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Finally, in what must have been the smallest hours of the night, when everything inside and outside of the house was nearly silent, Giles determined that their father had fallen asleep. As quietly as he could, he moved the chair, then turned the door handle and cracked the door.
Their father had fallen asleep in the hall just outside the door. Giles thanked whatever gods had listened to him, then pulled the door open all the way. He was inclined to tell Rebecca to stay with the younger girls, but the look in her eyes told him that whatever he had planned, she wanted to come along.
He hadn’t had time to tell Rebecca his purpose, but with a quick touch of his finger to his lips to warn her to silence, he stepped over their father’s sleeping form and crept down the hall. Rebecca came with him, and both of them fought to keep their steps as light as possible to avoid creaky floorboards.
By the time they made it down to their father’s study, Giles felt it was safe to speak in whispers.
“I need to find papers or ledgers or anything pertaining to Father’s business,” he told Rebecca as his sister lit a lamp and carried it to their father’s desk, where Giles stood. “Anything that might prove he’s been blackmailing Mr. Vansittart to be awarded lucrative shipping contracts.”
Rebecca’s eyes went wide. “They know about the shipping contracts?”
Giles was grateful his sister was holding the lantern at that moment. If it had been him, he would have dropped it in shock. “Do you know about them?”
Rebecca looked around timidly, as though spies were hiding in the curtains. She stepped closer to Giles, then said, “Father has had men at the house. I’ve heard them speak of things. One has been trailing Mr. Vansittart and knows about his mistress and his gambling debts. Another has made certain that Father’s competitors have met with disappointment. Still another has secretly bought out shares in merchant vessels from other enterprises and put them in Father’s name.”
“So he truly has made a fortune?” Giles asked.
Rebecca nodded, then headed to one of the bookshelves at the far end of the room. Giles watched as she pulled down a volume from a top shelf, opened it, and removed a small key from its hollowed-out pages. From there, she brought the key to the desk, then used it to unlock one of the bottom drawers.
Giles had to hold back a gasp as Rebecca opened the drawer to reveal a wealth of papers and letters, ledgers and books. She set the lantern on the desk, then she and Giles proceeded to move the contents of the drawer to the desktop.
Right away, Giles knew he had all the evidence Theo needed to prove that his father was the conspirator. He read through it all with avid interest, though, as if thumbing through the pages of a gothic novel. His father’s business activities were vast and startling. He had indeed won contracts for numerous merchant voyages to the Far East over the last few years. Those ventures had proven lucrative beyond Giles’s wildest imagination.
The strange thing was, his father had been successful in his own right without resorting to blackmailing the Chancellor of the Exchequer. His father owned controlling shares in more than one merchant vessel, and in spite of the embargos and blockades of the war, those vessels had made successful journeys. One of the ships, theWhirlwind, was due back in the London dockyards in a matter of days, if it wasn’t there already, with a cargo that could include silks and spices from the Orient.
“I did not know about any of this,” Giles whispered to Rebecca after more than an hour of reading through the papers, as the faint light of dawn tickled the sky outside the window. He glanced up at her from across the desk. “Did you?”
“Not until very recently,” Rebecca said. “I wouldn’t have heard Father’s guests at all that first time, but Constance was feeling poorly, and I’d come downstairs after bedtime to fetch her something for her head.”
“It’s a good thing you—”
Giles got no further than that before their father roared, “How dare you?” from the doorway of the study.
Both Giles and Rebecca reeled back as their father charged into the room. Rebecca stumbled, and in his haste to prevent her from falling, Giles nearly tumbled over as well. Their father raced to the desk and slammed the ledger they had opened there closed, hiding and crumpling the collection of letters regarding the specifics of the blackmail and the threats over the contracts.
“What do you think you’re doing, boy?” he then growled at Giles.
“Proving that you are the one conspiring to blackmail Mr. Vansittart into granting you shipping contracts,” Giles told him honestly.
“And what would you know of it?” his father demanded.
“I am working with the Bow Street Runners on the case,” Giles told him. It was mostly true, whether the Runners themselves knew it or not. “Why else do you think I would venture back into this house of horrors?”
Whatever traces of affection, or even lust, their father might have had vanished. Instead, the man growled and bared his teeth at Giles. “You will not live to tell the tale,” he said. “Nobody knows you have returned here, and nobody ever will.”
Giles stepped in front of Rebecca to shield her, but instead of attacking directly, their father leapt back to the fireplace. For half a second, Giles thought they were in the clear, until their father grabbed one of the fire irons, then charged.
Rebecca screamed, but Giles was determined to do whatever he could to protect her. He drew her to the side, avoiding his father’s swing with the iron poker. He needed to reach the fireplace himself so he could take up one of the other irons to defend himself and Rebecca, but his father seemed to know it and blocked the way.
Another swing with the iron just barely grazed Giles’s arm as he raised it to protect his head. His father shouted wordlessly, then came closer, taking another swing. That one hit Giles’s arm loud enough to cause him to cry out. Giles refused to back down, and if he had to use his body as a barrier between his father and Rebecca, he would, even if it meant his father beat him to death. The way his father raised the iron seemed very much like he was preparing for a deadly blow.
But just as his father began to bring the iron down, aiming at Giles’s head, there was a massive crash from the front hall.
ChapterNine
As soon as Baker had given him leave to assemble a group of his fellow Runners to descend on Pennyroyal’s house in the morning, Theo had set to work enlisting as many as would join him. The men he’d managed to recruit were, perhaps, not his closest friends, but Matthews, Fleet, and Waterstone were good, tough men with a solid sense of right and wrong.
Theo was glad for the three men’s help, and grateful when they agreed to assemble on Margaret Street in the predawn half-light. Theo hadn’t wanted to wait any longer than dawn to surprise Pennyroyal. If Giles carried out his part of the plan the way he’d planned to, he would have what they needed to prove the man’s guilt long before morning light.
