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Richard raised his eyebrows, appearing surprised.
“Not a bad idea, but no. That’s not the urgent side of the matter. I can swoop the chit up whenever I please.”
Samuel frowned. “You can’t be here seeking my blessing.”
“If only.” Richard’s chuckle fell flat. He drained his drink. “You remember Yvette?”
“The actress you rent a townhome for?”
The one that, five years ago when Richard was in his early twenties and Samuel a scant eighteen, Richard had sworn was the love of his life and the only woman he would marry. The woman Richard always returned to, no matter how many others he took to his bed.
“Yes, well, we had a bit of a falling out.”
“Over what this time?”
“She said that any woman could create a Carmichael heir, so long as I married her. I told her not to be ridiculous. We’re related to members of the peerage. Only a woman of a certain lineage will do.” Richard shook his head. “It was a real fight this time, Sammy. She said that if I didn’t prove my love once and for all, we’d be through.”
Had Richard come to him for sympathy? Certainly, his brother didn’t want Samuel’s advice on how to handle his mistress.
“Perhaps that’s for the best.”
Richard grimaced.
“No, it wasn’t for the best. I was so desperate to make amends. You know how I feel about her. I told her I’d do anything to keep her.”
Samuel nodded, sympathy welling in him. For all his brother’s debauchery, he seemed truly attached to Yvette.
Richard turned the empty tumbler in his hand, staring into the bottom like a tea reader.
“She, ah, requested I prove my love by walking off with a certain memento from the home of a friend.”
“You stole something for her?” Worry for where Richard’s tale headed capped Samuel’s pity. “What? From whom?”
Richard shook his head.
“A journal. It doesn’t matter from whom.”
“I imagine it matters to whomever you stole it from.”
“A general,” Richard snapped, anger twisting his features, and then gone. He pushed a hand through artfully disarranged brown locks and said more softly, “It was only a personal journal. Nothing related to the war.”
Fingers of fear curled into Samuel’s gut.
“You stole a general’s private journal? And then?”
“And then Yvette ran off with it.” Richard’s hazel eyes darted up to meet Samuel’s gaze, then dropped again. “I think she returned to France.”
“With a general’s journal?”
Richard nodded.
Samuel sank back against the desk, flabbergasted. This went far beyond Richard’s typical debauchery. Helping deliver even a non-military journal written by one of England’s generals into the hands of the French, or any country with whom they were at war, could definitely be construed as treason.
“I thought maybe she was hiding somewhere here in England, testing my love by making me search for her, but I found out that a page from the journal appeared in a Paris paper several days ago.”
Samuel’s jaw hinged open. He snapped it closed, then forced it back open to say, “This is very bad.”
“I know.”
