Chapter 20
Sir Jonathan sat in his office, combing through the pages of a file. His back was cramped, and his eyes felt strained.
I need another lamp for my desk if I'm going to work past dusk. He laid the papers he had been going over down to stare at the wall on the far side of his office. It was in deep shadow. Late night work like this required better light.
What had been in the reports before him, while riveting, was not pleasant reading. It had turned his stomach. The working of a mind this twisted he had never come across before and he hoped to heaven he never would again.
The subject of the file: Rebecca Fogg. She was an agent he knew well, an asset to the service, and a very proud, independent woman. Her unorthodox guardian had instilled such traits in her to make her the agent she was. Her self-reliance often prevented accepting partners on missions; a thing he would have insisted on if not for Phileas Fogg's involvement.
As a woman, Rebecca could do things no male agent could manage. Despite a chivalrous bent that would have preferred her only handling light missions, Sir Jonathan had kept her busy because of that advantage.
I once tried to recruit and train other women to replicate her. The average young woman of the upper class was not raised to self-reliance as Rebecca had been. They did not take to learning to protect themselves with any seriousness. Four had washed out in the first stages of training. That had frustrated Chatsworth because he knew full well women had served as intelligence operatives during the wars with France and had done so with distinction.
After that, I tried recruiting among the families of the Diplomatic Corps and orphaned daughters of military officers. They had been hardier, more down to earth, and willing to take direction. All for not.
The whole thing still frustrated Chatsworth to no end. What was the defining difference between women like Rebecca and those of the last generation that had served so well and the ones I recruited?
Sir Jonathan's stomach soured further. He wanted more Rebeccas. What he got was a fiasco. Chatsworth looked back down at his desk and considered the information, recalling his past mistakes.
He did not like the way the papers read as he examined the web of lies Jordan had woven in the Verne file. It gave a vicious accounting of Phileas Fogg's character. The reports made him look as though he had been playing fast and loose with his cousin's inheritance. True, Fogg's part of the accountings had been equally expensive; but even an idiot could see that Fogg could afford the financial risks, while Rebecca Fogg could not. In this fiction, he would walk away from the wreckage of a high-risk investment with a bruised ego at most, while Rebecca would be ruined completely.
On paper, her house on Governor's Square and her other properties had been heavily mortgaged to keep her in an investment she could not afford. If one thought of Phileas Fogg as a ruthless man, one might think this was designed with the express purpose of cutting his risks in half by using his cousin's properties as collateral. If one looked at him as a generous sort, he would be accused of trying to keep her part of a high-risk venture going until it came to fruition. In either case, Rebecca Fogg's independence now appeared to have been destroyed. If this were true, she would be reduced to the status of impoverished relation, a vassal to her cousin, with no way to support herself.
No way that Isaac Jordan could know of. She had her own income. Chatsworth had gone to some trouble to prove the nonsense she had told Jordan about Phileas's generous allowance just in case he tried to verify it. No chance was given of the man finding out where her income truly came from.
Chatsworth had a good idea exactly what would happen when this information was put before Rebecca. She would be badly hurt, at least. Her trust in her cousin would be shaken. She would also be furious, without a doubt. In any other pair, this would shatter their relationship. If Fogg lived through the resulting confrontation, it would be a miracle.
Chatsworth then put the report back in its folder. He took out paper to send several directives to the agents watching for meetings between Jordan and Rebecca Fogg.