The Daring Exploits of a Runaway Heiress by Victoria Alexander Page A

a coconspirator.

Chapter Three
    “Come, now, Phineas, surely you have something I can use?” Cam stared hopefully at his old friend. “Something I can write for the Messenger as well as expand for a book.”
    “Nothing I can think of. Besides . . .” Phineas Chapman leaned back in the chair behind his new desk. A desk that was half the size of his previous one, necessitated by the fact that there was now yet another desk in the corner of the front room of his flat, the room that served as his main living quarters, library, and office. “You know full well my reputation rests on my discretion.”
    “I’m not asking you to tell me anything about an actual client.” Cam scoffed. “I would never wish to jeopardize your business.” He leaned toward his friend and lowered his voice. “But you and I both know you hear all sorts of things that have nothing to do with whoever is paying your fee at the moment.”
    “Which has served you well in the past.”
    “And I am most grateful.” This wasn’t the first time Cam had turned to Phineas for an idea.
    Although Phineas was a few years older, the two men had been fast friends since their school days. Both were the youngest children of prominent families, which was perhaps what drew them together in the first place. Phineas too had had a period of trying to find his place in the world. He had flirted for a time with a life of scholarly pursuit and, even though he was unquestionably the most intelligent man Cam had ever met, he found the life of an academic too sedate and dull for him. Quite by accident, he had turned his brilliance to investigation, to the ferreting out of secrets or the locating of that which was missing, be it a person or an item of value. Phineas’s reputation was such that he was now the investigator much of society turned to when time was short and discretion was called for.
    “I know.” The corners of Phineas’s mouth curved upward slightly in the superior smile that was as much a part of him as his dark hair and sharp green eyes. “But I fear nothing of interest comes to mind at the moment, old man. You’re the writer. You think of something.”
    “If I could think of something, I wouldn’t be here asking you.” Cam pushed himself up from the upholstered wing chair, one of two that sat before Phineas’s desk. “I am trying. While I have any number of ideas, none of them are developed enough to be of any use. And I don’t have time to waste on idle thought.”
    “No, we wouldn’t want that,” Phineas murmured.
    Cam clasped his hands behind his back and paced the room. “One can’t just pluck an idea out of the air, you know. It needs to simmer as it were, in the back of your mind.”
    “Until it blossoms into literary brilliance?”
    “Something like that.” He resumed pacing. “I haven’t the time to fabricate a story completely from nothing. All I need is a fact or two that I can build a work of fiction from. Kindling as it were. Something I can nurture and . . .” Cam paused in midstep and looked back at the chair he’d been sitting in. His gaze slid to its mate. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but weren’t those chairs mismatched and extremely worn the last time I was here? And hadn’t the leg on one been replaced with a stack of books?”
    Phineas heaved a resigned sigh. “They’re new.”
    “You’re not overly fond of new,” Cam said slowly, glancing around the room and wondering that he hadn’t noticed the changes upon his arrival. But then he’d had other things on his mind.
    It had been no more than a few weeks since Cam’s last visit, but he now noted a startling change in Phineas’s sanctuary beyond the replacement of the decrepit wing chairs. The walls were still covered by floor-to-ceiling shelves, but while they were usually crammed to overflowing with books and papers and anything Phineas thought of interest to himself or to an investigation, all the shelves were now tidy and well organized. The