights illuminated his dark golden hair. “Mr. Thomas.”
“Good evening, Mr. Irons.” The clergyman was about Nicholas's age, and his pleasant reply was at odds with his pervasive sadness.
Nicholas neither possessed nor wanted the details, but he knew Mr. Thomas’s wife had been killed some months before in his parish in Bramfield, the family seat of Chadbourne’s earldom.
Nicholas used the bellpull, and its ringing coincided with the dawning of a devilish idea. Up his sleeve already was one wicked plan, and he didn’t feel guilty in the slightest as he embraced this latest.
“Say, Mr. Thomas, have you determined the location of your mission?”
“Alas, no. I just left a meeting of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts.” His low laugh was mirthless. “I’d thought to make London but a brief stop before departing for some colony to spread the Word. Now I’m bound in red tape. It may take the intervention of the Lord Himself.”
Chadbourne’s butler opened the door and stepped back to admit them. Gesturing for the clergyman to precede him, Nicholas followed and waited for their coats to be taken before floating the idea that would change the life of this unsuspecting priest. He wouldn’t and couldn’t claim that his idea was divine intervention; he’d leave that to Mr. Thomas to sort out.
“You’ve said you don’t care where you sail so long as it’s far from here. If you meant that, I have an offer.”
Standing in his well-tailored but somber clothing, aside from his shadowed eyes, Peter Thomas looked like any of his set—a handsome, youngest son of a respectable country baronet. If his wife’s death hadn’t hardened him after his tender, privileged upbringing, taking up Nicholas's proposition would.
“It includes first rate passage in a well-appointed cabin—on a swift ship to hell.”
Nicholas almost smiled; he had garnered the man’s full attention, and he was confident it wasn’t his mention of the fine stateroom that had appealed. Mr. Thomas was in search of suffering, thinking it a form of penitence.
“I accept.”
“Perhaps you ought to hear where you’ll be sailing before you ready your trunk.”
Mr. Thomas shrugged. “Very well. Where?”
“To China.”
“China.” His voice sounded flat, but the man’s toffee-colored eyebrows rose in the greatest display Nicholas had seen in the man since meeting him a few weeks earlier.
“You would serve as chaperone to a hold full of silver aboard a ship so fiendishly fast you’ll need God Himself to protect you. If nothing else, the crew looks to be half-criminal, and the captain is pursued by his own brand of demon.”
“To China, then.”
A minute later, the clergyman was off to his room, and the butler showed Nicholas into Chadbourne’s library. This courtesy visit was his ultimate stop for the evening before returning to his Gresham Street office to meet with the Americans again.
“Have you heard from the engineers?” Lord Anterleigh asked after they exchanged greetings.
Nicholas nodded, settling first into a chair near the fire, then updating him about the plan to review Macalester’s work on the wheel. After a few other business matters, he moved to the subject most on his mind. After the American siblings’s surprise visit yesterday, he had informed Chadbourne about it, giving him, of course, the right of first refusal to the investment.
“Your Mr. Thomas is sailing to China in a few days.”
Chadbourne froze, and Nicholas saw the second he pieced it together himself. “You’reinvesting?”
“Subject to certain conditions, yes.”
“How will you obtain the silver?”
“That’s one reason I’m here. In the morning, I’m off to Bilbao.” He didn’t need to spell it out further; Chadbourne knew of the Sideris business interests in the northern Spanish port.
“Pray tell! Your father is going along with all this?”
“He’s happy to make good on his sickbed promise.”
More than surprise was reflected in Chadbourne’s eyes; he looked concerned. “I didn’t see this coming—neither investing in such a wild plan, nor your pride allowing you to tap your father’s coffers.”
