***
Anight of drinking and gambling with old friends took its happy toll, and Ives slept soundly, oblivious to the impulses that plagued him. With daylight came sobriety, however, and thoughts of Padua once again intruded.
While he dressed, he considered that perhaps he should visit a brothel, so he might avoid going around town insulting women by propositioning them. One good rut, and Miss Belvoir might cease to fascinate.He had better do something, because if she continued to absorb his attention, he would be thoroughly compromised regarding her father.
How bad would that be? He mulled the question while he broke his fast. He was not the only lawyer who could prosecute. Let them find someone else. He knew the likely prospects. While all good men, they placed winning above fairness, just the way the courts expected. The way he used to. Justice sometimes suffered then. Rarely, but it happened, especially in cases where the guilt was not clear-cut.
Of course it was with Hadrian Belvoir. Supposedly. Only, between imagining what he would do with Padua when he had her naked, he also mulled her father’s case. And Strickland’s information. And that apartment on Wigmore Street. For a crime in which the man was caught with the evidence in his home, there were questions unanswered and coincidences unexplained.
He called for his horse, with the intention of riding out of town. Instead after a few blocks he cursed, and turned his mount toward that apartment.
When he stopped at the nearby corner, he was still trying to convince himself to ride on. Then he noticed the blond head at the low window. Mrs. Trenholm had not left for the flower shop yet, despite it being two o’clock.
The head disappeared. A few minutes later the door opened, and out she came. Even from a distance he could see the paint on her face.
He followed her as she walked down the street, then turned left for several blocks. She stopped and stood there. Once more he watched from a crossroads.
Five minutes later a carriage stopped where she stood. She approached the window and spoke. A man’s arm reached out and their hands met. Then the carriage door opened and Mrs. Trenholm climbed in.
Ives rode back to the apartment. He could not damn the woman for lying about working in a flower shop, considering the work she did instead. Still, her presence in the same building as Hadrian Belvoir had become one of those coincidences that nudged at him.
What were the odds of two people with serious criminal activity in their backgrounds living on that street, let alone in the same building? And although Strickland thought there were no political overtones or suspicions in Belvoir’s case, Ives was not convinced. So Mrs. Trenholm’s husband and Belvoir may have had something else in common.
Back at the apartment, he dismounted and tied his horse. He climbed the stairs and entered the cluttered chambers. Padua said there was nothing of use here, but he did not think she had looked very far before those old letters absorbed her.
He opened a window, shed his frock coat, and began digging.
An hour later he had viewed enough mathematical notations to last most men a lifetime. He sat back in the desk’s chair and viewed the chamber. He wasdisappointed. He had hoped—damn, he had hoped to find something that might help Hadrian, he supposed. He would bear it to Padua like a gift. And he would avoid the moment when he had to choose whether to don his wig and robe and enter the Old Bailey, or whether his friendship with Padua meant he must leave her father to his fate at the hands of another lawyer.
While his mind worked, his gaze drifted over the motley assortment of publications that filled the case of books on the chamber’s wall. The collection spoke of other interests besides mathematics. He could spy history books and volumes of poetry amid the scientific titles. Many purchases had never been bound, however, and their contents remained invisible.
Just as his thoughts were leading to unfortunate introspection about the first time his instincts on a case had been proven right, but too late, his gaze lit upon a binding that made him smile. He rose and walked over. Thin, small, and red, a schoolbook for children on mathematics had been stuffed between two tomes on chemistry. His tutor had used the same book when he was a boy.
His gaze saw another one, then another, interspersed on the shelves. Padua’s schoolbooks, he assumed. He pulled out the first one. Perhaps she had put her name inside. The idea of seeing her childish hand charmed him.
He opened the book, and froze. He turned the pages. Then he pulled out all the other children’s books, and did the same. When he was done, he had a stackof ten little books. No, twelve, because two others had already been removed and placed on the table near the chair.
He also had a stack of something else.
Money.
CHAPTER9
“Dear child, how often must I repeat the same thing.Do not come here.”
Padua hugged herself while her father scolded her. His words were harsh, but he appeared pained and his tone sounded more exasperated than angry.
The men in his cell laughed. One of them sidled over, and stuck his lascivious smile to the grate through which she saw the cell.
“Don’t you listen to the crazy old man,” he said. “We all like your visits, don’t we? When we are out of here we all will be happy to show our gratitude.” He reached over and plucked a book out of her father’s arms. “More food and less of this, though, if you don’t mind.”
She burned the man with a furious glare. It appearedher father had not heard the insinuations and lack of respect.
He had other things on his mind. “I wish you had never left Birmingham,” he muttered, his sad eyes refusing to meet her gaze. “You are too willful by far. That is your mother’s doing. That is the reason for your disobedience now. You think you know better than I do, but you do not.”
“I only think you need my help, so that you have a bit of fresh food now and then, and some books to occupy your mind.” She spoke quietly, praying at least half of this argument would not be heard by the whole prison.
“I don’t need books to occupy my mind. My thoughts alone can do that, and I rarely can keep these scoundrels off the food, so you waste your money.” He paced away, and dumped the books in his corner, then came back.
