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“A recent development,” he replied, and Charlotte could see the tickled annoyance bubbling beneath the surface of his skin. “I feel I’d be doing quite a disservice to the arts if I kept my poems to myself. I plan to publish them wherever I can. There is talk of a subscription for them.”
“What a feat, Mr. Huxley,” Matthew conquered, and Charlotte rolled her eyes. “I must say, I have always been a great patron of the arts, a well-versed reader.” Charlotte let out a shock of laughter before remembering herself. She tried to pass it off as a sneeze. “Perhaps you might be interested in calling upon my sisters, sir. Lady Eleanor was very impressed by your recital last night. And Lady Charlotte,” he looked to his sister with a warning glare, “would be there.”
Her brother was a terrible bootlicker, but he had playedHuxleyright into their hand. Charlotte could almost be convinced that he was trying to act the matchmaker between them—not for her benefit, of course. No doubt he only wanted Charlotte out of his hair as soon as possible.
Something in what Matthew had proposed had rightfully unnerved the man. He fidgeted, quickly sliding the purse into his coat pocket and looking for an exit. He sucked in his cheeks, revealing the sharp angles of his cheekbones. “I may just do that, my lord. A mutual acquaintance mentioned your being housed in Mayfair for the Season. Is that not so?”
It was a threat, Charlotte knew. She replied all the same, “That is correct, sir, at Richmond Court. We would be so happy to welcome your visit. I feel a call would be tremendously revealing. You are in London, are you not?”
“I am, my lady. Born and raised. Though I am only recently returned to the town.”
Matthew reached into his coat and pulled out his card. “If you’re ever nearby,” he said as he tended it to him. The man took it. Their ways dictated he should give Matthew one of his own, but he did not. Instead, he merely muttered a goodbye and slunk out of the building.
Charlotte watched the door slam behind him.
“Strange fellow,” Matthew commented beside her. “Very strange indeed.”
“They’re all the same in this business, my lord.” They swiveled around in tandem to where the publisher was now speaking to them. “The price to pay for creativity, I suppose.”
There was an opportunity here, despite his beating her to the chase. She took it. “Has Mr. Huxley been in contact with you long?”
“A few weeks only, my lady,” he explained, filing Charlotte’s poem away. “He had a small lad drop off the first last year. I didn’t think much of it myself, but the Countess, Lady Singberry is on the board, and she was taken with his style.”
Matthew opened his mouth to speak, but Charlotte beat him to it. “Curious,” she breathed, then she turned to her brother. “I do think you were quite right. We should invite him to the house if he is so recently returned to London. I hate to think of him without company.”
Matthew nodded and smiled quite genuinely. He turned to the publisher. “You wouldn’t happen to have his address, would you?”
The man smiled, pulling out a small stack of cards from a set of wooden drawers behind him. He flicked through the lot of them until, at last, he wriggled free the one he had been looking for. He picked up his spectacles from where he had set them down after the poetry reading and intonated, “Walden Street, Whitechapel, London.”
Charlotte clapped her hands together. If the thief had thought to slip from her net forever, he had been sorely mistaken. She would make him rue the day he stole from her, one poem at a time.
She turned back to the publisher when he asked, with a smile, “Right, my lord, my lady. What can I do for the two of you today?”
Charlotte smiled right back and looked toward the street from the window. The man had done quite enough for her already.
