Nell nodded again, still struck dumb by him. By this. By them.
“I shall return to you tomorrow for our usual walk?” Beckett looked hopeful, his eyes wide, and an expression soft and open in a way she’d never seen. Or rather, never knew how to recognize before.
“Our usual walk,” she echoed.
And he was gone, and her heart took flight.
Chapter Ten
Beckett felt likehe could stride through the ocean without resistance. He was stronger than an ox and smarter than Timothy could ever be. He was invincible. He met up with his friend in their usual room at their club.
Timothy was hunched over with a glass of brandy, smoking a cigar. He rarely smoked, and only did so when he was thinking. Beckett poured his own glass and went to sit beside him. Letters were stacked in an uneven pile on the small table between them.
Beckett tried to mitigate his ebullience, lest it put off Timothy, who seemed to be struggling. “Everything put to rights?” he asked, eyeing the precarious stack of unfolded papers. There were more at his feet.
“My ardent pen pal seems to be otherwise occupied. I hope he is not ill.” Timothy puffed on his cigar and blew out the smoke slowly, letting it rise in sinuous curls to the ceiling. “Or dead.”
That surprised Beckett. Timothy was not a man prone to morbid predictions. “Are you that worried?”
“I am,” Timothy said. “It’s Mr. Smalls.”
Beckett sipped at his brandy. “Ah yes, the industrious Cornelius Smalls. I’m not sure I ever read an entire letter from the man.”
Timothy grunted. “I’m aware. He has complained of it a number of times. It was then that I suggested we begin a chess game via correspondence as a way to distract him from his complaints.”
“Is that why you think he is dead? He hasn’t yet given you the next move in your game?”
Timothy took another drag at his cigar and pondered. It made Beckett wonder if his friend was already drunk. Very possible. “I’ve thought perhaps he had something going on with him the last few weeks. His responses took longer than usual, and his overall missives shorter. As if something else held his attentions.”
Beckett raised his eyebrow. “Sounds as if you are jealous.”
Another drag and exhalation from his friend. “Perhaps I am. For so long, I held his rapt attention, as if I could see him sitting down with his chessboard the moment he received my missives. Now? My letter sits at the bottom of a pile, waiting for his splintered awareness. And now? It’s been a full week. He has never taken that long.”
“A week? That’s nothing. Hardly an eyeblink for postage.”
Timothy leveled him with a look. “Mr. Smalls abides in London.”
Beckett made a face. He’d never thought long enough on Mr. Smalls to speculate where the fellow lived. He was an annoyance. A person who bedeviled all men of power, hoping to gain influence and status.
“I know you think poorly of him, but his mind is quick,” Timothy said. “And I’m worried.”
When a friend worried, the only thing left was to lend what aid one could. “Let’s have it, then. Where’s the most recent letter? The unanswered one. Perhaps we can ferret out a clue.”
Timothy gestured to the top of the pile.
“Did you bring the entire history of correspondence?” Beckett harrumphed at the letters that skidded about.
Timothy huffed out a laugh. “Hardly. That’s from the past few months alone. We exchange letters perhaps twice a week. Glad I’m a member of Parliament, otherwise even we would drown in postage costs.”
“This is from but a few months?” Beckett looked about, shaking his head. He didn’t have time for such a literary affair. He shook his head and held the letter to the firelight to read. “Seems innocuous enough. Economy. Voting. Poverty.” But as he read through the letter, summarizing the talking points familiar to any government official, he began to look at the familiarity of the handwriting.
And then, without wanting to think too hard upon it, he withdrew from his pocket the suffocatingly obsequious note he’d received from Mrs. Reid. A knot full of sick dread formed in his stomach.
“What?” Timothy asked, blowing another sinew of smoke into the air. “Did you find something?”
Beckett felt like he might cast up his accounts. The formation of the uppercaseL, the short, efficient crossing of the lowercaseT, were identical from the note this morning and Timothy’s sheaf of letters. He felt sick.
Bile rose in his throat, accompanying the betrayal that blanketed him. The experience was too acute to parse if it was a betrayal of hers or Timothy’s. Because he was certain—certain—that the hand that penned his note also penned the letters to Timothy. He handed the note and the letter to Timothy.
