One of the books—reflecting Brundage’s embassy budget—showed the ebb and flow of money into the mysterious charity. The other book included Brundage’s meticulous records of personal purchases and payments—debts and creditors paid in concert with the ebb and flow of that charity’s balance, and shiny objects purchased, and the like. Including, as Pike the footman had told him, three vases from Guthrie’s Antiquities ranging in cost from three pounds to five pounds fifty, purchased in 1812 and 1813. An ambassador’s finances were always the subject of some scrutiny, particularly during a war. Brundage would have needed to disguise any unorthodox influxes of money.
Together those budget books were damning. But it wasn’t the whole story. He still didn’t know to whom, specifically, Brundage had sold secrets.
Brundage must have realized that Hawkes was now on the trail of the whole story.
And he’d likely reweighed his options and decided that between being shot by a firing squad—or at best, imprisoned for the rest of his days—for treason, and losing a fiancée and a valuable necklace, he preferred the second. Hawkes had to go.
Why else? What were the odds it was a whimsical stabbing?
He’d find out once he got a look in his pockets to see if his money, guns, and watch were gone.
Christ. He couldn’t yet think clearly.
It was infuriating.
He remembered staggering, careening against walls, stumbling as far as that thick red door of the inn. He had no sense of the distance. He only remembered falling through it.
Apparently, he hadn’t wanted to die alone.
He hoped he hadn’t left a trail of blood leading right up to the inn, because that would certainly be useful when it came to finding him and stabbing him for keeps next time.
Was Lady Aurelie even here?
Urgency surged through him again. He shoved himself upright and swung his legs over the side of the bed.
Oh, God. That was a mistake.
He sucked in a breath and gripped the edge of the bed with both hands.
The room spun grotesquely and his stomach heaved.
He closed his eyes and let the room do a circuit or two before he attempted to open them again and breathed hard breaths through the nausea. He had a suspicion he’d been dosed with laudanum or something like it.
Bloody hell, he was weak. He must have been well drugged.
And, well, he was ill. Clearly. Or had been. Apart from being stabbed.
He could and would not complain. Someone or several someones had clearly administered to him and he was alive because of that.
He breathed. Deeply, held it, released it. Air, he’d learned, was also medicine.
And he needed water. To begin to clear the laudanum or whatever it was from his blood and the furry feeling from his mouth. He hefted the pitcher he found on the little table near his bed; it was nearly empty.
He turned his head to find that a bar of sunlight slanted through a slit in the blue curtains hung at the window. It traced a bright path across the floor, slanting across the wardrobe, terminating at the door. Not one speck of dust danced in that beam.
On the whole, he felt as though he’d been beaten like a horseshoe on an anvil, but somehow that still impressed him.
Gratitude roared through him like sunlight through that window. Fucking hell, but at least he was free and alive.
Perhaps he just couldn’t be killed.
The room smelled improbably of spring. He located the culprits: a little froth of blossoms stuffed into a vase on a modest writing desk, a few feet away from his nose. The chair in front of the desk was drapedwith what looked like his shirt, which was probably suitable only for use as a surrender flag.
A fire burned cheerfully and the hearth was spotless.
Next to the hearth stood his boots. If his—hosts? Captors? Rescuers?—were going to rob him while he was helpless, surely they wouldn’t have given him flowers, or left his boots? A pair made by Hoby could finance a good long debauch, if their tastes ran to that.
When the room stopped spinning he noticed a little heap of clean white linen torn into strips piled on the writing table.
