Tom Byrd had been listening to all of this with visible impatience, and could contain himself no longer.

“The devil with what he was doing here—where’s Jack gone?” he demanded.

Grey had his own pressing question, as well.

“This friend of Frau Mayrhofer—do they know his name? Can they describe him?”

With strict attention to social precedence, von Namtzen obtained the answer to Grey’s question first.

“The gentleman gave his name as Mr. Josephs. However, the butler says that he does not think this is his true name—the gentleman hesitated when asked for his name. He was very . . .” Von Namtzen hesitated himself, groping for translation. “Fein herausgeputzt. Very . . . polished.”

“Well dressed,” Grey amended. The room seemed very warm, and sweat was trickling down the seam of his back.

Von Namtzen nodded. “A bottle-green silk coat, with gilt buttons. A good wig.”

“Trevelyan,” Grey said, with a sense of inevitability that was composed in equal parts of relief and dismay. He took a deep breath; his heart was racing again. “And Jack Byrd?”

Von Namtzen shrugged.

“Gone. They suppose that he went with Frau Mayrhofer, for no one has seen him since last night.”

“Why’d he leave his shoes behind? Ask ’em that!” Tom Byrd was so upset that he neglected to add a “sir,” but von Namtzen, seeing the boy’s distress, graciously overlooked it.

“He exchanged these shoes for the working pair belonging to this footman.” The Hanoverian nodded at a tall young man who was following the conversation intently, brows knitted in the effort of comprehension. “He did not say why he wished it—perhaps because of the damaged heel; the other pair were also very worn, but serviceable.”

“Why did this young man agree to the exchange?” Grey asked, nodding at the footman. The nod was a mistake; the dizziness rolled suddenly out of its hiding place and revolved slowly round the inside of his skull like a tilting quintain.

A question, an answer. “Because these are leather, with metal buckles,” von Namtzen reported. “The shoes he exchanged were simple clogs, with wooden soles and heels.”

At this point, Grey’s knees gave up the struggle, and he lowered himself into a chair, covering his eyes with the heels of his hands. He breathed shallowly, his thoughts spinning round in slow circles like the orbs of his father’s orrery, light flashing from memory to memory, hearing Harry Quarry say, Sailors all wear wooden heels; leather’s slippery on deck, and then, Trevelyan? Father a baronet, brother in Parliament, a fortune in Cornish tin, up to his eyeballs in the East India Company?

“Oh, Christ,” he said, and dropped his hands. “They’re sailing.”

Chapter 16

Chapter 16

Lust Is Perjur’d