“Agreed,” Mark said.
Daffin turned to Regina. “We need you to take us to where you were held. We’ll drive around the city until we find it. I have the direction from the hackney driver of where he picked you up. It’s our only clue at this point.”
Regina nodded. She wasn’t at all certain she could remember where she’d come from, but she would do her best. “Of course.”
“We need you to tell us everything you remember about where you were kept, Regina,” Mark said.
Regina scoured her memory. “He gave me laudanum.Everything was hazy. When I left, it was dark. I stumbled away looking for a street I recognized. I was still groggy.”
“I know, but think hard,” Mark pressed. “Do you remember anything? Anything at all?”
Regina did her best to concentrate. She’d been trying to remember the particulars of her escape for days. The details were lost in a fog of cold and fear. “I remember a lamppost and a milliner’s shop.”
“Anything else?” Daffin moved to a chair that faced her, his elbows braced on his knees.
Regina rubbed her hands across her face and groaned. “I remember while I was in the locked room, I heard a loud clanging noise. Over and over. As if someone were striking iron. Like a blacksmith.”
“There is a blacksmith on the corner of Earlham and Mercer in Seven Dials,” Cade Cavendish offered, leaning on a nearby wall. “Didn’t the hackney driver say he picked her up near there?”
“Yes,” Daffin replied, his nostrils flaring.
Regina nodded. “If we can find the street I was on, perhaps I can find the window I crawled out of.”
Daffin reached out and squeezed her hand. His gaze caught and held hers. “It’s settled. We’ll leave in the morning at first light.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Later that afternoon, Daffin entered Grimaldi’s study. “What did you find out?”
Grimaldi nodded at him to sit. “I’ve had my best men researching Quinton Knowles. You’re not going to like what I learned. Apparently, he’s been out of prison for years.”
Daffin expelled a breath. “But how? I was there the day they buried him in a cheap coffin outside of town.”
“You know as well as I do that Newgate is rife with prison guards out to make a few extra pounds.”
Daffin scratched the back of his neck. “I was afraid you were going to say that.”
“You never saw his body, did you?” Grim asked.
“No. And I was young and naïve enough back then not to ask. God, I’m a fool. All these years, I believed he was dead.”
“You’re not a fool, Oakleaf. You merely believed in a system that let you down… more than once.”
Daffin rubbed his hands over his eyes. “You found out who I am, didn’t you?”
Grimaldi smiled a little. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
Daffin laughed a humorless laugh. “Easy for the grandson of a duke to say.”
“Ah, but you’re the grandson of a duke, too, now aren’t you? The illegitimate eldest son of the Duke of Portland.”
“Yes.” Daffin clenched his jaw. “I’m a bastard.”
“This changes nothing, Oakleaf. You’re still the best runner Fielding’s got. You’re a damn fine man and a damn fine friend.”
Daffin hung his head. It humbled him to hear those words from his friend’s mouth. Would Regina feel the same when she found out? He didn’t have time to contemplate it. All that mattered was finding the son of a bitch who’d tried to hurt her and whoever had paid the bastard, and putting them both in prison where they belonged. This time Daffin would make certain Knowles never got out. “I want the name of the guard who took Knowles’s bloody money to let him out.”
Grimaldi cracked a smile. “I thought you might want it. I’ve got my best men on the case.”
