Wakeford grimaced, then suddenly throwing his hands up in the air, he spun on his heel and stormed out of the Café Procope.

Avers did not immediately scurry back to his table. Instead, he pulled his snuffbox from his pocket, flicked open the lid with one practised finger, and inhaled a pinch, staring after his vanished cousin, shaking his head. When he had made quite the show of this disconsolate attitude, he snapped the container shut, sighed, and meandered his way back to the Comte’s table, sitting down and placing the gold snuffbox before him.

“I’ve been admiring your box,” Avers said, pointing a long finger at Vergelles’ snuffbox, which still rested beneath his tapping finger. “Mother-of-pearl, is it?”

“Oui,” said the nobleman, his eyes examining and a faint pucker on his pale brow. “Merci for your compliment.”

“And do you blend your own? Can’t buy the ready-mixed stuff myself. They never get it right.”

“You are very calm considering that little fracas with your cousin,” said the Comte, raising a brow and looking meaningfully over at the door of the establishment.

“Oh Robert? He’s just in a pucker because it was supposed to be my first day at his offices and I absconded as he so crudely put it. But there is always tomorrow, and so I told him, but he did not take it well.”

“So we saw,” the Comte replied, his tone cold and his top lip curling scornfully.

“Give me an investment with high returns—or a rich noble to fleece at the tables—and I shall be there on time. But some dreary political office where I shuffle papers and have important conversations with important people? No, I thank you. I wish my cousin would keep his grandiose notions of public service to himself, and leave me to my debauchery.”

Dartois laughed.

“You will have to go at some point, though?” asked the Comte.

“Oh, yes—I suppose so,” Avers replied. “But not today.”

“Today we can drink.” Dartois raised his glass. “And if we hear of any lucrative investments or nobles to fleece, you shall be the first to know.”

A look passed between Vergelles and Dartois that was not lost on Avers, though he could not manage to decipher it.

Just at that moment, a server came to the table, bearing a pewter tray upon which rested a note. The servant tapped the Comte’s elbow nervously, almost moving out of the way, as if in anticipation of being struck, and offered the note as some kind of offering.

The Comte barely acknowledged the individual, taking the note without thanks, and flicked it open, quickly scanning the contents.

“Mademoiselle Cadeaux awaits me outside.” He rose and the rest of the table followed suit. Inclining his head to his friends first, he then turned to Avers. “I wish you luck in your future endeavours,” he murmured and then, turning sharply, he was gone.

Avers felt an awful sinking feeling at the Comte’s words. There was no further invitation of engagement or acquaintance in them. He had a horrible feeling that his aim for today—to establish a rapport with the Comte, even if it was simply one of a transactional nature—had failed. There had been nothing short of asking the noble directly if he were involved in espionage that Avers could have done. The man was a cold fish and perhaps all his and Wakeford’s efforts were in vain.

“Don’t mind the Comte.” Dartois’ voice cut through Avers’ thoughts. The Frenchman stood beside him, watching after the Comte, and he slapped a hand on Avers’ shoulder. “He does not—how do you English say it? Warm to people.”

“You mean he don’t like me?” Avers put an affected hand to his chest and wore a look of mock affront. “There has never been any accounting for taste. Besides, it’s no skin off my nose, he may dislike me as much as he pleases.”

Dartois laughed, slapping Avers across the back again.

“I like you, Monsieur le Duc. You have the wit of a Parisian. I am sure we shall meet again.”

Avers bowed in acknowledgement of the compliment.

“The Comte is a man of business. If I hear of any dealings that might profit you, I shall let you know.” Dartois put his hat on and touched the brim to Avers before bowing and taking his leave shortly after.

The two taciturn men followed and Avers watched them go with the faintest flicker of hope.

Perhaps his ruse would work after all.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The Théâtre des Tuileries was teeming with the best of Parisian Society on Thursday evening when Avers attended to see Mademoiselle Saint-Val Cadette in her latest play. While his interest in the actress had been piqued by Mademoiselle Cadeaux’s mention of the famed tragedienne, the performance was not his principal reason for attending tonight.

