Besides, what would you do with the body, if you killed him? the logical side of my mind inquired. He wouldn’t fit in the cupboard, let alone the hidey-hole.
“For the third—and last—time,” I said. “What do you bloody want?”
“Your help,” he said promptly. “I’d originally had it in mind to use you as an agent in place. You could have been very valuable to me, moving in the same social circles as the British high command. But you seemed too unstable—forgive me, ma’am—to approach immediately. I hoped that as your grief over your first husband faded, you would come to a state of resignation in which I might seek your acquaintance and by degrees achieve a state of intimacy in which you could be persuaded to discover small—and, at first, seemingly innocent—bits of information, which you would pass on to me.”
“Just what do you mean by ‘intimacy’?” I said, folding my arms. Because while the word in current parlance often meant merely friendship, he hadn’t used it with that intonation at all.
“You’re a very desirable woman, Mrs. Fraser,” he said, looking me over in an objectionably appraising way. “And one who knows her desirability. His lordship obviously wasn’t obliging you in that regard, so . . .” He lifted a shoulder, smiling in a deprecating fashion. “But as General Fraser has returned from the dead, I imagine you’re no longer susceptible to lures of that kind.”
I laughed and dropped my arms.
“You flatter yourself, Colonel,” I said dryly. “If not me. Look: why not stop trying to fluster me and tell me what you want me to do and why on earth you think I’d do it.”
He laughed, too, which lent some sense of individuality to his face.
“Very well. It may be difficult to believe, but this war will not be won on the battlefield.”
“Oh, yes?”
“Yes, I assure you, ma’am. It will be won by spying and by politics.”
“A very novel approach, I’m sure.” I was trying to place his accent; it was English but a rather flat sort of accent. Not London, not the north . . . educated, but not polished. “I assume you weren’t soliciting my assistance in the political line.”
“No, actually, I am,” he said. “If somewhat indirectly.”
“I suggest you try the direct approach,” I said. “My patient will be arriving very shortly.” The sounds outside had changed; apprentices and housemaids were going past in little groups, bound for work or daily marketing. Calls to and fro, the occasional giggle of a flirtation in passing.
Richardson nodded in acceptance.
“Are you aware of the Duke of Pardloe’s opinion of this war?”
I was somewhat taken aback by this. Foolishly, it hadn’t occurred to me that Hal might have one, outside the requirements of his service. But if ever I had met a man guaranteed to have opinions, it was Harold, Second Duke of Pardloe.
“What with one thing and another, I’ve never exchanged views with the duke on political matters. Nor with my—nor with his brother, for that matter.”
“Ah. Well, ladies often take no interest in things outside their own sphere of interest—though I rather thought you might have a . . . wider appreciation, shall we say?” He looked pointedly from my canvas apron and tray of instruments to the other appointments of my surgery.
“What about his politics?” I asked shortly, disregarding his implications.
“His Grace is a strong voice in the House of Lords,” Richardson said, playing with a frayed thread on the edge of his cuff. “And while he was at first very much in favor of the war, his opinions of late have been noticeably more . . . moderate. He wrote a public letter to the first minister in the fall, urging a consideration of reconciliation.”
“And?” I hadn’t the slightest idea where he was going with this and was growing impatient.
“Reconciliation is not what we want, ma’am,” he said, and, pulling the thread free, flicked it aside. “Such efforts will only delay the inevitable and interfere with the commitment of the citizenry that we desperately need. But the fact that His Grace shows this moderation of outlook is useful to me.”
“Jolly good,” I said. “Get to the point, if you please.”
He ignored this and proceeded about his exposition as though he had all the time in the world.
“Were he fiercely committed to one extreme or the other, he would be difficult to . . . influence. While I don’t know His Grace well, everything I know of him indicates that he values his sense of honor—”
“He does.”
“—almost as much as he values his family,” Richardson finished. He looked directly at me, and for the first time I felt a flicker of real fear.
“I have for some time been working to acquire influence—whether direct or otherwise—over such members of the duke’s family as are within my reach. With, say, a son—a nephew?—perhaps even his brother in my control, it would then be possible to affect His Grace’s public position, in whatever way seemed most advantageous to us.”
“If you’re suggesting what I think you’re suggesting, then I suggest you leave my sight this instant,” I said, in what I hoped was a tone of calm menace. Though I spoiled whatever effect there might have been by adding, “Besides, I have absolutely no connection with any of Pardloe’s family now.”
He smiled faintly, with no sense of pleasantry at all.
“His nephew, William, is in the city, ma’am, and you were seen speaking with him nine days ago. Perhaps you are unaware, though, that both Pardloe and his brother are here, as well?”