LITMIR.BIZ

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do you expect the company to function, split like that?’ she demanded.

      ‘Poorly, I imagine,’ he drawled. ‘It can run to rack and ruin for all I care—it cost me nothing to acquire my share. Of course, my dear, you could marry me and then we’d all be one happy family and I’ll be as anxious as you that it runs well. What do you think? You may have found my proposal not smooth enough for your tastes, but we could deal well together.’

      ‘You disgust—’ Bree did not finish the sentence as Piers pulled free from her grip on his arm.

      ‘She is not marrying you, you are going to be dead!’

      ‘Piers.’ Bree cut off the boy’s tirade with a sharp word. ‘Mr Latymer, I would not marry you if you professed undying love and crawled over hot coals to my feet. You are a treacherous, spiteful, vindictive, two-faced liar. You will hear from our lawyers. Come, Piers.’

      ‘They won’t find a crack in it, my dear. Your uncle’s in his right mind. This was a gambling debt between gentlemen.’

      ‘Gentlemen!’ Piers snarled, lunged back towards the table and was brought up short by the point of a long steel blade at his throat.

      ‘A swordstick.’ Bree, her heart in her throat, reached out a trembling hand and took Piers’s arm, pulling the boy back towards her. Latymer made no move to come round the table after them. ‘I should have guessed you’d use a coward’s weapon. But do not worry, we are both unarmed, and we are leaving.’

      They walked out of the inn, arm in arm for support, too shaken to say anything until the pony was making its way back to the farm. ‘Bree, he’ll ruin us. We cannot run the company with half of it in hostile hands,’ Piers stammered. ‘If he won’t sell, any amount of money from Lord Penrith will not help.’

      ‘We are going back to London tomorrow morning,’ Bree said. ‘And we will ask Max for help. He will know what to do.’ She shook the reins and the reluctant pony lumbered into a trot. ‘Now we must do our best to lift Uncle’s spirits. Put a brave face on it, Piers—like you did just now. I was so proud of you.’ And so scared for him. Whatever happened, she had to keep him away from Brice Latymer.

      Max sat back in his chair, studying the fan of cards in his hand. Across the table in the best private parlour that the Sun in Splendour in Winchester could boast, the man who called himself Jack Ryder did the same.

      A fire crackled in the grate, the remains of an excellent supper had been cleared away and a rare Bordeaux gleamed ruby light in their glasses.

      He felt, strangely, calm. It was not at all how he had expected to feel after viewing the unmarked plot that held the remains of Drusilla’s family in the corner of the small church of one of the city’s outlying parishes.

      With Ryder he had found the verger and they had dragged the registers out of their cupboard in the vestry and pored over them. As the agent had told him, the entries during the epidemic that had ravaged the city were scanty and ill written.

      ‘Vicar was taken with it,’ the verger explained. ‘He lived, although his wife died. The sexton and I, we did our best with notebooks and scraps of paper, but we were burying that many, sometimes we forgot. We’re not lettered men, my lords.’ He rubbed a gnarled hand over his face. ‘It was a terrible time, that it was. Bitter bad.’

      ‘Here is what I found before.’ Ryder pushed a register towards Max. ‘See. Fifteenth of May, The Cornish family, 3 souls. But which three?’

      ‘I can see if I can find the old notebooks,’ the verger offered. ‘I gave them all to Vicar, once he was up from his sickbed. He read the service over all the graves then, and filled in the registers, best as he could. He was in a right state, though, still weak himself, and his wife just gone.

      ‘They’ll all be in here, I suspicion,’ he mumbled, pulling out a battered chest. ‘Aye, there you are.’

      The two men had looked at the jumble of scraps of paper, battered notebooks and pieces of old parchment, all covered in blotched and pot-hooked handwriting. Ryder dug in his pocket and handed the verger a coin. ‘A jug of ale and three tankards, if you’ll be so good. This could be a long business.’

      It had taken them three hours before they found the notes relating to that day in May 1807. Max spread the page out on the table. ‘Buried Mr Matthew Cornish, apothecary, Mrs Letty Cornish his wife, Drusilla Cornish his daughter, spinster, of Eastcheape, dead of the pox, 15th day of May,’ he read. ‘We must put this under lock and key here and go and see the vicar. Will you swear before a lawyer where it was found?’

      ‘Aye, I’ll do that,’ the verger nodded. ‘It’s my handwriting too, I’ll swear to that as well. We’ll put it in this cupboard here, all safe and sound.’

      After they had seen the vicar, a thin, tremulous man with pockmarked cheeks, and had made arrangements for an attorney to come to the vestry next day, the verger guided them to the gravesite. Max had stood there a long while, the flowers he had brought held loosely in his hand, his eyes unfocused as he thought of his wife. Then he had put down the flowers with the sense of having found an answer to an unspoken question, and asked the old man for the direction of a monumental mason.

      ‘What name will you have put on the stone?’ Ryder asked, striding beside him through the drizzle.

      ‘Her own, with her parents’. She did not want the marriage—I will not force the name on her now.’ The stone mason’s work shed was dusty, dim and noisy, but somehow the act of doing something was curiously soothing and he left with the sense of having come to the end of a book and of having closed it, completed.

      Now, in the warm comfort of the inn, he was enjoying the sensation of matching his wits against someone he could not read at all. The play was about even, they were winning almost turn and turn about, yet there was something in Ryder’s game that made Max suspect he was more than the excellent card player he appeared to be.

      Max played an ace and took the hand. ‘May I make an observation that may appear insulting, without the risk of being called out?’ he enquired, watching the other man’s hands as he dealt.

      Ryder glanced up, smiled and returned his attention to the cards. ‘You may, my lord.’

      ‘You play like a sharp, yet I would swear you have neither played to lose, nor to win unfairly, this evening.’

      Ryder raised one eyebrow. ‘You have a good eye, my lord. I can play booty …’ he glanced up to make sure Max understood the cant phrase ‘… to draw the pigeons in, and I can rook them royally when I have them. You are the first man I have ever played against who has called me, my lord—and that when I was playing fair.’

      ‘Call me Dysart. That is my name, although I might hazard a guess that Jack Ryder is not yours.’ Max picked up the cards he had been dealt and fanned them out.

      ‘It is part of it.’ The other man made his play, then drained his glass. ‘I should say that I have never cheated for personal gain, only in the course of my work—and where it was deserved.’ He reached for the bottle and refilled their glasses. ‘After today, is there anything further I can assist you with?’

      ‘No, nothing, I thank you. I shall make sure Lord Lucas is well aware of how much you have assisted me. I would prefer it if you sent your accounting directly to me, marked for my personal attention. My secretary is not aware of this enquiry.’

      Ryder nodded. ‘It will be done. You are travelling direct back to town tomorrow?’

      ‘Yes.’ Max grinned, his thumb caressing the Queen of Hearts in the cards fanned in his hand. The consequences of their day’s discoveries were beginning to sink in. Surely, with the proof that he had been a widower for seven years, he could win Bree round? ‘Oh, yes. I have a lady to see. Are you married, Ryder?’

      ‘I have not that felicity,’ the other man replied, straight-faced. ‘But I wish you good fortune.’

      They travelled back

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