Page 12 of A Spinster for the Rakish Duke
“As I have explained, Mr. Gesett, Mr. Bradford is a solicitor, not a fruit salesman.”
The confused look returned to the man’s face. He looked down at the paperwork in front of him again.
“Lidia!” Mr. Gesett shouted suddenly, causing Donovan and Emma to jump. “Lidia, bring me my spectacles. I can’t read these darn notes.”
A younger lady, likely Mr. Gesetts daughter, came into the office from the front shop area and handed the older man some reading spectacles that seemed to have been well used. As the man cleaned his glasses before putting them on, Lidia leaned in to read the paper. “They said they are looking for Mr. Bradford, our solicitor, not Mr. Brodfield.” She glanced up at the two guests, “Mr. Brodfield supplies our overseas produce.”
“I see,” Donovan said, not thinking it wise to say much more. Since Mr. Gesett was still squinting at the paperwork, despite the spectacles, the investigator decided to ask his questions to the one person who had managed to give them sensible answers, Lidia.
“Do you know what business he had here the other day?” Donovan asked the younger woman.
“We had a dispute we needed to resolve with a dye supplier over the wording of a contract. Mr. Bradford came to evaluate and resolve things to everyone's satisfaction, which was done. Mr. Bradford left in good spirits, and I don’t think we noticed anything strange.”
Donovan gave a gruff thanks, off-put by the difficulty of the situation. He was given pause when Emma stopped and expressed great gratitude for the woman’s help.
“Even if we don’t have the answers we need, each answer we get brings us one step closer to my brother. Thank you.”
Donovan was left speechless at the humility of this woman and thought it might be good for him to take a bit of that into himself. He thanked Lidia again, succinctly but politely this time. She had helped them, after all.
Donovan was unsurprised to find that each of the remaining dozen or so contacts yielded little information or less. It was clear that Benjamin did most of his business with moderately successful businessmen, but none who made enough money to warrant anything malicious, as far as he could tell.
Despite spotting a few names that could have outed his true identity, Donovan was not willing to compromise the investigation to preserve his lie. He was, of course, oblivious to the irony that his being an investigator was part of that lie. Twice the people being met were house workers who had made deliveries to his estate. One was even the nephew of his chef, but the blissfully dense boy didn’t recognize him. Still, with each heart thumping rise, he pressed on.
The hardest part of it all wasn’t the investigation or the questioning. Truth be told, Donovan had been looking into the deaths of his parents for most of his adulthood, so the circumstance was almost refreshing given that there might be a chance to help the living. No, the hardest part was watching Emma’s face fall each time they left a questioning without any new leads. He didn’t think she misunderstood the circumstances or chances; her disappointment was rooted purely in the diminishing hopes of quickly finding her brother.
Donovan had told himself that he did this out of obligation to a friend. That this had nothing to do with the kiss they shared or the emotions he felt were spurred. Rather his friend needed his help, but each time he looked her way, he could not help but see that beauty that captivated him the first time they ever met.
He wanted her…. Even if his logical mind knew that this was not the way to her heart, that saving her brother was no way to indebt her to him. Still, even if he knew it in his head, his pining soul pressed into further action. He needed to have her close, to feel her close, within arm’s reach.
“I was hoping,” she turned and said to him suddenly, “that we would have luck on this first day.”
“It rarely goes as we hope it does,” he said apologetically.
“True, but my brother would have been able to provide you payment for your services, and I have no access to funds. I did not intend to ask you to work for free,” she spoke haltingly, clearly embarrassed by the circumstances.
“I wasn’t expecting payment at all,” he told her, keeping his voice neutral as not to embarrass her.
“What? No! I cannot expect you to perform your services without compensation,” she said insistently.
But Donovan shook his head again. “Are we not friends? This is something I want to do for a friend.” Then he added, to make sure that his lies did not earn him false pity or false humility, “I am not in need of money; there is no great sacrifice in my assisting you, don’t worry.”
“Oh, that's good then,” she said quietly and uncertainly.
“I think,” Donovan said while looking towards the smoke-laced London sunset, “it would be best to call it a day from here. We will renew the search for your brother in the morning.”
“I suppose that makes sense. But from where Mr. Connor? We have no leads.” The tone in her voice made Donovan think she was hopeful that he had a quick answer, so he came up with a quick answer to provide relief to that pretty face of hers.
“We will, unfortunately, have to talk to some more unsavory characters. People who might know if Benjamin had any run-ins with the criminal underbelly of London,” Donovan said, thinking of his words as he spoke them.
“You know people like that?” she gasped.
“I may. Having to find those people is essential to the job of an investigator,” he said hushedly, “as unseemly as it may be.”
“Well, I will be nervous tomorrow, but if it means finding my brother, then I will go with you,” she said, reassuring herself as well as him.
He laughed lightly to himself and nodded. “If you insist. Come along, let's get you back to the apartment.”
Chapter Ten
