“Yes, I am,” Theo said, crossing his arms and glowering.
Giles began to laugh, but he cut short his mirth as the boarding house’s door opened. Instead, he pressed his back against the side of the building and listened. Theo did the same.
It was a bit of luck for them that the two men headed in the opposite direction. Giles didn’t know how he and Theo would hide if the men had come toward the alley where they hid. Of course, that also meant they would get away faster unless Giles and Theo acted swiftly.
“Come along,” Giles whispered, stepping out from the alley and latching his gaze onto the back of the two retreating men.
“Are you mad?” Theo grabbed Giles’s arm and yanked him back into the alley. “They’ll see you.”
“I am not mad,” Giles laughed, “and they will not see me. They do not know to look. But if we follow them, we could learn the location of their lair, or perhaps discover the identity of their employer. Come along.”
Before Theo could stop him a second time, he dashed out of the alley and hurried past the boarding house in an effort to catch up to the two men a bit. A moment later, he heard Theo’s deep, disapproving grunt as he matched his stride to Giles’s, going along with the scheme.
“They’ll see us,” Theo warned him when the two men turned a corner and Giles picked up his pace to trail them.
“You did not see me,” he said with a teasing wink.
Theo’s face flushed and he clenched his jaw for a moment before saying, “I did not know you were following me.”
“Just as those two do not know we are following them,” Giles whispered. He then clicked his tongue and shook his head. “What sort of Runner are you that you would not follow two men who are almost definitely conspirators when the opportunity arises?”
It was meant to be a jest, but Theo’s entire countenance fell at the admonition. That raised a thousand questions in Giles’s mind. Did Theo believe that he was not a good Runner? Had he failed in the past in some way that made him reticent now?
Those questions raised more, such as what sort of debt did Theo have that meant he was living like a pauper on a Runner’s allowance?
There would be time to answer those questions later, or so Giles hoped. For the time being, his focus needed to be on the men they were following.
They trailed the two men out of Soho and north toward Marylebone. That much came as a surprise to Giles, not only because he would have expected vile conspirators to head east or south, toward some of the more criminal parts of London, but because he knew the path the men were treading a little too well.
“Is something the matter?” Theo asked as Giles’s expression pinched to confusion, then disbelief, then horror.
“No,” Giles answered hesitantly as they paused to wait several yards back from the crossing of Oxford Street.
He didn’t say anything else as they waited for the two men to cross over, then followed them as soon as the traffic allowed. Giles’s confusion turned to a desperate hope that the men really would continue on to Marylebone and not venture farther into Fitzrovia, but his hopes to that end were dashed.
“Giles, something must be wrong,” Theo said in a low voice, swaying closer to him as they turned onto the very last street Giles wanted to turn onto. “You’ve gone quite pale.”
Giles wanted to reply that it was nothing, but he feared it was most definitely something. The two men continued on, walking with purpose toward a well-appointed house on Margaret Street. He hoped and prayed with everything he had that the men would walk past the house he knew like the back of his hand.
When the two men dashed his hopes and sent panic racing through him by stepping into the alley that ran beside the house, Giles froze where he was. He supposed the two men could have been in the employ of Mr. Jeffers, the neighbor, but in his heart, he knew that was not so.
“Giles, enough,” Theo said, grasping his arm and tugging him around the corner of Great Titchfield Street. “You must tell me what has you looking like a specter at once.”
Giles took a deep breath and turned away from the house, glancing up to meet Theo’s eyes. “I know who your conspirator is,” he said in a hollow voice.
Theo’s brow shot up in surprise. “Who? Do you know that house?”
Giles nodded slowly, glancing back around the corner at the place for a moment, then facing Theo grimly. “I know it well. It was my home for the first seventeen years of my life.”
Theo frowned and crossed his arms. “What are you saying?”
Giles swallowed. “I believe that your wicked conspirator is…is my father.”
For a moment, it was as if all the bustle and noise of London stopped. Theo gaped at him, eyes going wide, then narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean?”
Giles sighed and rubbed a hand over his forehead. “I mean that I believe my father could be the man who is blackmailing Mr. Vansittart.”
Theo shook his head, though Giles couldn’t tell if it was in disbelief or disappointment. He grabbed Giles’s arm again, then walked him along Great Titchfield Street until they found a small park out of the way of foot traffic.