Which had led Raven here.
Which had led him to Tinted Spectacles.
He knew the private details of the lives of every man at this meeting except for his.
“Who’s the slender fellow sitting on the back bench?” he asked Montrose in a low whisper.
“Dammed if I know,” the earl whispered back, shrugging his shoulders. “Never saw him before. Don’t like his appearance, I must say. Loathe those dainty dandies.”
Montrose was the model of an English lord with ruddy cheeks, an expansive waistline, and a very high opinion of himself. Raven had already crossed him off his list.
Too sluggish for espionage.
“Are you acquainted with the man in the tinted spectacles?” Raven whispered to his friend Westbury, who was seated on his other side.
“Never seen him before in my life.” West sighed. “Tell me, are the meetings always this skull-crushingly dull?”
“Always. Why are you here, anyway? I didn’t know you were interested in antiquities.”
“I’m thinking of selling a few pieces from my ancestral collection. Wanted to have an opinion on what prices I might expect. Never thought it would come to this,” West whispered morosely. “But I’ve made several bad investments, and have too many sisters to bring out and it’s damned expensive with their music instructors, and dancing masters, and new gloves and bonnets every time they leave the house. May have to bringmyselfout and find an heiress to marry.”
Raven had kept a close eye on West of late. He hadn’t made bad investments—he had a bad gambling habit.
Debts exposed a man to the threat of blackmail, but West wasn’t on his list of suspects. He didn’t speak multiple languages, and, even though he had vices, murder certainly wasn’t one of them.
“Next we have a very handsome bequest of a Viking hoard found on the properties of the late Sir Stanhope,” said Sir Malcolm. “If you will direct your attention to the crucible steel sword displayed at the center of the table...”
Sir Malcolm’s job was to keep droning until Raven signaled that he’d finished his observations.
Malcolm was the closest thing Raven had to a father.
They’d gone to stay with him that summer Raven’s father had died. Malcolm was a spymaster who had revealed that Raven’s father had been an agent of the Crown.
He’d given Raven his father’s private journal, a thin volume bound with cracked brown leather and tied with a silk cord. The last pages spattered in blood.
His father’s blood.
The last entry scrawled in a shaking hand. A directive to Malcolm to give the diary to Raven and then a few lines for Raven, the words wavering, nearly illegible:My son. I was going to tell you when you turned fifteen. That’s the age I was when I became... what I am...
Raven locked away the memory.
Something was happening on the periphery of his vision.
Tinted Spectacles whispered something to the man sitting next to him, slid out of his bench seat and crept from the room.
Anomalous, indeed.
Raven waited exactly three seconds before hiccupping loudly.
Sir Malcolm paused but kept reading from his ledger.
Several hiccups later, Malcolm finally stopped reading. “Your Grace, if you please,” he remonstrated.
“Apologies, I’ll just go and walk these off.”
Raven bumbled out of the room but when he was out of sight he dropped the inebriated ruse and sped toward the central stairs. The attic held only the apartments for the resident secretary, which meant Tinted Spectacles must have gone below.
At the foot of the staircase he caught sight of a flash of blue and brown entering the library.