Page 47 of Seduced By a Scoundrel

“Anderson is in his office,” Duncan said, gesturing to the stairs. “You’d best be quick if you hope to catch him before he goes home to his missus.”

Derrek nodded, then gestured for Jeremy to follow him to the stairs.

“Do you need to be such a bear?” Jeremy whispered as they started up to the first floor.

Derrek glanced incredulously at him as they turned a corner. “This is a police station, not a ball.”

The curtness of the answer felt as though it drove the wedge farther between the two of them. Their harmony and accord was most definitely out of tune at the moment, but Jeremy could not imagine how it had become so dissonant so quickly or how he might fix things.

“Inspector Anderson,” Derrek introduced the two of them as they walked through the open door of an office toward the end of a corridor on the first floor.

They caught the middle-aged man in the room in the act of donning his outer coat. He glanced over his shoulder, then his eyes went wide at the sight of Derrek. “Talboys,” he said as if seeing a ghost. “Whatever are you doing here?”

Derrek’s uncomfortable shoulder roll was not lost on Jeremy. His stomach sank, and he wondered just how much leave Derrek had had to whisk him away to the country two months ago.

“If you will remember, sir,” Derrek said, standing like a soldier, “I was called away to the country on a matter of particularly urgent business.”

Jeremy eyed Derrek with even more suspicion. Had he not been honest with his superiors about running off to Maidstone Close with him?

Mr. Anderson narrowed his eyes at Derrek for a moment, then widened them. “Oh, yes. It was some matter involving The Crown, was it not?”

“Yes, sir,” Derrek said. “A matter that involves my friend here, Mr. Jeremy Wilkes.”

“How do you do?” Jeremy greeted Mr. Anderson with a graceful bow when the inspector turned to study him.

“Quite well,” Mr. Anderson said, then hurried on to, “What brings you here today, Mr. Wilkes? Have you come to return my errant officer to me?”

Jeremy glanced at Derrek again. Errant officer? It seemed as though there were more things than just Derrek’s trip to the manor house at Maidstone Close that Jeremy had not been told.

“Detective Talboys has been protecting me from men who wish to kill me,” he said, addressing the problem directly.

“Kill you?” Mr. Anderson said. He looked at Derrek as if to ask why he had not been informed earlier.

“Yes, sir,” Jeremy said before Derrek could step in and continue the explanation in some way that would once again omit him from his own crisis. “You see, about two months ago, I was called to Kensington Palace for a fitting with Sir John Conroy, who had commissioned me to create a suit of clothing for him.”

“Kensington Palace, you say,” Mr. Anderson said, stroking his chin.

“Yes, sir. And while I was there, I overheard Sir John and an accomplice, a man I have since come to discover, with Detective Talboys’s help, is one Lord Albert Howard of Maidstone Close in Kent, plotting to poison King William and bring about his demise before Princess Victoria’s birthday so that a regency, led by Conroy through the Duchess of Kent, could be established.”

It was a horrible mouthful to explain, and before the speech was complete, Jeremy lost confidence in how it would be received.

His story was met by baffled silence from Mr. Anderson. Worse than that, Mr. Anderson looked at Derrek as though he’d brought a stray dog into the office.

“Is this why you have been absent from your duties for two months?” he asked Derrek.

Derrek cleared his throat and shifted his stance. “I believed it of the utmost importance to protect Mr. Wilkes, who is influential in higher circles, from the machinations of a would-be puppeteer behind the throne.”

“Were you given leave to abandon your post for this duty?” Mr. Anderson asked, his frown growing.

“Yes,” Derrek answered quickly and definitively. He then hesitated and continued with, “In a manner of speaking.”

“A manner of speaking?” Mr. Anderson questioned him.

Derrek squirmed a bit more, then said, “I informed Mr. Cooper that my current investigation would take me out of the city for a time and that I did not know when I would be at liberty to return to Scotland Yard.”

Dead silence filled the room.

Then Mr. Anderson huffed. “Mr. Talboys,” he began, his failure to address Derrek as a detective setting an ominous tone, “The Metropolitan Police Department is an institution of London. It was created, and indeed, its sole purpose continues to be for the policing of the city of London, not locations in the countryside.”

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