Page 103

Willa sighed. “Always give me the boring jobs.”

But she nodded.

Grace smiled at her friend and ran toward the patrolmen close to the forest. “This way. He went this way!”

And she led them in a winding path through the forest, steering clear of any sign of the Rogue.

Chapter 25

The mayor was in an uproar.

Reports had come in from a dozen sources, each with a different story.

Mr. Durr claimed Willa and Grace had been helping the Rogue.

The patrolmen, however, weren’t so sure. They thought Grace might have been, but then she’d led the charge in the forest, just as the mayor had reported she had before.

And the farmers, every one of them, either claimed to have been too busy with the harvest or swore up and down that Frank and Milo Tucker, Willa, and Grace had been doing their best to help the sheriff’s men. They were just a little inexperienced. And tripped a lot. Near lots of people who got caught in their stumbles.

It was just like the mayor had said the last time the Rogue made an appearance. Grace was on his side.

Grace spent a good fifteen minutes laughing with Willa that night. Before realizing it, Grace found herself confiding in Willa a slightly altered gold-free version of the true happenings in the the mayor’s copse in which the mayor caught her helping an unidentified Rogue chase the vandalizing imposter. Her friend laughed all the harder knowing it had been the mayor’s idea to lie about Grace’s loyalty, which now made it so he’d either have to contradict himself or let Grace get away with helping the Rogue.

Behind Grace’s laughter lurked a fear that her friends weren’t so well protected. But, like sitting out at dances, tripping wasn’t exactly a hanging offense. Not that the mayor didn’t know how to twist things to fit his needs. He was bound to start up the trials again any day now.

Grace had smiled at Sheriff Clairmont and Mayor Nautin when they came to the scene of the robbery and declared that her friends had been so willing to help her in her efforts, hoping it would tie them to the mayor’s team of allies as well.

The mayor fumed, and the sheriff, clearly confused by the sudden alliance with the Robbins clan, glowered menacingly at Grace.

How had she ever thought Garrick was like that man?

As she finished out the day’s harvest, yet again short on the expected progress, Grace sighed. The mayor had sent a message to her family. They were to join him for a banquet in honor of their undying loyalty.

Grace wasn’t going.

She told her parents to give her excuses. She had far more important, and enjoyable, plans. If the mayor hadn’t made it clear that they were dining with him in his personal dining room, she would have thought this an excuse for the mayor to break into their home, and would have suggested her entire family refuse.

More likely, he would be leveling thinly veiled threats. Her parents could handle that easily.

Though her parents had resisted her suggested absence, when she explained what she had figured out, and that she had decided, beyond dissuasion, that it was time for her to do more than sit out from a dance, they begrudgingly agreed.

Grace couldn’t be sure, but she thought Mother had told Father about her and Grace’s conversation. And, though they were still calling her fledgling and treating her like a child, Grace didn’t feel like a child. Somehow, that made it hurt less.

The patrolmen were only in the forest this night. The mayor had declared it off-limits to all else, insisting that the Rogue had terrorized Fidara long enough, and not even well-meaning helpers should set foot there.

Grace chuckled. The mayor didn’t realize how easy he made it on her sometimes.

She wound her way past the farm homes, toward the abandoned shed. The weight of the cloak clasp she’d slipped into her pocket before leaving bounced on her leg.

Reaching her destination, she opened the front door as noiselessly as she could and slid inside.

The Rogue stood in the corner of the room, away from the window, poised with a sword in his hands.

When he saw it was Grace, he sighed in relief.

“Sun above, Grace. What are you doing here? I thought you were a patrolman.”

Grace smiled and slid the clasp from her pocket. “I have something of yours.”