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shoved his cup-wielding wife from the room. “Sorry, sir. I have no idea—”
    “I’ll not have him scaring women in my tavern—”
    Haws put his hand over her mouth. “Too much time in the hot kitchen. Lewis, get Lord Grey a towel. Lewis? Damn it all, where is that boy?”
    The lad he’d seen yesterday skidded through the kitchen door, his blond curls hanging limply over his face. “Here.” His voice cracked halfway through. He ducked past Haws and grabbed a clean cloth, tossing it toward Camden, his expression sullen.
    Camden grabbed at the clean linen but missed. Sophia retrieved it and pressed it into his hand, amusement lighting the blue of her eyes.
    Lottie rushed over, hands planted on her hips, scolding Lewis.
    Camden sopped the remaining dampness from his face. His coat and cravat were a lost cause, clinging to him and reeking of a brewery. “You never had any intention of helping me, did you, Sophia?”
    She sucked in a small breath—whether from his question or his use of her given name, he didn’t know. “I did what you asked.” She took the rag from his hands and wiped under his right ear, then along the edge of his collar.
    His breath caught. “But their loyalty to you is stronger than that. Have you earned it? Or are you betraying it?”
    She wiped a puddle of ale on the edge of the bar before it dripped to the floor. “I don’t betray the people I care about.”
    He took the cloth back. “I’m sending you home.”
    “I thought you needed me to tell everyone to cooperate.”
    “I think we both know that will be useless. Go home so I can beat the truth from them.”
    She blanched. “I won’t let—”
    Camden scowled. “You truly expect me to hurt Mrs. Haws? Or perhaps it’s the elderly man who owns the livery stable? What kind of man do you think I am?”
    “The kind that thinks me a murderer.”
    “Lady Harding!”
    Camden turned toward the voice behind them. Sophia’s gardener hovered in the doorway of the tavern, hat twisting in his hand, wrinkled face flushed. “I’m sorry to interrupt, my lady, but you are needed back at the house.”
    “Did you find the shooter?” Camden asked.
    Wicken rubbed his disheveled tufts of hair. “No, nothing like that. Just a household matter.”
    Ah, this was a rescue then. “Go back to your house, Sophia.”
    Sophia’s lips thinned.
    “Unless you wish to tell me the truth.”
    “I do not know it.”
    With poise befitting a queen, she glided to the door, only pausing when Wicken stopped to ruffle Lewis’s blond hair.
    “Grandda.” The lad glowered up from where he was scrubbing the floor, but fondness underpinned the scowl.
    This whole investigation was taking far too much time. That fool Ipswith might have already devised an algebraic solution. The man would be unbearable if he succeeded first. And he’d use the clout to make sure the Mathematical Society studied worthless things each more esoteric than the next, continuing to keep their backs turned from people who had more practical needs.
    Camden wiped a remaining drip of ale from his temple. He wasn’t an investigator.
    But he knew someone who was.

 
    C HAPTER S IX
    C amden sagged exhausted in the rickety chair. Across from him, Gabriel Huntford, Bow Street Runner, ate some bread and cheese, his attention never leaving the door.
    “You could have waited for me to come home. You didn’t need to track me down in the streets of London.”
    But he had. Time was wasting. He needed to convince Huntford to investigate before he lost too much time from his studies.
    And before his uncertainty about Sophia drove him mad.
    He briefly recounted the facts thus far.
    “You took your suspect to interview witnesses?” Huntford asked, a brief grin flashing over the weary lines of his face. The momentary humor lifted years of harsh living from his face, making him resemble the young man Camden had known at Oxford.
    Camden sighed and picked up his tankard, grimacing at both his stupidity and