Julius raised his glass in assent.
“How long have you been paying?” Audley asked.
“Long enough.” Julius puffed on his cigar. A group of men, old enough to know better, stumbled into the room at the far end, laughing uproariously. A longtime member started, jerked his cue along the felt covering the table, and shot the group a disgusted look.
Dangling his elbow over the armrest of his chair, Julius tipped his glass to the side until the liquid almost spilled over the rim. “They’re very good. I’ve never seen one of my blackmailers. Mysterious notes show up on my doorstep.”
“Lucky you. I appear to have a personal representative who is always willing to remind me of the consequences if I don’t pay him on time each month.” Audley’s fingers whitened around the stem of his glass. “Although the man might as well be invisible for all I know of him.”
“You know what he looks like,” Julius said. “That’s a start.”
Audley ground out the end of his half-smoked cigar on the bottom of his boot, ash falling to the carpet. “He looks like any other lower-class shit sack. Unkempt. Unwashed. Rude beyond tolerance.”
“Of course, he’s rude.” Julius stared at the ceiling, resting his head back. “He’s extorting money from you.” And he wondered how ‘unkempt’ the man truly was. To the son of a duke, Julius most likely looked like a vagabond. Sutton would appear a hardened ruffian. And he didn’t even want to consider how Audley would see their friend Sinclair, the Marquess of Dunkeld. Even to Julius’s more forgiving eye, that man looked two steps from bedlam.
“Can you give a more specific description?” At this point, anything would be useful. “Hair color, height, weight? Accent?”
“Average size. Brownish hair. Middle-aged. A lower-class accent.”
Julius had been wrong. Not everything was useful. “You just described over half the men in London. Anything distinctive about him?”
“No.” Audley shifted in his chair. “Except for the scars, of course.”
Leaning forward, Julius gripped his fists to keep from throttling the young man. “What scars?”
Audley shrugged. “Little craters that cover his neck and cheeks. Pox I guess.” He downed the last gulp of brandy. “He frequents a coffeehouse in Covent Garden. I have my grooms follow him after he leaves my house. The man always loses them after that point.”
“Why did you not lead with this information?” Julius asked, exasperated. This was why he preferred espionage to investigations. People never told him what he wanted to hear when he wanted to hear it. “Anything else? The name of the head blackmailer you’ve forgotten to tell me? His home address?”
Audley’s eyebrows drew together. “No. If I knew that we wouldn’t be having this conversation.” Before Julius could explain the concept of sarcasm, Audley continued. “But you may want to speak with Martin Dawnley. He was a clerk in the Court of Chancery and another victim of blackmail. He paid even when he had no money, and now England provides his keep in debtor’s prison.”
Julius rubbed his temple. “How do you know he was blackmailed?”
“I came to know him casually when I helped my aunt with her husband’s estate. Dawnley came to me for a loan.” Audley snorted. “I refused. Told him he needed to man up and face the consequences of his actions. This was before I was approached by the blackmailer, of course.”
“Of course.” Julius laid down his brandy and cigar and stood.
“Don’t you want to know what they’re blackmailing me for?” Audley stared at his boots.
“No.” Julius eyed the young man, his lowered shoulders, his tired eyes. If the kid had attained the age of one and twenty, Julius would be surprised. Too young to have to deal with such a threat. At that age, Julius had just joined the military, eager for the adventures life would provide. Still ignorant of life’s harsher realities.
He’d learned quickly. In the three years he’d been a prisoner of a local warlord, he’d discovered the depravity of human nature and his own limits on how much suffering he could endure. His two older brothers had died while he’d been captive, and it was their deaths that had saved his life. Their lives for his. It had been a poor trade-off.
Audley looked up, a hint of desperation crossing his face. “They want more than blunt now. They want something I can’t give. My father would never—” Leaning forward, he rested his elbows on his knees and dropped his head in his hands. “I don’t influence my father.”
“And that’s what they really want.” Julius drummed his fingers against his thigh. He quite wanted to meet these bastards.
Audley dug his fingers into his scalp. “But if I don’t get my father to convince Prinny, I’ll be hanged. I don’t see a way out of this for me.”
“You might not see it, but there is always a way out.” Julius laid a hand on the man’s shoulder and squeezed. “Why would you hang?”
“It’s the law. Men like me don’t deserve to live apparently.”
“Ah.” So those were the types of clubs the young lord patronized. It wasn’t unheard of for a man to visit a molly-house. Most in Polite Society preferred to turn a blind eye. But it was still dangerous, at least for men without Audley’s connections. One of England’s many capital offenses.
“You are the son of a duke. You wouldn’t hang.” He’d be shunned. Shipped out of the country. Probably sent to fight on the front lines in the hopes he’d do the decent thing like step in front of a bullet to end his family’s disgrace. But not hanged.
“You think not?” Audley stood. “You don’t think the government would love to make an example of an aristocrat? To round up the support of the common man by tossing him a bone? And the execution of a titled toff is a very juicy bone.” He looked away. “I don’t know if my father would fight for me,” he said, his voice small.
