Page 44

“Then you’re at a standstill,” Philip pronounced, settling deeper into the green brocade wingback chair in which he lounged, his hands clasped across his abdomen.

The hour growing late, his Scottish brogue, which had been educated out of him—as all good noblemen learned to speak the King’s English—had crept into his deep voice around the edges.

I suspected the second glass of whisky now sitting empty on the table at his elbow had also contributed.

Much as it had contributed to all our contentment as we lounged in the lavish drawing room of Cromarty House on Charlotte Square. Though full stomachs and the conviviality of family also had a great deal to do with it.

As expected, dinner had been both delicious and boisterous, as the children had been allowed to join us.

Even Emma, who was learning to feed herself.

She’d managed to get about half of the food we’d given her into her mouth versus her lap.

Her cousins had found her messy eating to be quite entertaining.

Though wee Jamie, who was just a year older, hardly did better.

After the meal had come a lively round of hobbyhorse.

Alana and I couldn’t decide whose antics were more high-spirited—the children’s or the gentlemen’s.

They certainly egged each other on. Philipa, who was almost eight; Greer, who was almost four; and Jamie, who was almost two—or so they reminded us—had chosen Gage, Philip, and Trevor as their mounts respectively, and they were all determined not to lose.

Or if they did, to do so in spectacularly hilarious fashion.

Emma, meanwhile, jogged along at a more decorous pace on my or Alana’s lap, alternately clapping and laughing, or staring wide-eyed at the others’ uproarious behavior.

The only person missing from our fun was my ten-year-old nephew, Malcolm, who was still away at school.

When the races had finished, Philip and Alana’s children were hustled off to bed, while the men—thoroughly fatigued from their efforts—sought refreshment from the decanters on the sideboard.

I had taken Emma into the adjoining parlor to tend to her, and once she’d fallen asleep, I’d laid her in a nest of blankets and pillows on the settee.

Leaving the door cracked so that we could hear her if she woke, I’d rejoined the others in the drawing room.

Gage had saved me a place beside him on the spring green fainting couch, and I nestled close to his side, stealing a sip of his whisky.

Our discussion seemed to naturally turn to the floor collapse at the auction and then our investigation.

Sergeant Maclean had wanted us to keep quiet about the sabotage, and he hadn’t given us permission to share the matter with my family, but Gage and I knew that they could be trusted.

Just as we knew that sometimes fresh eyes could provide a fresh perspective.

It hadn’t taken long to review what we had uncovered so far and the various potential suspects, most of whom we’d already ruled out. This had led to Philip’s emphatic observation, which summarized our current circumstances. We were at a standstill.

“Though I must say that I’m relieved to hear you weren’t lured there under false pretenses,” Alana stated, eyeing me almost in scolding. “Or at least, not false pretenses which would make you the…the target.”

My sister had reconciled with my desire to continue assisting Gage with his inquiries, even though they sometimes put us in danger, but I didn’t think she would ever truly approve.

As such, I’d known what her reaction would be to the discovery of my being left off the invitation list. Still, I’d hoped my revelation that Mr. Rimmer had been the one to send me the catalog would mitigate her disapproval.

Gage had been glad of it, albeit a bit less forgiving of his deception.

“Even so, it seems to me a dubious ploy,” Trevor declared, leaning back in his matching wing chair and stretching his legs out to prop his feet on the edge of the tea table. This earned him a scowl from Alana.

“Yes,” Philip agreed. “If anyone wished ill of Kiera, or Mr. Smith, or Sir James Riddell, or any of the hundreds of other individuals who were expected to attend the auction, tampering with a joist in the hopes that it would collapse at the exact right moment and kill the exact right person frankly sounds ridiculous.”

“That’s what we’ve been struggling with,” Gage admitted, smoothing his hand up and down my arm. “It does seem ridiculous. Which is why we’ve turned to other potential motives, like a rival auctioneer intent on ruining Winstanley.”

“And I understand you have some corroborating evidence which might bear that out, but once again, it seems a trifle ridiculous to imagine this Mr. Cranston would embark on such an overly complicated plot in order to hurt his rival’s business,” Philip ruminated.

