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He had other designs for his Saturday afternoon.

• • •

Alfred Thewes, First Baron Mabeldon, sucked his cigar with appetite, then studied its glowing coal before smiling at Anthony with large, square teeth. He was horse-faced but this chance resemblance only served to underscore Anthony’s distaste.

“You arrived in the nick of time,” Mabeldon said. “I was about to head out the door. I’m meeting Archibald at the club.”

Mabeldon wasn’t dressed for going out. He lounged in his smoking jacket, loosened cravat limp against his chest. Anthony inclined his head at the tinniness of the excuse. They both knew it was claptrap.

“What luck,” he said. He should have been bolder. Done this weeks ago, barged in on a Saturday, when the element of surprise was on his side.

“Scotch?” Mabeldon reached behind him, lifted a decanter. Anthony stared at the amber winking through cut crystal, like mocking eyes.

One drink, five drinks, one hundred. How much is enough. Forever. When Lucy had said those words to him in the canteen, he’d put aside the gin. Maybe it was then he’d had his first inkling of the forever he wanted more. Too bad he was such a slow learner.

He shrugged. “I don’t have the taste for it.”

Mabeldon sucked his teeth, plunking the decanter back down.

“Starting to take after your father. Archie won’t believe it. You know, he always asks after you. This year, we’ll have you both on the hunt. Usually, he goes to Inverness with his college chums, and they waste whole days on the golf links. The promise of your company—a little friendly competition—will lure him back into the heather, I guarantee it. And you’re almost a college chum, aren’t you?”

Mabeldon’s son Archibald had taken all firsts at Oxford the same year that Anthony was sent down. Mabeldon still enjoyed referencing Anthony’s failure, poking the old wound. With some surprise, Anthony realized that the wound had healed over. The young idiot. He smiled briefly.

“We’re colleagues now, at any rate.” Parliament was hardly the heather, but he and Archibald would meet there before long, as Anthony tried to flush political opponents. Archibald, a Conservative MP for Bath, had been one of his father’s disciples. He’d take aim at him soon enough, as he worked through the list.

“You’ve taken your father’s seat?” Mabeldon looked surprised. “Bored of knocking about and raising hell, are you? Good, good, but there’s technique to it. Your letters . . .” He broke off, shook his head, and sighed, as though he’d ignored them out of tact.

Yes, Anthony knew he wrote in a messy hand, that his style lacked finesse. But he’d made his concerns, and his demands, clear.

“Weren’t the characters legible?” he asked. “I can summarize the content. The Board of Works acquired a large site on Charlotte Road, containing several buildings that do not seem to conform to the description given by the inspectors of nuisance and confirmed by Dr. Jephson. I’m prepared to hire a surveyor and bring in the medical officer of the Privy Council to issue an independent report on those properties, which could prove more than an embarrassment, for the vestry and for the board itself. The board is on the thinnest ice with the public, and the dailies want but a whiff of fresh corruption to raise the cry.”

Anthony folded his arms, leaning back in his chair. His eyes flitted over the sheaves of paper on Mabeldon’s desk.

“You mounted your own investigation. Show me the committee’s findings.”

Mabeldon’s eyes skittered and he stuck the cigar back into his mouth, puffing slowly. Was there ever a committee? Despite his best effort, he couldn’t subdue his reaction, swift and violent, his whole body bracing for a bloody contest. The energy it took to hold himself still made the sweat break out across his brow.

Every time he thought he’d come to the bottom of Yardley’s duplicity, he discovered a false bottom, a deeper level yawning beneath. He called up a smile.

“I see,” he said. “All the more reason for me to task myself with unearthing the malfeasance. Rumors are already circulating, as you know, that there is an inner ring within the board, members allied with certain brokers, speculators, contractors, builders, and architects, all peddling influence and services to dispose of surplus lands.”

Through his morning reading regimen, he’d discovered that the Financial News had gone so far as to levy charges of general corruption, calling the board a “den of thieves.” Criticism for the board’s secretive procedures had scarcely been higher at any point in its thirty-year history. Mabeldon was in a weakened position.

If he’d imagined Anthony was too much the fool to be aware of it, he was disabused now. His long face had turned a sickly color. Anthony’s smile felt less forced as he continued.

“I could localize my efforts and resolve, with your help, the misdeeds on Charlotte Road. Or I could, for the good of the metropolis, set my sights higher, and use the evidence of wrongdoing to make a case for a larger investigation. I’ll move in the House for a select committee to investigate all of the board’s affairs.”

Mabeldon stared, his eyes lusterless. “You’re making a mistake,” he said at last.

Anthony raised his brows, made a dismissive gesture with his hand. “You’re making the mistake with those evictions,” he said. “That is, if you don’t want your board dissolved by an act of Parliament.”

Mabeldon stubbed out the cigar. “So. You plan to denounce Jephson? That story will sell papers. Far more than any story about alleged sharp dealing in Shoreditch.”

He bared his teeth and quite a bit of darkened gum.

A vein in Anthony’s temple throbbed as he tried to make sense of this. He kept his face neutral, but he had that panicked feeling again, the feeling of a trap closing around him. Why did Mabeldon say Jephson in that peculiar tone of voice?

He didn’t like how Mabeldon was looking at him, like he was a plate of salade de grouse à la Soyer.