A Measure of Menace (Kat Holloway Mysteries #7.5)

Chapter 4

I seized Lord Clifford by the arm and tried to haul him backward. I could not pull him fully away, but I was at least strong enough to prevent him from reaching Jacoby.

Jacoby retreated a step, but instead of rushing to safety, he adjusted his cravat and stared at Lord Clifford in amazement.

“Swindler? Me? Clifford, whatever do you mean?”

“Mrs. Holloway is right.” Lord Clifford wrested himself from my hold, but he did not resume his attack on Jacoby. “You planned to dupe me out of as much money as you did Dougherty. I trusted you. Now a man is dead, and if his successors come after me for that debt … You should pay it. Why don’t you hand me fifteen thousand guineas on the moment?”

Jacoby blinked at Lord Clifford in bewilderment, but I saw the canniness in his eyes as he tried to think of a way to turn this dilemma to his advantage.

“Who is Mrs. Holloway?” Jacoby asked. “She is obviously a siren temptress trying to sway you into doubting me. Perhaps she wants the money.”

Lord Clifford stared at Jacoby, baffled. “Mrs. Holloway is a cook. And she is standing right here.” He indicated me.

In the very back of my mind, I took some offense that Lord Clifford could never view me—or any cook for that matter—as a siren temptress. Cooks could be temptresses as much as anyone else, once we put aside our unflattering work attire.

My more immediate reaction, however, was dismay that Lord Clifford had exposed my ruse. Mr. Jacoby pinned me with a steely gaze.

“She told me her name was Mrs. Davis.”

“I misspoke,” I said quickly. “Davis is my maiden name.” Actually, it was Holloway, which I’d resumed after the death of my rather horrible husband, but Mr. Jacoby did not need to know my history.

Jacoby’s eyes narrowed, but Lord Clifford waved the confusion away. “Whatever you call her, she pointed out that you were drawing me into this scheme alongside Dougherty. You coaxed me in by telling me how much I could make once we finished with him.”

“Because my company will do very well, once I have it running smoothly,” Jacoby answered, assurance oozing from him. “Dougherty’s capital would have been enough to make us both rich.”

“And my capital,” Lord Clifford snapped. “I have a wife and daughter to look after. If I’m out that fifteen thousand I owed Mobley, my family will go to a workhouse. My darling daughter will have to hire herself out as a governess or some such awful thing. You owe me that money, Jacoby.”

“Surely you can raise it, your lordship.” Jacoby’s smoothness of manner returned. “You are a peer of the realm.”

“Shows you know nothing about the bloody aristocracy,” Lord Clifford muttered.

Jacoby went on in the same unruffled tone. “You are trusting the word of an ignorant cook over mine? When I am an experienced investor?”

“She is not an ignorant cook. She is very clever. She helped me work a scheme with a necklace last year that exposed an anarchist. From what I understand, the police were most appreciative to find him.”

I tried to make myself inconspicuous behind Lord Clifford and willed him to cease speaking. Jacoby turned his glare on me.

“Are you working a scheme on me now?” he demanded, more of me than Lord Clifford. “Will the police be here soon to haul me to a magistrate?” He peered past me as though a few helmeted constables would thunder in any moment.

“No,” Lord Clifford said in confusion. “Why would I alert the confounded magistrates?” He poked a finger toward Jacoby’s soft middle. “If Mobley’s mates come after me for that fifteen thousand, and you do not supply it, I am finished with you. What’s more, I will ruin you. That, at least, is something my title is good for.”

Jacoby’s ingratiating manner deserted him, and he regarded Lord Clifford coolly. Too coolly, as though he had no fear of Lord Clifford’s influence. “Then you had better leave, your lordship. Or I will summon the police to remove you and your precious cook from my premises.”

“Ruin you.” Lord Clifford jabbed his finger one more time in Jacoby’s direction and then turned on his heel. “Come along, Mrs. Holloway. Let us shake the dust of this place from our feet.”

