“How go the preparations for the special license?” he asked.

“I only started a few hours ago,” Reynolds said with a bemused smile. “But your influence and Shelley’s money will get you what you desire, I’m certain.”

“And the talk?” he asked, this time softer.

Reynolds shrugged. “Not very loud for now. But as I inquire more and the servants begin to whisper…”

“Of course,” Jasper said with a shake of his head. “That blasted woman will cause me nothing but trouble. In truth, I’m pleased to make the trade with her sister for my bride. Thomasina and I seem better matched.”

Reynolds cocked his head. “You’ve certainly talked about the younger triplet more since your engagement.”

Jasper pushed to his feet and paced away from the smirk of his longtime friend and employee. “You are being ridiculous. At any rate, that isn’t why I asked you to join me. I didn’t share with you the contents of the note Miss Anne left her sister before she fled me like I was a monster at her heels. I would like to do so now.”

Reynolds shrugged. “Very well.”

“She ran off with a man with the name of Ellis. I do not know for certain if it is a first or last name. But I keep coming back to it. It is so familiar. And I have begun to fear that her finding a…well, I hesitate to call him a gentleman…but a man willing to thwart her very public engagement to be rather suspicious.”

“You are always suspicious of something,” Reynolds drawled.

Jasper pursed his lips. “The world has given me a great many reasons to be so. At any rate, do you have any theories as to why that name rings in my head?”

Reynolds paced the room, and Jasper watched as his mind spun on the question. The man had a memory like no one he’d ever known. “Wharton Ellis is the shopkeep near your London estate,” Reynolds began.

“No, I doubt that is who my until recently intended ran away with,” he said with a chuckle as he thought of the ancient shopkeep with a wife of over sixty years and a gaggle of beloved children and grandchildren.

“Ellis Crowley owned an inn you stayed in once in Scotland.”

“We’re reaching, I think,” he said.

Another hesitation as Reynolds continued his search of memory. Then his eyes widened. “Wait. Wait.”

“What? You thought of something?”

“What was the name of your brother’s second in the duel that—” Reynolds cut himself off, and Jasper flinched.

“The duel that took his life?” he asked, as if there were another. “Maitland, I think. Er…oh God. Ellis Maitland.”

Reynolds nodded. “He had a bad feel to him when he came to tell you about the particulars of the previous earl’s death.”

“He did at that.” It was Jasper who paced the room now, fisting his hands at his sides. “I knew my brother had involved himself in far worse than mere reckless gambling and carousing when I met Maitland. But I paid him for his support of Solomon.”