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“Then I shall do the same.”
“April, you need rest.” He flung his coat over the chair and turned to her, touching her cheek, the bruised circles beneath her eyes. “It breaks my heart to see you so—”
“I won’t sleep until you’re home anyway,” she said flatly.
Sewart entered and stood quietly by the door. For an instant, Piers ignored him, his gaze locked to April’s.
He let his hand fall. “Be careful with the coat, Stewart. It has something I need.”
She recognized that for acceptance and bustled off to her own dressing room. They both knew that her peculiar talents might well be useful.
***
JIMMY KNOTT, ONE OF Bow Street’s sharpest and most successful runners, was not above a little gloating. Jem Stagger was a fine catch and a useful boost to his arrest numbers, but he had never expected to make such an easy catch. He and his cohorts had discovered Stagger trussed up like a Christmas present in a Seven Dials cottage that certainly didn’t belong to him. Stagger had managed to bump his way into the small, dingy hallway by the time they broke the door in. He was the only person they found.
“This cove I never seen before in me life, he broke in, hit me on the head and tied me up!”
“Poor Stagger,” Jimmy said half an hour later, with no pretence of sympathy as he confronted him in his Bow Street cell. “You’re not the first man—I use the term loosely—to underestimate Lord Petteril. We have information his lordship was abducted from Park Lane on Monday evening and kept in that house where we found you, against his will and for ransom. You got any idea how many charges I can get you on?”
“Not without evidence, you can’t. I am a clear victim of crime, I am.”
“Well, you are, ’cause your partner—don’t worry, Stagger, we all know you ain’t capable of planning this crime let alone carrying it out alone—has shabbed off and left you to pay the full price. You’ll hang, as it stands.”
Stagger did not look remotely frightened, which bothered Jimmy more than he cared to show.
“Get this fancy lord down here then. Get him to say it were me. He won’t.”
Jimmy changed tack. “How long you been living in that cottage, then, Stagger?”
“Just a few days. I ain’t going back. Too bloody dangerous.”
“Just you? No lodgers or guests?”
“Just me—till that cove come and tied me up.”
“Odd. We found two chamber pots in there. One covered by a very fine gentleman’s cravat, embroidered with the letter P.”
“Suitable for a pot,” Stagger sniggered.
“And a double-barrelled pistol. Where’d that come from?”
“Found it,” said Stagger. “In the house when I moved in. Ain’t loaded.”
“Where’d you sleep?” Jimmy asked.
Stagger saw the trick. “In the bedchamber, of course. I keep a blanket in the spare room at the back in case one of my mates drops in and gets too drunk to make it home.”
“On half a pint of stale small beer?” Jimmy wondered. “Liberally laced with laudanum from the stink of it.”
“People’s habits is no concern of mine. Nor yours. Laudanum’s legal.”
“Who broke your window?”
Oddly enough, that was the question that threw Stagger. He frowned. “Ain’t got a broken window.”
“Yes, you do. At the back, your spare room. It’s shuttered on the inside, boarded at the back—though two lower bolts are missing—and the window between’s in bits all over the window sill.”
Stagger’s lips had parted into a very unprepossessing shape. “Jesus. I thought it was bloody cold in there. That must be how she got in.”
