“With no thought that ye might have been injured, or worse?”
I heard the concern in the words.
“Alex was with me. He has become quite proficient with a weapon,” I added, then, “who would have thought?”
“Ye are troublesome baggage, Mikaela Forsythe Brodie.”
I leaned into him and slipped my other hand back through that dark hair, my fingers curling into the soft waves.
“I do try,” I whispered against his lips.
Epilogue
Emma Fortescue,adventuress and world traveler, leaned over the bow of the felucca, one of those small sailboats on the Nile, as it bumped against the wood pier, a body covered with flies pinned between.
Her guide, lean, with dark hair that waved over the collar of his shirt, cautioned, “There are many dangers on the river, miss.”
Perhaps not as dangerous as the heat in that dark gaze fastened on her…
“Are ye finished then?” another man with dark hair and an equally dark gaze asked as I looked up from my type-writing machine.
It was Brodie of course, who had somehow slipped into Miss Emma Fortescue’s next adventure.
“There’s just the ending to add and then I will send it off to Mr. Warren,” I replied. “He’s been most patient in consideration of our last case.”
That last case being our inquiry for Helen Bennett in the matter of the disappearance of her husband, and the Agency’sinvestigation into rumors of a conspiracy against the Crown. The two cases connected in ways we hadn’t foreseen and with devastating possibilities had we not exposed and stopped the conspirators.
I added additional lines to that ending page, clattering away at the keys. It was Brodie’s suggestion that I bring the machine to the office on the Strand as I spent a great deal of time there. With him out and about on various matters, I had more than enough time to finish my latest novel.
Not that I didn’t think of the case, or rather two cases, that we had solved.
We had both called on Helen Bennett afterward. She deserved to know that justice had been served in the matter of her husband’s death.
Soropkin had been remanded to Newgate, there to await trial on charges of conspiracy and murder in the deaths of at least two others who had provided information to the Agency, not to mention countless people across Europe in the attacks that had taken place earlier.
However, Brodie speculated that he might not live long enough to be brought to trial. In spite of the horrible crimes committed by others imprisoned at Newgate, it seemed that there was a certain code of justice, if one could call it that.
Among those who were imprisoned for life or condemned to death, where there was most often no loyalty to anyone but self, there was a deep, abiding loyalty to Queen and country. It was very possible that Soropkin would meet another sort of justice there.
Sir James Redstone’s part in all of it initially was far more complex and difficult to comprehend.
He had been raised amid wealth and privilege. His family was one of the oldest, going back generations to the Reformation when an ancestor was presented both title and lands by HenryVIII for his loyalty. No small honor. Not to mention the wealth that went with it.
However, it was discovered that James’ father had fallen to drink and gambling and the repercussions that came with it— something I knew a little about.
The vast lands gifted by a king centuries earlier were gone to pay debts. As was the family estate in London in the past year, seized by bankers— and by extension, the Crown.
During very near twenty years of travel to other countries, including those I had shared along with others, he’d nurtured a growing undercurrent of intense dislike toward those he felt had wronged his family.
In addition to the loss of everything that defined who and what Sir James Redstone was and the bitterness that came with it, he found himself drawn more and more to others who had been impoverished and trod upon, cast aside by those they saw as the elite.
With that anger burning inside him, the step into their world and the promise of a new order was a tempting lure. And then with his connections into that world of wealth and privilege, with many unaware of his family misfortunes, he became the proverbial“wolf in sheep’s clothing.”
The perfect plot unfolded to strike at the heart of British power and wealth. Parliament was seen as the heart of power along with those who created the laws. Then, very much like that plot centuries earlier, the decision was made to bring down Parliament and murder the Prime Minister, and the perfect plan was set in motion.
However, not quite perfect…
They hadn’t counted on former police inspector Angus Brodie, who had gone back to the streets and had followed rumors and speculation to Dr. Bennett’s secret office.
