Page 22

“Barney’s taken the measure of you tonight,” Oliver Hayes said as Jasper collapsed into a club chair across from him. Tables surrounded the raised ring inside Fortune’s, the gentleman’s boxing club that Jasper had a standing invitation to frequent thanks to his friend, the viscount.

“What is that supposed to mean?” Jasper asked. A waiter had poured him a whisky while he’d been in the ring with Lord Barnstable, the third son of a duke, and he now took a healthy swig of it.

“You’re angry, and it has made you sloppy,” Oliver answered with an amused grin. He was reclining in his chair, one ankle resting on his opposite knee, his attention fixed on the two men who’d climbed into the ring after Jasper and Barnstable had finished. Or rather, after Barnstable had finished with Jasper.

He flexed the hand not holding his drink and groaned. Oliver wasn’t wrong. He’d been in a foul mood most of the day. His meeting with Andrew had started it off; his argument with Leo had exacerbated it; and his inability to locate any doctor in London by the name of Henry Gray had cemented it.

Now that Jasper was certain Lawlor and Gray were accomplices, he would need to send the sketch artist, Mr. Gibbons, to Mrs. Lawlor’s home on Hill Street. With any hope, a member of the staff could provide a description for a rendering of the doctor’s face. He’d put it and Sebastian Lawlor’s sketch into the Police Gazette for circulation, and he’d send the likenesses to Fleet Street too, for inclusion in any newspaper that would run them.

Constable Price had taken a copy of the sketch of Sebastian Lawlor to Paddington Station, but no porters or ticket salesclerks recognized his face. There was no way to know if the man had purchased a ticket and boarded a train; hundreds of people passed through the station every day. Porters couldn’t be expected to remember them all.

If Sebastian had left London, at least Jasper knew he had not first gone to the Central Bank. The judge’s warrant had loosened the bank manager’s lips, and Sergeant Warnock and PC Mills had learned the Lawlors’ account—originally in Miss Augusta Hart’s name and transferred into her husband’s after their wedding—had not been accessed for over a week. But looking through the account ledgers, the manager revealed that a significant withdrawal of four thousand pounds had been made the previous week.

Jasper presumed that Lawlor must have stashed the amount in the study safe, in preparation for the morning he would overdose Augusta and flee.

However, four thousand pounds was a fraction of what had been left in the bank account and of what Mrs. Lawlor’s other assets and investments might have raked in. So, the question remained: Why had Sebastian left without trying to take his full due?

Frustrated, Jasper had arrived at Fortune’s with a desire to hit something. But so far, none of the punches he’d thrown—or absorbed—had alleviated the pent-up aggravation inside him.

“Is it one of your cases that has you in twists?” Oliver asked as a waiter set a shallow bowl brimming with chipped ice before Jasper. “Or is it the lovely Miss Spencer?”

Jasper plunged one fist into the ice and sent his friend a warning glare. Oliver only chuckled, as if knowing he’d hit the mark.

He’d expected Leo would be upset when he refused to tell her what Andrew wanted. Had he explained, she would have insisted on helping him search for Cillian Carter, and that was something Jasper did not want. Her assistance wasn’t the issue; it was the fact that the assignment involved both the East Rips and the Spitalfields Angels, two enormously dangerous gangs. Jasper had thought that keeping her clear of it all would be worth fielding her disappointment, even her anger. Now, however, he wasn’t sure he’d made the right choice. She’d accused him of not trusting her. How could he make her understand it was the Carters and the Angels he didn’t trust?

“How are things progressing with your ladylove these days?” Oliver asked when it was clear his first question would go unanswered. This one would as well.

Jasper gritted his teeth against the ice numbing his sore knuckles. “I hear you’re becoming serious about a certain debutante,” he asked his friend instead.

The viscount rolled his eyes at the obvious redirection. “That is what my mother is feeding to the gossip mill.”

His mother had recently returned from a long stay in Italy, following the death of her husband and Oliver’s father. Since the widowed viscountess’s arrival at Hayes Manor, Oliver had been complaining about her insistence that he find a wife and settle down. He’d been forced to curtail his vice-ridden soirees—and his habit of falling in love on a weekly basis.

“I don’t read the society pages, but Leo does,” Jasper replied. “She mentioned a Miss Vachon.”

Oliver scowled and raised his empty glass to signal the waiter for another pour. “She is perfect in every way, as my mother has expounded upon countless times,” he said with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. “I’ll probably marry her, though I’m not in any rush.”

Jasper removed his numbed fist from the ice and buried his other bruised set of knuckles next. “I’m not sure how any woman could resist such a romantic declaration.”

Oliver laughed. “I could be an ogre, and she wouldn’t bat an eyelash. It’s the title and the money Miss Vachon’s kind wants. You can see for yourself when you meet her at the Home Secretary’s dinner next week.”

Jasper peered across the table. “I’m not aware of any dinner at the Home Secretary’s.”

Oliver grinned as his glass was refilled with more Spanish port. “Your invitation is on its way. I made sure one was extended to you.”

“This day needs to end,” Jasper groaned. “It is only getting worse.”

“Oh, come now, you can bring Miss Spencer.”

“She would hate it even more than I would.”

“You are attending, and that is that.”

Jasper pulled his knuckles from the rapidly melting ice chips. He detested the political elbow rubbing that came with being an inspector in the Metropolitan Police Force. The higher up one rose in rank, the closer one was to the politicians at the helm of the force, such as the Detective Chief Superintendent, Commissioner, and Home Secretary. Jasper didn’t have the polished temperament that his father, Gregory Reid, the former Detective Chief Superintendent had possessed, and nor would he need it if he remained a detective inspector…as he preferred to do.

That meant, of course, that he needed to solve most of the cases he was given. On that note, Jasper turned his thoughts to work and the possibility that the man known as Sebastian Lawlor had pulled off this fraudulent ploy more than once. He would have targeted a wealthy woman. Possibly one within the aristocracy.

Briefly, Jasper laid out the Lawlor situation to the viscount, who nearly choked on his port when he heard a woman had risen to consciousness while inside a wicker transport casket.