reputation. And as Sommerset had noted, at the moment no one was likely to sponsor an expedition led by him. They might never do so again.
“Any suggestions?” he finally grumbled.
“Come with me.” Without a backward glance to see whether he was followed, Sommerset left the sitting room.
With an audible curse, Bennett collected Kero and strode after the duke. If it came to the worst, he could sell Tesling and take himself off to the Americas or back to Africa on his own. It wouldn’t be exploring for the sake of the adventure, though, and he wouldn’t be able to share anything he discovered, because no one seemed to have cause any longer to believe him. It would be running away, and he couldn’t think of a way to word it that made it anything else.
The duke turned down a corridor running lengthwise across the front of the large house. Myriad servants bowed respectfully to their master, but ignored both Bennett and Kero. He wasn’t certain if that spoke well for Sommerset, or poorly for himself.
Finally, at what looked to be the far east corner of the house, Sommerset stopped. “Here we are.” He pushed open a door and stood aside, gesturing for Bennett to precede him.
Beyond the door a small alcove opened into a large sitting room with dark paneled walls and glowing lamps set upon tables alongside two dozen or so chairs. The entire back wall was lined with books, maps, and stacks of papers. A pianoforte stood in one corner, odd-looking beside a trio of Zulu drums. More foreign trinkets and animal skulls and furs lay scattered throughout the room, while the east wall featured a trio of tall windows overlooking what appeared to be the Ainsley House garden.
Three men sat at a distance from one another in the room, the oldest reading a newspaper, the second asleep in a chair facing the fireplace, while the third sat beneath the left-hand window and seemed absorbed in a book. None of them stirred at the duke’s entrance, much less Bennett’s.
“What is this?” he asked, noting a second door at the front of the room that looked as though it led directly outside. A fourth man, sitting in the shadows and so still that at first Bennett had thought him a dressmaker’s mannequin, moved from his position by the door and headed in their direction.
“This is a beginning,” the duke said. “I spent a year thinking about it, and the past four months having walls knocked down and the pieces gathered together.”
“It’s very…nice,” Bennett ventured, “but the beginning of what? And what does it have to do with my wanting Langley’s head on a platter?”
“Reading the newspaper there is Lucas Crestley, Lord Piper,” Sommerset went on, as though he hadn’t heard the questions. “Eight months ago he returned from a…secret expedition through the French-held territories of America to scout whether Britain might wish to reinstitute a presence there. Red Indians killed the rest of his party in a rather disturbing manner.”
“That’s—”
“The sleeping fellow,” the duke continued, “just arrived in London three days ago. Colonel Bartholomew James. He—”
“The India Thuggee skirmishes,” Bennett interrupted, looking again at the dark-haired man seated with a walking cane to hand. “He went missing for a time. I read something about it in this morning’s newspaper.” He knew them to be nearly the same age, but Colonel James looked older. By his gaunt face it didn’t seem as though the colonel had done much sleeping lately.
Sommerset nodded. “And by the window we have Thomas Easton, sent to Persia in an attempt to persuade the locals to expand their silk exports. He posed as a Muslim for a year.”
Easton looked up at the sound of his name, the light catching a thin scar running from his left ear down the side of his neck. “And I’m presently reading Across the Continent . You must be Captain Wolfe, the overly cautious fellow with the monkey. This says you’re dead.”
Bennett