“The surplus goes to South America, via the Caribbean islands.”
“Where the shipments are waylaid.” I pondered. “Stolen outright, perhaps, and sold where a profit can be had. Shipped straight back through London and presumably to the Continent.”
“There would be plenty of customers,” Brandon said somberly. “The Greeks are working themselves up to battle the Turks. The Austrians are trampling over the Italian states, and anyone else who bothers them. Anarchists in France stalk the king’s family, wanting no more monarchy. The absence of Bonaparte simply lets whatever his menace kept buried bubble to the surface.”
“Bloody hell,” I said softly. I glanced at Louisa to apologize for my language, but she appeared as unhappy about Brandon’s story as I was. “I’ve not been paying much attention to the wider world, I admit.”
“Best that way,” Brandon answered. “Especially if you are prone to melancholia.”
He had a point. There was little I could do about much of this. Better to be concerned with my daughter learning to walk and Peter going off to school than about who stole guns meant for one revolution and sold them to men planning another.
On the other hand, I certainly did not want my son and daughter to be hurt by all the machinations that might rise to engulf us.
“Gabriel fears that Miles Eden might be involved,” Louisa said in her gentle voice. “I told him those fears are ungrounded.”
Brandon did not dismiss them. “I knew Eden well. I can imagine his hand in this.”
“Can you?” I asked as Brandon sipped his coffee. “Louisa has only finished convincing me he would never stoop to such a thing.”
Brandon shot us both a dark look. “He was always a charmer, was Eden. A good man in a fight. But I noticed he never did anything that did not benefit himself in some way. Saved men in battle—then earned a medal, a promotion, more pay. Volunteered to join the regiment in Antigua, then left when drilling for nothing became dull. I correspond with the colonel in charge there, and he was disappointed in Eden. Eden found nothing in peace for heroics, so he bought a plantation and rescued the slaves working there. But if Eden was so adamant about saving the enslaved, he could work to ban slavery altogether, as others have done. But he does not. When he could not make a fortune in the islands, he came home—obviously. Perhaps he discovered the gun smuggling along the way and decided it was dangerous enough to interest him.”
“That is possible,” I had to acknowledge. Eden had always enjoyed charging into bad situations. I noted that when I’d first gone to see Creasey, Eden had immediately leapt in beside me to face him.
However, he’d vanished for my second encounter with Creasey, and I still did not know why.
“The murders were rather cold-blooded,” I said. “Not like Eden at all.”
“Were they?” Brandon asked. “Or were they the result of quarrels? A man refusing to … what? Give Eden his share?”
“Or, he was crusading against them,” I said slowly. “Stopping the smugglers the most daring way he knew how—by confronting and killing them. Though I still believe Warrilow was a blackmailer, not a smuggler. He seemed to pride himself discovering the faults in others.”
“I believe you both cast Major Eden in the wrong role,” Louisa said. “I knew him as well, remember. If he wished to crusade, he’d have talked you into joining him, Gabriel. You also see yourself as a champion of the weak. I simply do not think Miles Eden has it in him to smuggle weapons and murder others to keep them quiet about it.”
Brandon remained unconvinced, and I reluctantly admitted I shared his skepticism.
“I will have to find Eden,” I said. “And persuade him to tell me what he is up to.”
“Please leave him unscathed,” Louisa said. “You were once very good friends, and he might be innocent of all this.”
“I will be most happy if he is.”
Louisa frowned at me, then she deliberately turned the topic to innocuous things—my upcoming journey to Oxfordshire and the subsequent one to Gloucestershire. Brandon expressed interest in Grenville’s horses, speculating he’d have the best on the field. Which brought the conversation back around to his new hunter.
As we conversed, I recalled long evenings in the Brandons’ tent in Portugal and Spain, when we’d recount the happenings of the day and speak of what we’d do in the faraway time after we’d retired. We’d been excellent friends, inseparable and devoted. It had been unthinkable