She looked again at the drawing. “It’s no wonder that when I took the boys to visit the King’s Dockyard I had the sense that I had seen Peregrine’s friend Samuel Tilden before.”
“I can see why you forgot about the drawing,” replied Wrexford, after re-reading the captions. “Your point was that the engineers on land, with their experimental locomotives, were coming up with far more exciting innovations than the seagoing men of science.”
“So I thought at the time,” said Charlotte.
His gaze had moved from the captions to the caricatures. “However, I assume that the reason you’re showing this print to me is because ofthem. . .” He tapped a finger to the two gentlemen in the foreground of the drawing. “Reginald Maitland and Samuel Tilden were the main speakers at the lecture.”
“There were no other A. J. Quill prints among Greeley’s papers. So the fact that he saved this particular one can’t help but raise disturbing questions,” reasoned Charlotte. “Given the fire at Maudslay’s laboratory and its significance to the race to invent the technology for ocean travel, how can this discovery not connect in some way to Greeley’s death?”
“But how?” Wrexford clenched his hands in exasperation. “As far as I can see, the da Vinci manuscript has nothing to do with modern technology.”
“Save for the drawings of water,” Charlotte pointed out.
They both darted a look at the manuscript lying at the corner of his desk. To the earl’s eye, the open pages seemed to quiver with silent laughter.
Charlotte seemed to read his thoughts. “I know, I know—it’s an absurd idea. And yet . . .” Her words trailed off in a frustrated sigh.
But after a moment, she looked up at him through her lashes. “There is another possibility, though it pains me to say it.”
Wrexford nodded. “I know what you are thinking. Perhaps Greeley got involved with a radical group of returning soldiers who believe that technology is stealing their chances of finding work. Which might mean his murder is the result of a quarrel between factions.”
She expelled a sigh. “But that still doesn’t explain why the manuscript was taken.”
“Or perhaps he saved the print because it showed Maitland—or Tilden.”
Their eyes met.
“So let us decide our next move.”
Wrexford rose abruptly. “We need to send word to Cordelia and ask her to come by as soon as she can. I was just telling Tyler that I remembered something from Maitland’s recent lecture at the Royal Institution. He mentioned a book on mathematics and fluid dynamics. Perhaps she is familiar with it and can help us discern whether any of these seemingly unconnected clues might fit together.”
“I’ll have Riche dispatch one of the footmen immediately,” replied Charlotte. But as she turned for the door, she hesitated. “I think it’s only right that we also summon Kit, despite the fact that things are fraught between him and Cordelia. He wouldn’t thank us for leaving him in the dark about our discovery and its possible connection to Taviot’s consortium.”
“Very well,” conceded Wrexford, though he couldn’t help but add, “Our friends will likely think we are mad as March hares.”
“I daresay we are.” A glimmer of humor flickered in her eyes. “Allowing an uncontrollable passion for justice to overwhelm all reason and restraint is clearly the sign of an addled brain.” She made a face. “I apologize. I think you caught the malady from me.”
Funny how she could make him smile, even under the darkest of circumstances. But as she hurried into the corridor, the light moment was quickly sucked under by the vortex of unanswered questions.
“Bloody hell,” he muttered. “I feel like we’re drowning in a sea of hidden secrets and lies.”
Wrexford took another look at the A. J. Quill print before folding it up and taking a deep breath. Logic had always been his lodestone, yet no matter how meticulously he analyzed the facts, nothing was making any sense. By piecing together a set of hard-won clues, he had come to believe that Greeley’s murder was linked in some way to a British traitor who had sold out his comrades during the Peninsular War.
But this new evidence seemed to say it was linked to the current technological race for mastery of the oceans.
There was another possibility . . .
“No. Impossible,” he growled.For it would mean—
“Sorry to interrupt, milord, but this missive just arrived,” announced Tyler as he rushed into the room and held out a letter. “It was delivered by a messenger from the French envoy’s office, so I thought you would wish to see it right away.”
Steady, steady. Wrexford slowly reached out and took it from the valet’s fingers.
Tyler’s face, he noted, had turned ashen. The valet knew the significance of a communication from a Frenchman.
The blood-red wax seal broke with an audiblecrack, allowing the single sheet of paper to unfold.
Four words, stark black on white, were scrawled in the center of the page.