“If he had a man working for Winstanley, as you propose he did, couldn’t he have simply had him disrupt matters in far easier and more guaranteed ways. ”

“Like tampering with paperwork or delaying shipments? Those sorts of things?” I asked.

My brother-in-law pointed at me. “Precisely. It seems a large leap to go straight to causing a floor to collapse when enough of those small, nearly innocuous acts of sabotage could do the trick without the potential for loss of life and criminal consequences if he was caught.”

“He has a point,” I told Gage, grateful that Philip had put into words what had been bothering me about his focus on Sullivan and Cranston, though I’d known Gage wasn’t going to like hearing it.

He was scowling, but in frustration rather than anger. “Then what is a motive that makes sense?”

“You mentioned the possibility of it being an act of revenge against Lord Eldin’s memory,” Alana reminded him.

Trevor shook his head, his brown hair flopping over his forehead. “Yes, but the logic behind that isn’t much better. Not unless the attack against his memory, his reputation is clear. And it’s not.”

I could sense my husband growing restless.

He was deeply invested in this inquiry for a number of reasons.

It was the first inquiry Sergeant Maclean had trusted him with since the awkwardness that had arisen the previous spring.

It was the first inquiry of any magnitude or depth that he’d been tasked with since our time in Cornwall five months prior.

And since we’d both been victims of the floor collapse, he also had a personal connection to it.

Because of those reasons and perhaps more, he wanted fervently to solve this.

But I feared that his eagerness to do so was blinding him to things he normally wouldn’t miss and making him hold on to things he shouldn’t.

I tugged gently on his expertly tied cravat.

“What of your supposition that it has to do with the building laws? You overheard those men at the Inverleith Ball who seemed to think they’d been changed after the incident at Kirkcaldy, and you wondered if Lord Eldin, acting as a Lord of Session, might have been involved. ”

“That Eldin somehow delayed or prevented or overall hindered that from happening—at least in the eyes of the culprit—and so the saboteur sought to make a rather emphatic point about the law’s faultiness.

” Philip’s dark eyebrows arched. “Yes, I could see that. At least the severity would befit the act. Dozens of people lost their lives at Kirkcaldy.”

“Did you speak to Henry about researching those laws?” I pressed Gage.

He tossed back the remainder of his whisky, grimacing as it burned its way down his throat.

“I did. Though Henry warned me it might take some time to discover if Lord Eldin was involved, and then even more time to find a connection to the men who might have gained access to the town house.” Which left Gage with nothing to do, unless he dug through records with his brother.

But tedious paperwork had never been his forte.

“Do any of you happen to remember any legal proceedings related to it?” I asked Philip, Alana, and Trevor. “It would have occurred sometime in the summer or autumn of 1828.”

Philip tilted his head in thought, the silver which had begun to show at his temples catching the light. “We stayed in London late that summer, if I recall. Parliamentary business. And then…” He broke off and I wondered why.

Until I remembered.

“And then Father died,” Alana said.

A stunted silence fell over the room.

I closed my eyes, ashamed and embarrassed that I’d forgotten. “Yes, of course.”

Gage’s arm tightened around me, offering comfort.

For he knew that in 1828 I’d still been married to Sir Anthony, and every moment of my life had been consumed with simply surviving.

That my first husband had not even let me return home when my father died was merely another indication of his determination to keep me firmly under his thumb in all things.

“I don’t think any of us were paying much attention to any legal matters pertaining to local building that year,” Trevor said.

His eyes were kind when I opened mine to look at him, as were Alana’s.

But I still felt abashed that I could have forgotten the importance of that year as our last parent slipped away.

Even as awful and sometimes terrifying as my life with Sir Anthony had been, even with the near constant state of vigilance I’d had to maintain, lest I be caught unawares, making the punishment that befell me all the worse for my not being prepared for it.

That all these years later it still diverted my attention from the place it properly should have been—remembering the passing of my father—unsettled me.

But it also made me wonder.

I frowned at the pattern of the Aubusson rug, trying to grapple with the inkling I’d suddenly had and drag it to the surface. To turn it over and examine it and make it coherent.