No, his reason was twofold.

Firstly, he had been summoned by Wakeford who had sent him a missive earlier today begging to meet urgently. The theatre had been deemed the least conspicuous place to meet given that the Tremaine family rented a box there for the season. The feuding cousins might, therefore, quite believably attend by embarrassing coincidence on the same night.

Secondly, Mademoiselle Cadeaux had mentioned that she and the Comte regularly attended Mademoiselle Saint-Val Cadette’s plays. Being that this evening was the debut of the actress’ latest Greek tragedy, Avers had a fair hope that Vergelles and his companion would be in attendance tonight. Given that his previous attempt to engage the Comte had failed, a casual meeting would be fortuitous, and might afford Avers another opportunity.

Arriving a short time before the play started, Avers was shown by a punctilious little man in an affectatious wig to the Tremaine box, just as the crowds quietened in anticipation of the play beginning.

“I had almost given up on you.”

“Apologies,” Avers murmured, slipping into the seat beside Wakeford. Already he could hear the strain in his friend’s voice. “I thought it best to avoid attention where possible.”

The other man didn’t respond. Avers noticed a decanter and two glasses, already filled with wine, were jiggling against each other on a side table. After a moment, he traced the cause to Wakeford, who’s left leg bobbed up and down furiously. The man’s hands were twitching too, clasping, unclasping, resting in his lap, on his leg and then on the arm of his seat.

A crease appeared in the centre of Avers’ brow. “You are the bearer of ill tidings, I assume.”

Wakeford’s frantic movements abated, as if coming back to the present from whatever awful musings had been consuming his mind, and he jerked his head around to give Avers a quick look before turning back to the stage without saying anything.

Below the box, two actors had appeared on the boards. The woman Avers took to be Mademoiselle Saint-Val Cadette. She was a beauty, and with a mournful attitude and tone she began a monologue before a scenery of shipwreck and waves.

As she finished speaking, as if by magic, the sea was rolled away, replaced by newly rising Grecian hills. Avers might have admired the cleverness of this change, from the theatre nicknamed the Salles des Machines thanks to its ingenious stage machinery, had not Wakeford’s demeanour been one of acute anxiety.

“The blackguards have stolen papers from my offices,” his friend rasped in a voice of despair. “They haven’t just got to the information and copied it out this time—they’ve taken the papers themselves. The filthy curs have dropped me well and truly in it. My superiors are threatening to have my head,” he added through clenched teeth. “The papers are sensitive in the extreme—military in nature.”

Avers’ brow rose in shock. He had been at Wakeford’s offices that morning to play his part as his reluctant cousin drafted in to work. The place had appeared to be locked up tighter than Newgate prison.

“How did they manage it?” he asked.

Wakeford shrugged despairingly, his profile one of defeat. “I don’t know. I simply can’t fathom it,” he whispered.

Avers asked, searching for a clue in his friend’s story, “Anything come through to your black room yet?”

“Nothing—but it didn’t last time—the wily dogs. I’m cursed if I know how they’re passing information on. No letters that the Comte receives are left unchecked by our men. If we can’t retrieve the papers, we suspect they’ll try and sell the information to the French—or worse, to our rebels in the Americas.”

Wakeford’s words fell like a lead weight on Avers’ chest. This now went beyond an information leak of petty papers and government missives.

“Do you suppose they’re using a cypher?” he asked, resisting the urge to reach out and stop his friend’s leg from its incessant ascent and descent.

“I’d easily believe there’s a cypher we’re not recognising, but I tell you there isn’t. I’ve had my best codebreakers on it. They can find no discernible pattern in any of the correspondence. And the Comte’s letters come from no one of any merit, just bills from bootmakers and butchers or the dullest friends and relatives. That’s why we’re convinced they’re finding some other way to communicate. We hear nothing of the secrets leaked from my offices until they turn up in the wrong hands. They’re foiling us somehow.”

Avers kept his eyes on the play as he listened intently to his friend’s rapid words. Wakeford’s final sentence dripped with exasperation.