I’d not had the chance to question Jacoby—I’d planned to ask whether he had been near the moneylender’s shop on the day of Mobley’s murder, and whether he knew the moneylender at all—but I had little choice except to follow Lord Clifford out.

I paused on the threshold to glance back at Jacoby. Whether I meant to apologize or say something polite so he wouldn’t rush after me and clout me, as many felt they had the right to do to servants, I wasn’t certain.

Jacoby wasn’t looking at me. He watched Lord Clifford stride away, and the hardness on his face told me he would not soon dismiss the earl’s threats. He was a dangerous man. Lord Clifford, I realized, did not understand how dangerous.

I turned and hurried out before Jacoby could notice me.

Once outside, I drew a breath of the sharp October air. Autumn had arrived in London, with gray clouds piling in the east and a stiff breeze flowing up the Thames.

I reached Lord Clifford as he passed the music hall, shut and quiet this early, and turned the corner into Cable Street. He was going the entirely wrong way if he intended to return to Mayfair, but he was marching in a fury, paying no attention to his surroundings.

“Perhaps we should find a hansom, your lordship,” I panted as I trotted next to him.

“Eh?” Lord Clifford peered at me as though he’d forgotten my presence. “Oh, I suppose.” He waved at one that was racing along the street, its horse’s legs a blur. The driver utterly ignored us. “Damn and blast the fellow.”

I tugged his sleeve. “There is a stand at the next corner. We have to queue.”

“I haven’t queued for anything since I was a young man scratching for a living,” Lord Clifford growled, but he let me lead him toward Prince’s Square. “Do you know, Mrs. Holloway, that being related to an earl means you can still be dirt poor? And said earl doesn’t give a damn? Not that the peerage endowed me with any large sums once I inherited it. Probably my cousin, the former earl, didn’t have two coins to rub together, either. It’s a funny old world, isn’t it?”

His rage at Jacoby seemed to have dissipated. Lord Clifford regarded me with sadness, his eyes red-rimmed, as though he’d shed a few tears since racing from Jacoby’s office.

At the turning to Prince’s Square, I hailed one of the hansoms that slowed, seeking new fares. I bundled Lord Clifford inside the cab and gave the driver our direction in Mount Street.

The cabby barely let me sit down before the vehicle jerked forward. I clutched my basket securely and balanced on the seat.

Lord Clifford gazed into the street as we passed delivery wagons and people moving about in their daily labors. His entire body drooped. “I’ve been a complete fool, haven’t I? I thought I was so clever, believed Jacoby a trustworthy mate.”

“Have you known Mr. Jacoby long?” I asked.

Lord Clifford shrugged. “For years, though I haven’t seen him since I became a respectable aristocrat. Jacoby was always good for a scheme, and I usually came out of it well. He has changed,” he concluded sorrowfully.

“As have you, your lordship. Perhaps now that you are a peer, Mr. Jacoby regards you more as a mark than an ally.”

“That is it exactly. How on earth am I to tell my poor wife that I might have lost us fifteen thousand guineas? We do not have it. As my daughter is always quick to point out, the Shires family is skint.”

“Perhaps you will not owe the money.” I tried to sound hopeful. “Mr. Mobley was a villain, was he not? The police might close down his business entirely, in which case you’d not be beholden to anyone trying to collect the debt.”

“The police.” Lord Clifford snorted. “My dear, I have had my fill of the police for my lifetime. When they came to investigate my beloved son’s death, do you know what the detective inspector told me?” He faced me, his expression one of rage combined with bleak sorrow. “That I was to blame for poor Reggie shooting himself. That I should have known he was in a bad way and ought to have locked up all the guns. And do you know, Mrs. Holloway?” Lord Clifford’s eyes filled with tears that drove away the anger and left only grief. “The inspector was right. I know that, if not for me, my Reggie would still be alive and with us.”

Lord Clifford put his gloved hand over his eyes and bowed his head.