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Grey prowled the room, but there was no evidence of its occupants.
“Does he entertain the same companion each time?” he asked. The keeping of a suite argued some long-term affair.
“Yes, I believe he does.” There was an odd tone in Caswell’s voice that made him glance sharply at the man.
“You believe? You have not seen his companion?”
“No—he is very particular, our Mr. Trevelyan.” Caswell’s voice was ironic. “He always arrives first, changes his clothes, and then goes down to wait near the door. He brings his companion in and up the stairs at once; all the servants have instructions to be elsewhere.”
That was a disappointment. He had hoped for a name. Still, a tendency to thoroughness made him turn back to Caswell, probing for further information.
“I am sure your servants are meticulous in observing your instructions,” he said. “But you, Dickie? Surely you don’t expect me to believe that anyone comes into your house without your finding out everything there is to know about them. You’ve only heard my Christian name before, to my knowledge—and yet, if you know about Trevelyan’s engagement to my cousin, plainly you know who I am.”
“Oh, yes—my lord.” Caswell smiled, lips drawn into a puckish point. The bargain struck, he was enjoying his revelations as much as he had his earlier reticence.
“You are right, to a degree. In fact, I do not know the name of Mr. Trevelyan’s inamorata; he is very careful. I do, however, know one rather important thing about her.”
“Which is?”
“That she isan inamorata—rather than an inamorato.”
Grey stared at him for an instant, deciphering this.
“What? Trevelyan is meeting a woman? A real woman? Here?”
Caswell inclined his head, hands folded gravely at his waist like a butler.
“How do you know?” Grey demanded. “Are you sure?”
The candlelight danced like laughter in Caswell’s small black eyes.
“Ever smelt a woman? Close to, I mean.” Caswell shook his head, the loose folds of skin on his neck quivering with the movement. “Let alone a room where someone’s been swiving one of the creatures for hours on end. Of course I’m sure.”
“Of course you are,” Grey murmured, repelled by the mental image of Caswell nosing ratlike through sheets and pillows in the vacated rooms of his house, pilfering crumbs of information from the rubble left by careless love.
“She has dark hair,” Caswell offered helpfully. “Nearly black. Your cousin is fair, I believe?”
Grey didn’t bother answering that.
“And?” he asked tersely.
Caswell pursed his lips, considering.
“She wears considerable paint—but I ca
Grey nodded, taking the point. Those mollies who liked to dress as women normally were painted like French noblewomen; a woman hoping to be mistaken for one would likely do the same.
“And?”
“She wears a very expensive scent. Civet, vetiver, and orange, if I am not mistaken.” Caswell cast his eyes up toward the ceiling, considering. “Oh, yes—she has a taste for that German wine I gave you.”
“You said you kept it for a member. Trevelyan, I presume? How do you know it isn’t he alone who drinks it?”
Caswell’s hairy nostrils quivered with amusement.
“A man who drank as much as is brought up to this suite would be incapable for days. And judging from the evidence”—he nodded delicately at the bed—“our Mr. Trevelyan is far from incapable.”
“She arrives by sedan chair?” Grey asked, ignoring the allusion.
“Yes. Different bearers each time, though; if she keeps men of her own, she does not use them when coming here—which argues a high degree of discretion, does it not?”
A lady with a good deal to lose, were the affairediscovered. But the intricacy of Trevelyan’s arrangements was sufficient to tell him that already.
“And that is all I know,” Caswell said, in tones of finality. “Now, as to your part of the bargain, my lord? . . .”
His mind still reeling from the shock of revelation, Grey recalled his promise to Tom Byrd and gathered sufficient wits to ask one more question, pulled almost at random from the swirl of fact and speculation that presently inhabited his cranium.
“All you know about the woman. About Mr. Trevelyan, though—have you ever seen a man with him, a servant? Somewhat taller than myself, lean-faced and dark, with a missing eyetooth on the left side?”
Caswell looked surprised.
“A servant?” He frowned, ransacking his memory. “No. I . . . no, wait. Yes . . . yes, I believe I have seen the man, though I think he has come only once.” He looked up, nodding with decision.
“Yes, that was it; he came to fetch his master, with a note of some kind—some emergency to do with business, I think. I sent him down to the kitchens to wait for Trevelyan—he was comely enough, tooth or no, but I rather thought he was not disposed to such sport as he might encounter abovestairs.”
Tom Byrd would be relieved to hear that expert opinion, Grey thought.
“When was this? Do you recall?”
Caswell’s lips puckered in thought, causing Grey briefly to avert his glance.
“In late April, I think it was, though I ca
Grey nodded. For a man with Trevelyan’s business interests, information like that would be worth its weight in gold—or even more, depending on its timeliness.
“One last thing, then. When he left so hastily—did the woman leave then, too? And did she go with him, rather than seeking separate transport?”
Caswell was obliged to ponder that one for a moment, leaning against the wall.
“Ye-es, they did leave together,” he said at last. “I seem to recall that the servant ran off to fetch a hired carriage, and they entered it together. She’d a shawl over her head. Quite small, though; I might easily have taken her for a boy—save that her figure was quite rounded.”
Caswell drew himself up straight then, and cast a last glance about the vacant room, as though to satisfy himself that it would yield no further secrets.
“Well, that’s my end of the bargain kept, my love. And yours?” His hand hovered over the candlestick, scrawny claw poised to pinch out the flame. Grey saw the polished obsidian eyes fix on him in invitation, and was all too conscious of the large bed, close behind him.
“Of course,” Grey said, moving purposefully toward the door. “Shall we adjourn to your office?”
Caswell’s expression might have been termed a pout, had he had the fullness of lip to achieve such a thing.
“If you insist,” he said with a sigh, and extinguished the candle in a burst of fragrant smoke.
Dawn was begi
Caswell had been delighted with his half of the bargain, as well he should be. Grey had held back nothing of his Medmenham adventures, save the name of the man who had actually killed George Everett. There, he said only that the man had been robed and masked; impossible to say for sure who it had been.
He felt no compunction in thus blackening George’s name; to his ma