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that you will come to believe it. Just as I have done. Though neither of us, I daresay, are going to enjoy having our comfortable, time-worn views so drastically altered.”
    He held her eyes, waiting on the next shoe to drop. For this day had been so damnable, he knew without doubt there was one.
    And then Elizabeth Colburne-Ashton, or whatever her damned name was, sighed again, her viridian gaze settling over him in a way that made his breath catch. She leaned into him, so near he could breathe in her perfume, that exotic combination of sun-warmed lilies and jasmine, unique as the lady herself.
    “And now, Mr. Napier,” she whispered in her husky voice, “wouldn’t it be best for all of us if we just let this awful business drop?”
    Napier looked at her blankly, his head swimming from her scent and her proximity. “What do you mean?”
    But Lazonby broke the spell by setting a heavy hand on Napier’s shoulder. “She means let sleeping dogs lie,” he said, giving him a hearty pat. “Embrace it, old chap. Trust me, it will only ruin your father’s good name if you go churning up old muck. And Miss Ashton, you will kindly stop talking now.”
    “The devil!” Napier swore.
    But Lazonby, damn him, merely winked.
    “Now listen closely, my old friend,” he murmured, slipping his arm fully about Napier’s shoulders and urging him down the path, away from the lady in gray. “For I am about to tell you a tale which, if I were you, I would not much question.”
    “Oh, a tale , is it?” said Napier. “Coming from you, I oughtn’t be surprised.”
    “Well, let us call it a legend,” Lazonby corrected. “The legend of a talented but radical young newspaperman named Jack Coldwater—he’s had a long and storied career on two continents, our Jack. And now he is going to save us a vast deal of unpleasantness, and spare your sainted father’s reputation in the bargain.”
    “Is he indeed?” snapped Napier. “I wonder how?”
    “Because he’s elusive as quicksilver,” said Lazonby with a huge grin, “and dashed hard to catch hold of. I tried like the devil to figure him out and failed miserably—as, I fear, will you .”

CHAPTER 2
    A Quiet Coze in the Two Chairmen
    S ituated as it was in a quiet Westminster backstreet, the Two Chairmen had long been the turf of civil servants and undersecretaries, drawn there not by its particularly fine ale, but by its food swiftly served. Save perhaps for those rarified few who sat in the House of Lords, the government’s business waited for no man, be he hungry or not.
    On this particular drizzly day, Sir George Grey fell upon a slab of gammon steak like a man with no time to spare.
    Royden Napier, however, had suffered inappetence for days now, and merely rooted his food around on his plate, as if doing so might uncover some truffle of a clue about the mysteries that had so recently come to plague him.
    And the conversation—well, that was looming, too, he did not doubt. The home secretary had not invited an underling to dine with him in a common public house just to discuss the weather.
    “Wot, din’t yer like it?” asked the harried serving girl who snatched the dishes up.
    Napier managed a tight smile. “I had a late breakfast.”
    With a saucy shrug, she swept away, bearing their dirty plates aloft as she edged sideways through the crowd now streaming through the door. At the last moment, however, she spun around to smile at the home secretary.
    “ ’Nother pint, Sir George?”
    He held up two fingers, and tilted his head at Napier.
    Once she was out of earshot, Sir George leaned back in his chair, his grand, graying mutton-chops seeming to sink as he drew a long-fingered hand down his face. He was not a happy man.
    “I cannot like it, Royden,” he said, not for the first time. “It’s been well over a week now. How can this newspaper chap have simply vanished into thin air?”
    “Not air, sir, but water.” Napier flashed a rueful smile. “Jack