“Mackenzie, there you are.” Hayden Atherton waved him over to two leather chairs pulled up to a small table. A waiter appeared from nowhere to deposit two glasses of whisky and a decanter and then vanish. “I was about to give up.”
“Errands to run.” Jamie shook Atherton’s offered hand and seated himself, crossing his stretched-out legs. He took up the whisky. “To the ladies,” he said, raising his glass.
“Always a worthy toast.” Atherton sat down and clicked his glass to Jamie’s.
The whisky was better than average, Jamie found as he sipped, but his nose detected a too-smoky scent, the burn from a whisky barrel that hadn’t been prepared well. Any other man would think this whisky fine, but Jamie’s palate had been trained by Ian Mackenzie, the best distiller in Scotland.
Jamie set his glass aside. “Thank you for seeing me. My apologies for being late.”
“Not at all. The Portland is a jolly place to spend time, though my father will expect me before long. Philanthropic clubs are all right, in his book, but ones meant for card playing and a chin-wag, like this, are not.”
“Yes, your father can be a stickler.” Jamie removed a cigar from the humidor next to him, sniffed it, then bit off its end and lit it. He gestured to the humidor, but Atherton shook his head. Probably his father disapproved of cigars as well.
“He can be indeed,” Atherton answered without offense. “Which was why I had to beg off last night. Evie understood, bless the girl.”
“She did. I am pleased to tell you that the expedition was a success.”
Atherton raised his glass. “Hear, hear.”
Jamie returned the toast out of politeness and took another sip. Definitely should have rejected that barrel.
“I’ve been making inquiries about your father.” Jamie puffed the cigar, which erased the slightly acrid aftertaste of the whisky. “Hope you don’t mind. I was curious.”
Atherton raised his brows but shrugged. “Not at all. I can tell you anything you wish to know. Can’t understand why the devil you would want such knowledge, but I allow gentlemen their hobbies.”
Jamie set aside the cigar and drew out the paper he’d received from Andrew. “What I learned is that your father keeps a rigid timetable.” He opened the page as though refreshing his memory, but he knew every word by heart. “He leaves for his office at nine in the morning, dines at home at one, then returns to the office again to work until six. Has his supper at seven, on the dot.”
“Yes.” Atherton laughed again, but looked pained. “Can set your watch by the old fellow. It was always a relief to go off to school after a holiday home.”
Jamie tucked the paper back into his pocket and rested his hands on the arms of the chair.
“After supper, your father takes a few sips of brandy, for medicinal purposes, and then retires, at nine o’clock, every night, without fail. Never brings work home, always does it at the office. He divides his day into exact categories, and none of those categories ever mix.”
“True. True.”
Atherton was slow. Jamie would have to spell it out for him.
“So, lad, when you said you couldn’t attend last night because your father kept you at the office working with him, you were a liar.” Jamie turned what his mother called the Mackenzie stare onto Atherton. “Where the devil were ye?”
Chapter 18
For a moment, Atherton gaped at him. Then, instead of spluttering a denial, flustered and embarrassed, Atherton sank back in his seat with his annoying chortle.
“Very well, Mackenzie. You caught me. Wasn’t worried that Evie would—she avoids conversation with my father at all costs. But it was your fault, you know. You switched the day to Thursday.”
Jamie kept his face straight, though he hadn’t expected this answer. “And Thursdays are important to you?”
“Of course. If you’d chosen Wednesday, or Friday, or Monday or any other day, I’d have been there with bells on. Or perhaps not, as we needed to be silent.” More inane laughter.
Jamie fought down the urge to punch Atherton in the face. “Why didn’t ye send word that another day would be better? Instead of Evie going out alone with me?”
“Because she was so adamant that she get her hands on the blasted jar and give it to Miss Georgiou. If Evie stayed home with me, she’d have tumbled to my ruse, so I sent her off. Miss Georgiou is a stunner, by the way, and unmarried. You ought to try your luck there, Mackenzie. She’d make a splendid wife for a chap, even if she’s foreign.”
Jamie wasn’t certain Iris would be flattered by his description. “Want to tell me about her?”
“Miss Georgiou?” Atherton feigned puzzlement, then he grinned. “No, I know who you mean. Better still, would you like to meet her?”
“Is that allowed?” Jamie pressed down the rage building inside him. “It’s Friday.”
Atherton burst out laughing. “You are a wag, Mackenzie. But she won’t mind.” He lifted his glass and drained it. “Drink up, and off we’ll go.”
Atherton took Jamie in a hansom to a small house north of St. Pancras Station. The station itself was a wonder of the age, a huge cathedral-like building on the outside, with massive, modern iron arches over the trains’ platforms on the inside. In one of the tiny lanes behind this gothic edifice, Atherton descended the hackney and knocked peremptorily on a white-painted door.
This was opened by a startled charwoman who scuttled aside, holding her broom, as Atherton greeted her merrily. The char watched him enter the house, then shook her head and began sweeping the step.
Jamie tipped his cap to her as the hansom clopped away. “Afternoon, love.”
The char straightened up, back stiff. “Sir.”
“Lovely day after all the rain, eh?” Jamie gestured into the house with a tilt of his head. “He come here often?”
“Every Thursday.” The charwoman sniffed. She had a red-blotched face that had once been pretty and a scarf over her graying hair. “Like clockwork.”
“No awkwardness if he comes today?” Some women took a different lover each day of the week.
“Nah. She’s smitten with him, the silly chit. Lord knows why.”
“He’s generous?”
“He’s all right. Better than some, I suppose.” The woman looked Jamie up and down. “You hoping to slide in?”
“No, indeed. My heart is taken.”
The woman gave him an approving nod. “Good.”
Jamie took her work-worn hand, palming her a coin. “For your family,” he said in a quiet voice, then entered the house.
“Where are you, Mackenzie?” Atherton’s voice rang from a small parlor. Jamie entered it to find Atherton with his arm slung around a small woman with glossy brown hair, a wide smile, and large blue eyes. “This is Brigitte.”
“Mrs. Mason,” the woman corrected Atherton with an impish smile. “He always forgets that part. I’m a widow, love. Don’t worry. No husband’s going to leap out and shout Aha!”
Jamie smiled his appreciation of her humor. “How do you do? Jamie Mackenzie, at your service.”