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Brandon pushed through to the rickety stairs, taking them two at a time. When he emerged into the back of the dingy pot-house, the owner gave him a sharp glance. The bare-knuckle fight going on in his cellar was hardly secret, but it was illegal all the same. Brandon's lip curled at what the man would think if he knew several fellows from Bow Street were down there right now.

Instead of leaving and fixing suspicion on himself, he leaned against the counter and motioned the publican over. "When does the African fight again?"

The man's expression eased. "Thursday next."

Brandon grunted and dropped a few coins on the counter. "A pot of heavy wet."

He took the mug of ale and carried it to a small table. The room was busy, with men coming in for a drink before disappearing down the back stairs. This drinking house was well-known in St. Giles for its ring. When men couldn’t be found to fight, a cock-fighting ring was erected in its place. The profits from the taproom couldn't compete with the profits from the cellar, he thought, grimacing as he sipped the soured ale.

He pulled his woolen cap lower on his forehead and drew the guttering candle close before unfolding the note Phipps had passed him. Stafford didn't waste a moment, sending him to spy on someone else before this job was even concluded.

But that wasn't what the note said.

The bench scraped along the floor as he jumped to his feet, holding the paper close to reread it. He glanced toward the stairs to the cellar, then jammed the note into his pocket, leaving behind his barely-touched ale and heading out the door.

He strode through the narrow, twisting streets of St. Giles, jumping over the sewers running in the gutters and ignoring the catcalls of the prostitutes. Crossing Great Russell Street was like crossing the River Styx from the Underworld back to earth, or at least a better part of London. As he went north, the buildings seemed to expand and brighten, the cramped poverty of the rookery giving way to spacious gentility. The houses here were clean brick edifices, tightly fitted together with neatly swept steps and painted railings, their windows dark mirrors for the gas street lamps. There were still thieves here, but they kept to the shadows.

After a few streets Brandon turned into an alley and went to the back stoop of a small house near the end. The door was locked tight for the night, but he didn’t bother to try it. Instead he braced one hand on the door, stepped up onto the short railing beside the steps, and reached upward to grab the ledge of the window. He pulled a knife from the sheath strapped under his upraised arm and wriggled the flat of the blade beneath the sash of the window, twisting the knife until he could fit his fingers into the opening. With one hard shove the window slid up; holding the sill with both hands, he pulled himself up and through the open window, into the house.

Brandon glanced around as his feet hit the floor, but no sound of running footsteps betrayed alarm—not that it would have really mattered, except to his pride. The owner of the house left that window unlocked for just this purpose. He closed the window and went in search of the man.

Light seeped from beneath the door of the master's study. Pausing only a moment to listen for voices, he turned the knob and slipped into the room.

"What the—? Bloody hell," exclaimed Sir James Peterbury, leaping to his feet in alarm. "You nearly scared me witless, man!"

"Sorry for that," said Alec Brandon. He held up Phipps's note. "Did you know?"

James looked at the note, then back at Alec's face. "I presume you mean your brother's death," he said quietly. "Yes, I knew. I wanted them to tell you at once, but they insisted you were vitally occupied."

Alec's tense anger drained away. He dropped into a chair and hung his head. "He died months ago." There was nothing he could have done, but he still should have been told. After all, there was nothing he could do about it now, either. He rubbed one hand across his stinging eyes. "Damn it. I should have been told."

James took the other chair by the fire. "My mother wrote that it was a lingering illness contracted in the winter. No one thought it was terribly serious, but he just grew worse and worse. Freddie never was very strong." The Peterburys no longer lived only a few miles from Alec's family, but James's mother and Alec's mother were still fast friends and wrote to each other often.

Alec nodded. He hadn't thought of his older brother in some time, but James was right. Freddie had been a scholar, a musician, a learned and kind man, a steady, capable presence—not like Alec, the wild boy who’d fallen into one disaster after another as a boy and then joined the army, eager to be sent to war. “And. . . the rest of my family? Are they well?”

"Your mother and sister are well, as are Frederick's widow and children." James cleared his throat. "I understand a cousin has stepped in to manage the estate. I suppose he thinks he's inherited everything now."

He knew what James was thinking. That cousin hadn’t inherited anything, because Alec was still alive—but only a handful of people knew that. Most of the world believed Alexander Brandon Hayes had been a traitor to his country, killed during the battle of Waterloo and ignominiously dumped into an anonymous grave to be mercifully forgotten. Only James Peterbury and John Stafford knew otherwise.

Alec took a long, measured breath. He gripped his hands together until his knuckles went white. He’d vowed not to go home until he had cleared his name. He’d hidden from his family, allowing them to believe him both dead and dishonorable. He’d suppressed his fury and fear and allowed James to do the investigating he burned to do. And when that failed, he’d swallowed the last of his pride and taken John Stafford’s offer, spying for the Home Office. James had arranged it, arguing that it would win favor with men like Stafford and Sidmouth who were more capable than he of finding the truth about those incriminating letters from a French colonel, discovered in Alec’s rooms after Waterloo.

But now Freddie was dead and Alec was being sent home, unmasked and still tarred with treason.

"I'm returning to Marston," Alec muttered.

His friend's face lit with satisfaction. "I knew you would. It's time, you know, and I've been thinking about your situation. Wellington is Master of the Ordnance now and has politics more on his mind than old battles. If we could secure an interview with him, and have your present employer put in a word⁠—"

"Wellington, who said he would have shot me himself if the French hadn't been good enough to do it first?" Alec shook his head. "I won’t go to Wellington without proof."

James fell silent. Both of them knew it was highly unlikely any proof of Alec's innocence would surface now. "It's still the right thing to do," he insisted. "Going home."

James meant that his greater duty now was to his family—his mother, his sister, his brother's widow and children. Alec wasn’t so sure, but it didn’t matter. His gamble hadn’t paid off.

He sighed and held out Phipp’s crumpled note. "I haven't got a choice."

His friend took it and read. Stafford was sending him home to Marston, not out of tender compassion for Frederick's death, but to find a missing man. Sergeant George Turner had gone to London to see Colonel Lord Pickering, a Deputy Commissary General for the army, and never returned home to Marston. He'd been gone for almost four months now, and his daughters had appealed to Pickering, who had asked Stafford to look into it. Just another spy's task on the surface, and a routine one at that. Only a terse line at the end—I regret to inform you of the death of Frederick Hayes this past spring—gave any indication Stafford was aware of the ramifications of sending Alec on this particular mission.

"Bloody cold of him," remarked James. "Who is this Sergeant Turner he wants you to find?"