aristocratic circles.
Why did the old man want him dead?
“Do they mean to stay all day?” groaned Keys. “I ’ave to piss like a bloody ’orse.”
Gideon snorted into his empty tankard. “Drank too much?”
Keys looked at his tankard. “S’pose I could use this to hold my piss. Wouldn’t change the taste that much.”
“I’ll be sure to tell the proprietress,” Gideon replied absently. Rookewoode had leaned back, and the others were making movements preparatory to rising.
“Oh, thank God,” Keys moaned as the group left the coffeehouse. “I’m for the bog.”
Gideon frowned as he stood. “I can’t wait for you. I’m following Greycourt to see if he’s off to meet anyone else.”
Keys nodded and limped toward the back of the building.
Gideon clapped his tricorne on and strode to the door, ducking his head as he opened it in case any of the cabal were lingering outside. But none of Greycourt’s group were in the lane. Gideon looked both ways. To the right, Hastings and Peabody were strolling away. To the left, Rookewoode and Greycourt were disappearing around the corner.
Gideon jogged left.
He came to the intersection of the lane and a wider street and checked before turning. Greycourt and Rookewoode were half a dozen paces away, mingling with the London crowd.
Gideon ducked around a porter carrying a brace of chickens hanging from the pole balanced on his back and hurried after his quarry. Another few steps and Greycourt and Rookewoode suddenly turned to cross the busy street. Gideon turned as well, only to find a cart filled with turnips directly in his path. The horses plodded past, blocking his view of both men.
Gideon ran back a few steps and crossed behind the cart.
Greycourt had disappeared.
Rookewoode was still striding up ahead, but Greycourt was nowhere in sight.
Damn it!
Gideon hated that he had no idea which way Greycourt had gone—to lose sight of an enemy made him uneasy.
But Rookewoode was still moving.
Should he return for Keys or continue following the man?
Gideon shook his head and half ran after Rookewoode, swerving around a group of sailors and pushing past a large butcher, standing in his bloody apron.
Behind him someone swore.
Rookewoode turned into a tobacconist’s.
Gideon slowed his progress, coming to a stop just before the shop. He lingered, pretending an interest in the display of pocketknives on the table outside the shop adjacent to the tobacconist’s.
He could see that the tobacco shop was a small one. If he entered, Rookewoode would be sure to notice him. That wouldn’t necessarily be a problem, except that Gideon wanted more information about Rookewoode’s ties to Greycourt before he took his offer of investment to the earl.
He lurked outside.
On the other hand, Gideon considered ten minutes later, he didn’t want to lose the man altogether.
He went inside the tobacconist’s.
The shop was, as he’d thought, small and gloomy and redolent of tobacco. Large twists of the dried leaves were arrayed on the walls, and a small, plump gentleman was pointing to one as a clerk attended him.
No one else seemed to be in the shop.
Gideon turned, but the shop was one room; the wares were displayed on the walls with nothing to obstruct them.
There was a door behind the counter.
Gideon vaulted the counter.
“Oi!” the clerk cried, lapsing into an East End London accent in his shock. “You can’t—”
But Gideon was already though the door.
He entered a room stuffed with barrels and crates of tobacco, the smell near overwhelming. At the back was another door.
Gideon threw it open and found himself in a small alley lined with tall, rickety buildings of the type that housed several families at once.
He turned in a circle, but caught no glimpse of Rookewoode.
He’d lost him.
Bloody, bloody hell!
Had Rookewoode known he was being followed? But then why not simply confront Gideon?
What was the earl hiding—and how was Greycourt involved?
He wouldn’t have those questions answered today.
Gideon trudged down the alley, trying to decide whether to return to Opal’s to find Keys or to go to Whispers House and leave Keys to return on his own. The buildings lining the alley were close here. Each story aboveground jutted out farther into the lane in an inverted stepped pyramid until the roofs nearly met overhead, giving the looming feeling that at any minute a building could fall on one’s head.
Gideon shivered. This place reminded him too much of the wretched neighborhood he’d lived in when he was a boy. He passed a pair of girls hanging wash, and then the alley ended abruptly in a small courtyard. A dead end.
An old man