“You’ll…”
“Not,” she finished for her father. “I said I will not marry Lord Barber.”
He seethed, his eyes bulging and his cheeks flushing. “Your options, I fear, given the circumstances, are limited.”
They were limited, but there… was one… Granted, he was one who’d made a promise to her as a child, but, well, when one was desperate, one was desperate.
“I will not marry him,” she said, coming to her feet. “You see, I am already betrothed.”
Her father choked. “You are…?”
“Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
Taking advantage of their shock, Gillian hurried from the room and set to work on the business of finding a betrothed.
Chapter 2
When Colin Lockhart, bastard-born son of the Duke of Ravenscourt, had set out to build his own business as a detective, he’d thrilled at the prospect of choosing his assignments, and more… solving cases of import.
Not arresting boys and girls for filching the purses of some lords outside of Covent Garden. Not breaking up fights in the streets. But truly important cases.
Now, partner to his own investigative offices for two years now, he’d come to fully realize and accept that the cases were all the damned same.
That was, for people like him. Bastards. The fine lords and ladies took their help from people closer to them in rank.
Colin scanned the list of prospective clients requesting his services that his clerk had put together. There was work enough and, because of that, money enough, too.
That would be enough for most men.
But Colin wasn’t most men. Since the moment he, his mother, and sister had been tossed out of Cheshire by the Marquess of Ellsworth, Colin had resolved to build himself into something. Something more than the bastard-born son of a duke who hadn’t given two shites about his family on the side, or two farthings to support them.
Colin’s hungering to be more, and have more, was born of a desire to never again be that scared, penniless boy.
And yet, for the success he’d had as a private runner, that success had not followed him to his venture as a private detective. His clients remained more like him than the men and women who belonged to his father’s elite ranks. As such, that so much more he craved continued to elude him, and for the very reasons he’d been shunned as a boy.
Licking the tip of his finger, Colin turned the page in his black leather journal, a gift from his sister some Christmases ago. All the while, he examined the potential list of clients his clerk had presented him with. All the respective names were people outside of the nobility, with but a handful of coins to pay, and yet, he also appreciated that those cases were no less important.
But he also had come to learn that they did not pay either.
Footfalls echoed outside his office. A moment later, his door opened.
“I’m working,” he said by way of greeting, not even lifting his head.
“You’re not solving a case. You’re deciding on your next client,” his partner, Mr. Roarke O’Toole, returned.
Frowning, Colin looked up. “I’d say the two are inextricably intertwined.”
“Let me save you the benefit of your time and efforts. A handful of extortions, petty theft, and missing wives that don’t want to be found, from people in East London.” His partner quirked a brow. “Have I missed anything?”
Refusing to be baited, Colin shoved the folder close at his fingertips in the other man’s direction.
“Those people also can’t pay,” O’Toole pointed out, coolly matter-of-fact.
“They can,” he countered. Just not what he should be paid, or what Colin needed to build the business into everything he hoped for it. Having ventured out from the role he’d played as a most-celebrated runner, he’d never imagined anything but success for his own private business.
His friend gave him a look.
Colin’s neck flushed.
“I have real work for you.” A folder landed on his desk with a solid thwack.
Colin glanced up at O’Toole, then at the packet on his desk. He resisted a curse. “No,” he said, before O’Toole could add anything more. He already knew what this was about.
His partner chuckled and, grabbing a chair, seated himself. “She didn’t want my help.”
She—none other than the old Countess Holderness—had all but set herself up as their personal proprietress. “I said no.” He knew what the other man was going to say and what the old woman wanted.
“She pays a small fortune every time you solve a case for her. We don’t have the luxury of simply rejecting those funds,” his partner said bluntly.
They weren’t cases. Not the kind that he’d committed himself to solving. Every time he went to see her, it was really about indulging an old woman who enjoyed his company. That was not why he’d thrown away his career for the prospect of having his own business. “I sent you.”
“Yes, well, she turned me away. She wants you.”
“To find her latest missing bauble?” He shoved back his chair and stood. “Tell her it’s her lady’s maid. It’s been her lady’s maid. And it will always be her lady’s maid.” And yet, for some unfound reason, the woman insisted on retaining the girl, and that was too bad. “My sole existence as an investigator isn’t to cater to her personal desires.”
“No,” O’Toole said calmly. “It is important, however, to take work where work exists.”
Colin’s partner sighed. “Lockhart…” he began, and Colin knew precisely where the discourse was going. “I understand you don’t want the assignment.”
And he wasn’t taking it.
“We need the work, and a substantial amount of it comes through our association.”
Colin lifted an eyebrow “Your association with Lady Holderness.”
“She quite likes you, she does.”
“Catering to a seventy-year-old, lonely, bored noblewoman is not part of my job.” Not the one he’d imagined, anyway. Frustration whipping through him, Colin grabbed for another file.
Roarke slapped a hand down on top of it. “It is when she’s the reason we haven’t had to shutter our doors and return to our previous work,” his partner pointed out.
Guilt washed over him. For he’d been the one to persuade O’Toole, the second-best runner at Bow Street, to leave the security of that work and set out to create their own rival establishment.
They’d expected clients would follow, that their reputations would be enough to secure the work that had previously gone through Bow Street.
What neither he nor O’Toole had anticipated was just how powerful legacy was. People used that which they knew, what was comfortable. The Bow Street runners were established, and he and O’Toole had been inextricably intertwined with that organization. When they’d no longer been part of it, other men had simply stepped in to fill that void, and the public had continued to entrust their care to that age-old organization.
“It’s fifty pounds, Colin,” the other man said quietly. “Fifty pounds to speak to her.”
Colin stared down at the folder, his pride as strong now as it had been in the village of Cheshire when he’d taken on the boys there.