Page 18 of One Night of Scandal
“To learn the identity of this MP so we can stop him from causing further harm.”
“Agreed, but how to do this…” He pursed his lips as he gazed out at the busy thoroughfare. “I need to think on it. Will I see you at the Wicked Duke later?”
She shook her head. “I can’t risk too many nights there.”
“Then where else will you be?” He peered at her expectantly, and she could almost imagine he wanted her to be somewhere so he could see her socially. But that was preposterous. Neither of them were interested in such a connection.
“I’m not sure. I’ll have to consult my grandmother’s calendar.” She hesitated a bare moment before saying, “I don’t often go out with her. I don’t particularly enjoy Society.”
He nodded sharply. “Another thing we have in common. All right, then, I’ll consider our next move—as will you. Why not send me a note as to where we can meet?”
“I’ll do that.”
She looked out at the street. “I just need a hack.”
“Allow me.” He hailed one, laughing as he shook his head. “I really have to stop thinking of you as a woman.”
The disappointment she’d felt earlier evaporated in a wave of heat. She gave the driver her direction, then turned to Barrett. “Actually, I’d rather you didn’t.”
She didn’t dare look at him again as she climbed into the vehicle. She also didn’t dare think about what she’d just admitted out loud.
Chapter 6
Walking into the house in which Jack had grown up with his loving parents always felt like being wrapped in a warm hug. Tonight was no different as he handed his hat to his father’s butler. “How are you, Michaelson?” Jack asked.
The tall Norseman inclined his still-blond head. “Quite well, thank you. Your father is delighted you’ve come for dinner tonight.”
After thinking it had been too long since he’d visited, Jack had dispatched a note. “Please tell me Mrs. Fink has made lamb.” Her recipe was Jack’s favorite.
Michaelson’s mouth lifted in a smile. “Of course.”
Jack walked through the entrance hall into his father’s library. The feeling of home intensified in this room, where he’d spent so much time with his father reading, learning, and just watching the man he admired most in the world.
His father looked up from his desk, his dark blue eyes peering at Jack over the tops of his half-moon glasses. “Jack, my boy.” He took the spectacles off and set them atop the sheaf of papers he was reading, then stood. For a man nearing seventy, he didn’t look a day over sixty, and he had the movement and activity level of someone who was probably fifty. Jack could only hope to age as well as him and his father before him, who had just died five years ago at the venerable age of ninety-nine years.
“Good evening, Father. It’s good to see you.”
Father came around the desk and embraced Jack tightly for a moment. Jack felt like a boy of five again with the smell of ink and his father’s sandalwood soap crowding his senses. “Good to see you too.”
They parted, and Father gestured for him to sit in one of the wingback chairs angled before the hearth, where a low fire burned on this cool April evening. As Jack took his usual chair, Father went to the sideboard and poured two glasses of his favorite whisky, which he procured every fall when he traveled to Scotland to hunt.
A moment later, his father handed him a glass and sat opposite him. They both raised their whisky in silent toast before taking simultaneous sips. How many times had they done precisely this? Far too many to count, and Jack hoped there would still be far more than he could imagine.
“You’ve been busy since Parliament opened,” Father said over the rim of his glass.
Jack winced inwardly. “Yes, sorry I haven’t been to visit.”
His father waved his hand. “I don’t care about that. With everything going on, I can well imagine how overwhelming it’s all been. The riots last fall, the attack on the Prince Regent, the march from Manchester… That’s a great deal to manage in the best of times.”
“As you know from personal experience, this is not the best of times.”
His father had been an MP for several years until Jack had taken over in the last election. Before him, Jack’s grandfather, for whom Jack had been named, had been MP. Barretts had occupied this seat for decades. That was a detail the rotten-borough MPs liked to point out to Jack when he discussed the overwhelming corruption in so many constituencies.
“Yes, and it seems the Tories are reacting just as they always do, with fear and a need to maintain their grip however they can.” Father shook his head before sipping his whisky once more.
“It may be even worse than that,” Jack said darkly. He’d thought about this mystery MP he and Lady Viola were hunting, and was nearly convinced it was a Tory trying to foment fear and distrust toward the radicals and workers and anyone else in opposition to them. “Apparently, an MP advised a group of radicals—or maybe it was one radical, I don’t know the details—to attack the Prince Regent. He told them where the prince would be and when to attack him. I suspect it’s a Tory trying to instigate the radicals in order to stoke fear so Parliament would implement a secret committee or suspend habeas corpus, which it did.” Jack scowled.
James Barrett was a difficult man to upset—unflappable was the word that came to mind when describing him. But now he seemed to freeze, his eyes locking on Jack. “An MP was behind the attack?” Jack nodded, and his father continued. “You know it was a Tory?”
