Wilberforce rose and circled his desk. “I’ll show you out,” he said, offering Lady Mary his arm. The door eased close behind them, leaving Charles alone with Miss Moore.
He placed the guest list on Wilberforce’s desk and examined it. “We need to speak with the hosts of each party and find out how they came to invite these people. Were they actually acquainted, or was anyone invited on a reference, as we were?”
Miss Moore came to stand next to him, peering down at the list. “There are still a lot of uncrossed names.”
“It’s more than we had to go on before.” He ran his finger down the list, his arm brushing against Miss Moore’s sleeve. “This man had a bushy, white beard that never looked quite right to me. It could have been a disguise. And the Scottish baronet. Did his accent ring true?”
She jerked her arm away and took two large steps to the side.
Charles frowned. He’d washed up that morning. He didn’t smell. Did she find him so distasteful?
“Sir Freeley also returned Mrs. Shelton’s pin when she dropped it.” Miss Moore stared out the window as she slowly circled the desk, putting it between them. “Why steal it later when he could have just kept it then?”
“Too easy?” He forced his jaw to relax. Miss Moore’s idiosyncrasies were not his concern. Perhaps she, too, found the ambiguity of her position distracting. She must be as unused to interacting with a man who didn’t fit into any appropriate category as he was with her. “Some thieves take delight in the challenge.”
“I would think fooling everyone as to his identity would be enough of a challenge.” Her back remained ramrod straight in front of him, the set of her shoulders tense.
Charles exhaled a long breath through his nose. If he was ever to conclude this investigation, he needed to work with this woman, not see her as an impediment. Which meant he needed to figure out where she fit. “Lady Mary made the point that trust among one’s associates is important to success. I believe that was meant as a hint to me.”
She cocked her head, a tendril of chestnut hair escaping from its tight knot. “You do?”
“Yes.” Tired of speaking to her back, he strode around the desk and pushed Wilberforce’s chair out of the way to stand in front of her. Lady Mary was right. There was no reason not to trust this woman. She had proven she had an adept mind and could be of use. She wasn’t what he was used to, but there had to be a place to sort her that would make sense to the both of them. “I wasn’t pleased when you were assigned to assist me. I have a system for my work here, and you don’t fit into any classification, category, or ordering within my system.”
“People don’t fit into boxes. If you expect them to, you will be sorely disappointed.”
“No, it is precisely to avoid disappointment why I sort people into their appropriate categories,” he said, rushing his words. It would be nice to make one person understand. To make her understand. He ran his hand up the back of his head. “I’m not explaining this well.”
“No, you’re not.” Her eyebrows drew together. “But do you need to? We are colleagues, not friends. We can continue to work together as before.”
“But we haven’t been working well together.” He nodded, making a decision. “Grab your coat. Come with me.”
“Where are we going?” She narrowed her eyes.
“Somewhere that will explain better than my words can.”
“A warehouse?” Miss Moore nodded at a man pushing a cart full of sacks of flour and turned a baffled expression up to Charles. “I am sorry to tell you, but this explains nothing.”
Charles smiled at her confusion. She was almost lovely when she didn’t hide her true emotions. “For me, it explains everything. This is where I am most comfortable in life.”
“At a warehouse.” She peered into a bin of tobacco. She wiggled her nose then sneezed, dried leaf flying.
Charles pulled her away and replaced the bin’s lid. “Not just any warehouse. This warehouse.” He inhaled deeply, the scents of his childhood washing over him. “It’s my father’s. It supplies his dry grocer stores. I grew up in here.”
“Dry grocer…. Wait. Strait’s Dry Grocer’s Hall? That’s you?”
He shifted. “Well, my father.”
“You have what? Three locations about London?”
“He just opened his fifth shop.” Pride mixed with the wariness in his voice. He couldn’t help it. There had been too many times when people had learned Charles’s father was successful that the relationship had changed. It was inevitable that they would want something, anything, from Charles, from a job to free product. Once an acquaintance had even asked him for a loan of an outrageous amount.
She clasped her hands together. “And this explains your need to label people how, precisely?”
He took her wrist and led her back to the tobacco. “You see these ten bins? Each one is filled with a different type of tobacco, sorted according to its place of origin. The tobacco from these bins will be put into smaller boxes and delivered to the stores where a man can choose precisely the right fill for his pipe.”
Miss Moore rolled her eyes. “Yes, having a selection is nice, but people aren’t tobacco.”
Charles ignored the familiar tightness in his chest. He always seemed alone in his need for organization. In his appreciation for keeping things in their proper places. He led her to another set of bins. “My father used to keep these nails all in one barrel in his stores. Some of them are very similar in length, you see, and my father thought they were close enough to all belong in the same barrel.”
