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Berkeley Square. He’d only lived there for a few weeks, and still had a bit of trouble realizing that it belonged to him.
    He’d visited for family occasions before joining the army, but never with an eye toward inheriting the place himself. He still considered it a freak accident that his cousin had died before siring an heir who could have inherited the earldom.
    Though he’d sent a note informing his mother of his intention to remove from his bachelor rooms at the Albany to the the Gresham town house, she had chosen to remain in Scotland where his two elder sisters and their husbands and families lived. Ever since his twin, Clarissa, had died while he was at war, the relationship between Christian and his mother had been conducted largely by post. And, to his regret, he preferred things that way. If he ever found himself in the same room with his mother again, he was unsure of how he would be able to keep from unleashing all the rage he felt over his sister’s loss.
    Shaking his head to clear the dark mood that threatened, he bounded up the front steps, the door opening before he could reach it. The butler, Yeats, had a penchant for correctness in all things, and had probably been watching for him.
    “Good afternoon, your lordship,” Yeats said as Christian stepped into the entryway.
    Handing his walking stick and hat to the footman beside his reed-thin majordomo, Christian accepted a stack of letters from the butler.
    “You have a caller, my lord. I have asked him to wait for you in the study.”
    “Curious,” Christian said, “do you know who this mysterious visitor is?”
    As if insulted by such a question, Yeats sniffed, then offered a card on a salver.
    “Interesting,” Christian said, reading the card. “See that we aren’t disturbed.”
    Making his way upstairs, Christian opened the door to his study to find Lord Thomas Leighton, late of His Majesty’s Army, sipping brandy and reading that morning’s Times.
    Upon hearing his host enter, Leighton raised a graying brow. “About bloody time, Gresham. For a new earl you spend very little time counting your stacks of gold.”
    Pouring himself a glass of brandy, Christian snorted. “That’s because I am constantly being hounded by a demanding old blighter from Whitehall who thinks I’ve got nothing better to do than chase Bonapartists.”
    “You should tell that old blighter to leave you alone,” Leighton said, sipping his own brandy. “Or to get another hobby.”
    “I’ll consider it,” Christian said with a wry smile. Taking a seat behind his desk, he leaned back in his chair and said, “I take it this isn’t a social call.”
    “Hardly,” Leighton said, sitting up straighter. “I heard about the business at Mrs. Bailey’s last night. I want to hear your version of events.”
    In detail, though without referencing his conversations with Maddie, Christian told the other man about the events leading up to Tinker’s murder the night before.
    When he was finished, Leighton whistled. “I wish you’d been able to see who it was that confronted Tinker in the passageway.”
    “So do I,” Christian said with a frown, thinking once more of how close Maddie had come to stumbling upon the murderer at work. “Unfortunately I didn’t see anyone leave the room with the exception of Lady Madeline, and I know she wasn’t the one to kill the fellow.”
    “So you trust her?” Leighton asked. “Despite the fact that she’s Linton’s sister? We did have reason to think he might be the man the Citizen’s Liberation Society might have been planning to contact. Now that Tinker is dead, I wonder if Linton might not have been the CLS operative who was planning to contact Tinker.”
    “You can trust Maddie, sir,” Christian said, then winced inwardly. “Lady Madeline, I mean.”
    Leighton didn’t miss the quick correction. “Maddie, is it? Just how well do you know this chit, Gresham?”
    “We move in the same social circles,” Christian said