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“Ah.” Harry pulled the shawl from his shoulders and folded it into a neat square. “What do you think of it?”

She tore her eyes from his wet shirt, plastered to his arms and chest. “I—I think... Well, I think the King should not be able to divorce his wife for adultery when everyone in London knows he’s had a dozen mistresses. And he was very cruel to her, refusing to let her see Princess Charlotte, not even writing to let her know when the princess died. However badly she has behaved, he’s done worse. That isn’t fair.”

Harry heaved a sigh. “No. It isn’t.” He hung his head for a moment, looking so tired Mariah’s heart melted. She leaned out and took his hand. His fingers wrapped firmly around hers, as if he drew strength from her touch. She still longed to know what he had been doing and why, but held her tongue. He would tell her, when he could—if he could. Wordlessly, she raised her free hand to hold his hand between her two, offering him what comfort she could.

* * *

Harry’s throat tightened as he gazed down at their clasped hands. He’d needed to see her tonight, even though he had no strength to be charming. It was freezing cold and raining hard, and he’d been out in it for several hours shadowing Lord Bethwell. Now that he knew it wasn’t to protect but to watch, he didn’t see the point in waiting outside a Cavendish Square mansion while Bethwell dined there, but if he didn’t go, Angelique would want to know why.

He had kept his conversations with Phipps and Stafford to himself so far. He didn’t know what his fellow agents would do. He didn’t know what Stafford would do if the entire team mutinied. He had discovered the truth about their work, but it didn’t make anything about it easier.

Mariah believed her father loyal—and why wouldn’t she? Doncaster was a Tory, the government’s party, publicly allied with the King. What motive would he have to turn against it and aid its opponents? But Sidmouth and Stafford thought he might have done just that. What had brought suspicion upon him?

“You’re very fond of your father.”

She looked at him, no hint of distrust in her eyes. “Yes, of course. I couldn’t ask for a better one.”

Harry nodded. “I’m glad,” he murmured. “Everyone should have an affectionate father.”

“Harry...” She stopped, then got to her feet. “I wish I could help you,” she said helplessly. “I hate feeling as though you’re in danger or troubled, and I can do nothing.”

In spite of everything, he smiled and raised her fingers to his lips. “This helps,” he told her, brushing her knuckles against his cheek. “Just talking to you helps.”

She stepped closer and put her arm around his neck, until he rested his head on her bosom. He snaked one arm around her waist. “I’ll get you wet,” he mumbled even as he drew her closer.

“I don’t care.” Her fingers stroked his hair. She rested her cheek atop his head. “I’m glad you came to see me,” she whispered again.

So he kept his arm around her waist and his head on her breast, and shoved away the thought of what he had to do next.

Chapter Twenty

Tobias had moved into his uncle’s house early that spring, coming from his own home in Dorset. From what Harry had seen, Crane took him in rather ungraciously, while Tobias was determined to enjoy the Season in town if not his uncle’s company. Tobias Crane gave every appearance of being what he seemed to be: a genial fellow of modest intelligence and less wit. But there were enough flashes of ambition to make one wonder—or if one were in search of a traitor and not inclined to miss a suspect, to make one break into Tobias’s rooms and search them.

His weeks of service in Crane’s house had taught Harry much. He knew the little window next to the scullery door wouldn’t close all the way, and he knew how to mount the back stairs without making a sound. He knew the lone lamp burning in the front hall was all Crane would allow to light Tobias’s way upstairs when he came home, and it told Harry Tobias was still out even before he glided into the deep shadows around the house and pressed gently at the scullery window. All told, it took him less than five minutes to gain entrance and find his way to Tobias’s sitting room and bedchamber.

For a moment he paused inside the door, letting his eyes adjust. Tobias’s rooms were at the front of the house, overlooking the street and admitting no quick exit. It was a stroke of fortune that Tobias could afford no valet of his own. Harry knew Tobias had tried to persuade Jasper, Lord Crane’s man, to assist him, but Jasper had been too long under Crane’s misanthropic influence and stiffly refused. Thus, the rooms were completely empty and would remain so, until Tobias returned. Harry drew off his thin leather gloves and set to work, not knowing how much time he would have.

He began in the bedroom, carefully turning over every item of clothing in the clothespress and probing every pocket. He inspected the few books, all the obvious places someone might hide stolen documents, and then every other nook and cranny he could see. Taking up his tiny shielded lantern, he moved silently into the sitting room. A few coals glowed weakly in the grate, making it a little easier to see.

He sat at the writing desk. Surely even Tobias would be more devious than to hide anything incriminating on top of his desk, but one never knew. Harry sat down and slid open a drawer, feeling a tinge of frustration. If Stafford had been honest with them from the start, he and Brandon and Angelique could have been searching all these many weeks for the villain instead of lurking in the shadows doing nothing.

The desk contained bills, several overdue and some clearly replies to letters Tobias had sent asking for more time. Harry totted up the value of Tobias’s new lifestyle as he skimmed through them, and thought again how much the man could use a source of income. There were a pair of letters from his mother, exhorting Tobias to be a good nephew and not to fall in with those who thought too highly of themselves. Harry smiled a little at that, and went on with his search.

He had almost reached the end without finding anything. Carefully, he replaced everything as it had been, then began picking through the letters and papers jumbled on the desktop. To his enormous amusement, many of the pages appeared to be drafts of love letters and poems addressed to several young ladies, chief among them Lady Mariah Dunmore.

His eyebrows went up as he read one heavily edited missive with her name on it. A few lines of verse were written in the margin, comparing her hair to freshly mined coal and her eyes to a rainy sky. Tobias must not have been pleased with it, for the bit about rainy sky had been scratched out and amended to “the dewy dawn.” That had ruined his rhyme, though, for dawn didn’t rhyme with freshly baked pie—which was apparently how appealing she smelled—and the poem wasn’t finished. Harry smirked and put it aside with the other pages.

There was nothing. He got up from the desk, his amusement over Tobias’s painful poetry vanishing under the realization that Tobias’s apparent innocence meant his search was far from over. He sighed, looking around the room for something he might have missed. It wasn’t that he wanted Tobias to be a traitor, but given that there was a traitor, it would have been nice to find the man out at once with minimal danger and inconvenience to himself. It would be considerably more difficult to get into Lord Bethwell’s home, and he didn’t even want to contemplate searching Doncaster House. If only Stafford would tell him what, precisely, had alerted the Home Office to those three men as the most likely parties...

He put out his little lantern and turned toward the door. By his internal clock, he guessed he had been in the house more than two hours, making it late enough that he should be on his way. After all, he—or rather, Henry Towne—had to be back in just a few hours, ready for another day copying diagrams of flora.

Already thinking about his next step, he was reaching for the doorknob before he heard the sound of footsteps in the hall. Hand outstretched, he froze, listening and waiting. A thin line of light appeared under the door, and the steps paused, then quickened, as though the walker had stumbled before slowing in front of the door.

In a flash Harry turned and vaulted over the small sofa in the corner, folding his body in half and pulling his knees up into his chin. He held utterly still as the doorknob turned and someone staggered into the room.

The man was drunk. His steps wandered around the room for several moments, and a swish of cloth hit the floor, probably a coat. He hummed a bawdy tavern song under his breath, off pitch and far too slowly, and finally sat somewhere with a great thump that rattled the uneven feet of the sofa Harry hid behind.

For a while it was quiet. The room hadn’t grown any lighter since the door opened, as if Tobias had just brought up the lamp left burning by the door and not bothered to light any others. Carefully, a fraction of an inch at a time, Harry raised his head from behind the sofa until he could just see over it.