Read Online A Lady's Guide to Ruin by Kathleen Kimmel - Free Book Online

both have been happy. They might be happy still, Martin reminded himself. If he could only first find his brother, then convince him to give up his newfound Eden. If he had found it, and not perished of snakebite or fever or the bitter cold of winter.
    All of which led him to today’s errand. Mr. Hudson, the man he had engaged to find Charles, worked from an office in a less than reputable area of town, though Martin’s contacts had assured him that Hudson was the most ruthlessly competent man he could hope to hire. The office was up a narrow and alarmingly unsteady flight of steps, wedged between the apartment of an old woman who was at present leaning out her window and flapping a rug so saturated with dust it might have been made of the stuff, and another from which the sounds of several infants rose in distressed cacophony. Martin fetched forth his pocket watch and examined the time.Nearly twenty minutes late. There was nothing for it but to bull his way ahead. He laid his knuckles against the splintering wood of the door.
    â€œCome in.” It was more growl than words. Martin obeyed, and found himself in a darkened room. He waited in the doorway, not wanting to venture in while his eyes adjusted to the light. Presently he made out a bulky form at the rear of the room. The form bent, a spark was struck, and a lamp swelled to illuminate the room. It was not, as he had expected, shabby, nor cluttered. Shelves at the rear held thin books and great many neatly stacked papers; a desk sat in the center of the room with one chair before it, one behind it. And beside the chair stood a broad-shouldered man sporting a well-groomed moustache. Martin squinted. He recognized the man.
    â€œYou box?” he said.
    â€œI did,” Hudson replied.
    â€œI think I bet against you once,” Martin said.
    â€œMy sympathies.” Hudson’s voice had all the musicality of boulders crashing into one another. “You’ll be Mr. Hargrove, then.”
    â€œLord Fenbrook,” Martin corrected, feeling his ire begin to rise. “I wish to engage your services to locate my brother, Charles Hargrove. I believe he may have gone to Canada.”
    Mr. Hudson grunted, hooked the chair with his ankle, and sank onto it. He had no natural grace, but the sort of liquid inevitability of a charging bear.
Formidable
was the word that most readily came to mind. “That’s a lot of ground to cover, my lord.”
    Martin drew out a copy of the letter. Not the original; that he had under lock and key at the town house. Heplaced it on the desk, but stayed standing. Mr. Hudson grunted again, and drew the letter toward him.
    â€œMy brother left two weeks after that letter was posted. It should give you a place to begin.”
    â€œEight years ago?” Mr. Hudson rubbed his thumb along his stubbled jaw, then nodded. “All right, then. You’ve been informed of my fees?”
    â€œI assume you will need additional funds if you are to travel across the Atlantic.”
    â€œI won’t be going myself.”
    â€œI suppose I shall have to trust in your choice of agents, then.”
    â€œYou will.” Hudson placed tented fingers over the letter.
    Martin knew that if he were a more sensible man, he would have investigated his investigator already. But the name came to him from a trusted friend who had been put in a difficult position when his brother had run off with a married woman and a great deal of her husband’s money. This man had all three—brother, woman, and money—safely home and safely separate within a week, and no one but Martin had ever been told the story. He trusted his friend. More than that, he trusted his instincts. And while he disliked this Mr. Hudson—with an acidic, roiling distaste that seated itself in his stomach and would not abate—he believed absolutely that he could accomplish the task.
    â€œYour brother may not want to be found,” Hudson