Grant sank back into the leather armchair wondering what was afoot. “So I’ve heard.”
The colonel offered him a cheroot, and when Grant declined, lit up and leaned back. “Not a bad thing to keep society guessing.”
“I’d prefer a different topic,” Grant said with a shrug.
“I daresay.” Black puffed out a circle of acrid smoke. “We have a job for you.”
Grant nodded and folded his arms, hiding his intense interest behind a cool exterior. He and Black had formed part of a shooting party at his father’s hunting lodge. Black had confessed admiration for Grant’s accuracy with a gun with some relief, after Black stumbled into a rabbit hole while in the path of a charging stag. Grant had felled it with one shot. Black later admitted that while seeking more recruits for intelligence, he’d done some digging into Grant’s past. He’d first dismissed Grant as a dandy, but after that shoot, and seeing what a cool head he had under pressure, he’d changed his mind.
It was true that after Oxford, Grant, at a loose end, enjoyed indolent pursuits with his university friends. When in the country, they indulged in shooting parties, hunted, and bet on the turf. During the Season, they visited the fashionable clubs, White’s and Brooks to play cards or Gentleman Jackson’s to box. Grant improved his aim at Manton’s shooting gallery. He drove his curricle around town with a team of horses, and exercised his gelding in Hyde Park. Their nights saw them at gambling hells, or the theatre with Cyprians.
The shallowness of such a life had long since palled when Black approached him. Perhaps because Grant’s father had refused his request to join the army and oust Napoleon at age sixteen, he snatched at Black’s suggestion with enthusiasm. And after a brief schooling in the art of intelligence work, he’d undertaken the covert and sometimes dangerous job of working for the Crown. There was another reason he’d accepted such work, deep seated, that Grant preferred not to revisit often; not to have his family believe him to be a wastrel. Grant sought to measure up to expectations before his grandfather died. His father was a more difficult proposition. Grant feared he grappled with depression after his mother died.
Grant generally avoided whirling a debutante around in the waltz under her mama’s avid gaze at that most exclusive of clubs, Almack’s. But this Season, he must shelve his boredom while squiring his sister, Arabella in her first Season.
It was a rare evening that he attended a brilliant gathering at a fashionable house like this one. And he wished he hadn’t had to come tonight, but Black had requested a meeting. He frowned, no doubt the gossip would spread farther north and add fuel to the fire of his soiled reputation.
“Was it? You haven’t yet heard that the earl, Nathaniel Haighton, has been murdered?” Black’s words cut through his reverie like a knife through butter.
“No!” Grant stared at him. “What happened?” He gripped the arms of his chair. Nat murdered?
“Shot down in cold blood.”
“Shot?” Grant shook his head disbelievingly. “He was a good friend of my father’s. I’ve known him all my life, and his wife, Jenny. They have a brood of children.”
Black gave a curt nod. “You’ll be aware that Stockton and Darlington’s first steam train will run in September.”
“Spoken of tonight as a matter of fact. But what has that to do with…”
“The newly laid train line was found ripped apart within shouting distance of where Lord Haighton was found on his northern boundary.”
“You believe he came across the men wrecking the rail line?”
“We don’t know. When his horse came back to the stables they began to search for him. Found him hours later. Difficult to say if the two things happened concurrently, but it’s certainly possible.”
“Fiends!” Horrified, Grant curled his hands into fists. “What lies behind this sabotage?”
“The reasons are not yet clear.”
“A beef against the company? There’s plenty of opposition against progress.” Grant shook his head. “But murder!”
“They might have panicked,” Black said on a puff of smoke. “And this might have nothing to do with Haighton’s murder.”
“Nat rode along his northern boundary to the river every morning,” Grant said. “My father and I often accompanied him during house parties.”
“They’ll strike again.” Black stubbed out his cheroot. “The government wants the matter kept quiet for now, it will cause some panic on the ’Change. The Duke of Rotherham’s estate lies in Yorkshire, so visiting your grandfather would go unremarked upon. I suspect the trail will lead you back to London. This was neither a local matter, nor insignificant. Talk to the Justice of the Peace and the parish constable. The North Yorkshire magistrate, too if need be.
“Because the canals proposed to move coal have never been built, this rail line has become part of a long-term plan that will eventually be extended to link industry, particularly iron, steel production, and shipbuilding, as well as coal, to other Durham towns. A vital step in English industry. Which is why the government wants to keep this matter low key. Find out what you can. But be careful, we remain too much in the dark.”
Grant breathed deeply to ease the rage tightening his chest. How distressed his father and grandfather would be when the news of Nat’s death reached them. He wanted to be there to somehow help ease their pain.
* * *
How Lord Gunn managed to sweet talk her mother, she didn’t know, but he led Mercy onto the floor for a waltz. She felt light as a feather in his arms as he guided her over the floor. “You’re a wee lassie,” he said in his heavy Scots brogue. “Different to your sister.”
“Yes, Hope and I are more alike.” It was all she could manage to say to his broad chest, for she’d become quite breathless.
“The Duchess is Junoesque,” he commented, as Charity waltzed past with Robin.
