The shop girls and clerks looked up, alarmed at his entrance, but none had the nerve to approach him. It was strange to go to her shop, knowing full well that she was not there to meet him. But better that the world assume he did not know where she was than that she was asleep in his bed.
He went to the nearest clerk, a gawky boy with red hair and ears like jug handles, and favoured him with his most terrifying frown. ‘Where is she?’
The boy was quaking in his shoes, but did not desert his post. ‘Miss de Bryun is not here, my lord.’ No attempt at pretending he was not titled, then. Had his ruse really been so thin as to be transparent?
He glared towards the back room and gave a dismissive gesture. ‘Then...’ Pratchet was nearly as hard to say as de Bryun. ‘What’s his name...?’ He snapped his fingers, as if trying to remember.
The polite thing to do would have been to excuse himself and get the man. But in the absence of his mistress, the ginger clerk had reached the end of his nerve. ‘Mr Pratchet!’ The call came not as an answer, but a plaintive, rabbit’s bleat for mercy.
The goldsmith appeared in the curtained doorway. His annoyance disappeared when he realised the reason for the disturbance. At the sight of the marquess, his face went a shade of white that rivalled the walls. ‘Lord Fanworth.’
Stephen contained his glee at finding someone so obviously at fault and so worthy of his anger. He redoubled his glare, raised a finger, dire as death, and spoke the single word. ‘You.’
As Stephen advanced, Pratchet shrank back, out of his reach, until they had passed through the doorway and were standing in the middle of the workroom. There would be privacy, in theory, at least. If half the shop clerks were not listening in at the doorway, he would be most disappointed in their lack of curiosity.
He backed Pratchet up until his arse hit the edge of his work table, sending a shower of loose gold chain-links scattering on the floor.
‘I can explain, my lord.’
Stephen stared down at the man who had caused him to ruin his own future. ‘Really?’ He let his frown deepen, staring with even more intensity at the little man before him.
‘When I was given the rubies, I did not know they were yours.’
‘Liar.’ Stephen swept an arm across the desk beside him, spilling its contents on the floor and tipping over the spirit lamp that Pratchet had been using to melt casting wax.
The goldsmith rushed to douse the flame, beating it out with the wool mat he had been working on, looking up frantically at Stephen. ‘All right. I knew they were the Larchmont rubies. But I was too afraid to refuse.’
‘You told her they came from me,’ he said and watched the man squirm beneath his wrath.
‘Not in so many words,’ he argued. ‘Is it my fault if she misunderstood?’
‘It was your intention, all along.’ Stephen continued to stare. When, at last, he spoke, he did so slowly and deliberately. It guaranteed the clarity of his consonants and had the added advantage of making each word sound as if it was to be the last thing Pratchet might hear. ‘Who. Was. It?’
‘Lord Arthur!’ he blurted the expected answer, backing away from the table. ‘Your brother brought them here. Who was I to refuse them? I went to the day’s receipts and gave him everything we had. Then I hid the stones in the safe and made the transaction disappear.’
‘You lied to her.’
‘I did not. I said your family could not be trusted. I said I was frightened for her,’ the man said, gathering what nerve he could, and spilling a torrent of words. ‘It is clearly the truth. Your own actions prove that you do not care for her. Nor does she understand her place. She is getting above herself by running the shop at all. She needs the aid of a strong husband to protect and advise her, or it will all end in ruin.’
He had thought such a thing himself, two weeks ago. But he’d not been thinking of Pratchet as a font of wisdom.
‘Aid from you?’ He snorted. ‘For your help, she might have been hanged as a thief.’
‘You would not have let it come to that,’ Pratchet said, still sounding surprisingly confident. ‘If she was dead, you’d not have got what you truly wanted from her.’
That had been true, of course. But he had never considered that their affair would leave her vulnerable to a loveless marriage with this worm. ‘So you spread rumours about her?’
‘Her sister deserved to know the truth.’ The man raised his chin, as if Margot’s humiliation had been a righteous act and not despicable.
But it proved that what she’d said last night was true. All around her had known of their bargain and berated her with it until she could neither eat nor sleep. This man deserved whipping. Or at least he would have, if so much of what had happened had not been the result of Stephen’s own unchecked pride.
But some punishment was definitely in order and it must suit the criminal. Stephen smiled. ‘Since you are fond of truth telling, my agent, Smith, must hear some as well. I will explain that Margot is not at fault. It was you.’
‘You would not dare,’ Pratchet said, ruffling his feathers like a cockerel who did not know he was a capon. ‘Your brother is equally guilty.’
‘My brother is Larchmont’s son. And you?’ He snapped his fingers. ‘Are no one.’ Then he smiled with satisfaction at the thought of Pratchet squirming on the dock. It would likely not come to that. The man would run like a rabbit the moment he turned his back. But he would be seeking employment without reference and lie down at night in fear that the law might take him before dawn.
It was very similar to the ruined reputation and perpetual fear he had sought for Margot. In Stephen’s mind, it seemed quite appropriate. He turned and walked away, to show that the interview was at an end, calling over his shoulder, ‘Until we meet again, Mr...Ratchet.’
As he left the room, he heard the beginning of correction. But the goldsmith got as far as ‘Pra...’ before he realised that if the powerful, and likely vengeful Fanworth could not remember his name, it was probably for the best.
He turned back to give the man a final glare and exited the shop with a slam of the door that was almost as violent as his entrance had been.
* * *
Arthur had rooms in a hotel on the Circus. It was there that Stephen went next. He entered as he had at the jewellery shop, with much noise and no words. He pushed past the valet, going directly to where Arthur sat, nursing his usual morning hangover. Then, he grabbed his brother by the lapels and lifted him out of the chair, until his feet dangled, barely touching the floor. ‘Explain.’
Arthur laughed with much more confidence than Pratchet had been able to manage. ‘I suppose this is about the rubies.’
‘You suppose?’ Stephen punctuated the words with a little shake.
Arthur did his best, in his constrained position, to shrug. ‘I needed money. Gambling debts, old boy. I could hardly ask his Grace. And I knew Mother would cry if she was forced to defend me, yet again. Better that she weep for her lost necklace than for her useless son.’
‘You could have come to me,’ Stephen reminded him. It would not have been the first time that he’d needed to rescue his younger brother from his own folly.
‘Perhaps I should have,’ Arthur admitted. ‘Poor little Pratchet did not pay nearly so much as I’d hoped to get.’
‘Then why take them there?’
‘Two birds, Fanworth.’ Arthur smiled. ‘I was not the only one who needed rescuing. You were far too involved with the de Bryun woman. Something had to be done, before Larchmont got wind. I knew if Mother’s rubies turned up missing, sooner or later,