Ah, this was going to be splendid.
The cup warmed his palm while he waited, biding his time.
Gen walked toward where Casimir and Roxanne had cornered Pierre. She stared down Pierre the entire time she paced across the wide room like the formidable litigating barrister she was. Her flowing black maternity dress even resembled her court robes fluttering in her wake.
Arthur tried not to smile.
Gen demanded, “How did you know he was missing? The hotel staff didn’t check his room until after we were already here this morning. He wasn’t ‘missing’ until then.”
“Of course, he was,” Pierre said. “Just because the hotel didn’t know—”
Gen passed Casimir and Roxanne and neared Pierre. “No one knew. No onecouldknow. How didyouknow?”
Pierre backed up as Gen approached him. “That’s none of your business.”
His tone had become more worried.
As he should be. Countess Genevieve Finch-Hatten, Lady Severn, was an imposing woman, and Arthur loved watching her take someone down. It was most entertaining.
But Arthur was also watching for his opening. Pierre must be more distressed than he yet was. Arthur was sure his Gen, all the more impressive with her increased bulk due to his baby inside her, would take Pierre to where Arthur needed him to be. He waited while Gen attacked Pierre like an avenging fury.
“More importantly, your uncle is dying, and you want Maxence out of the way when he bites it, don’t you?” Gen snarled, nearly in Pierre’s face.
Pierre backed up until his butt hit an ebony desk strewn with papers. “That’s not—”
Gen advanced while Pierre bowed backward under her onslaught. “When Rainier bites it, you want to make sureyou’refront and center, not Max. I think calling us here was a cover story. Where the hell did you put him, Pierre? Because I swear to God, after what that kid went through, if you’ve got him tied up on a ship somewhere with some tosser holding a gun to his head, I will rip you apart with my bareteeth.”
Gen nudged him with her baby bump, an amazingly aggressive move.
God, Arthur loved her more every damn minute he was around her.
Considering the sheer terror in Pierre’s eyes as he scrambled to get away from the scary pregnant lawyer lady, this was Arthur’s chance.
After all, Pierre was not a defendant to be cross-examined by the lawyers in the room.
He was an intelligence asset to be cultivated.
And that was Arthur’s specialty.
“Now, now,” Arthur said as he swanned across the room as smoothly as a rook gliding down an empty file of a chessboard to the back row. “We shouldn’t badger Pierre. He must be distraught. After all, his brother is missing.”
Casimir, Roxanne, and Gen stared at Arthur, and he shuttered one eyelid in the slightest wink at his wife as he slipped his arm around Pierre’s shoulders and led him away from the attacking barristers.
Closer, Arthur could see that Pierre did indeed have a rather plum-colored eye under his thick makeup. His eyelid was swollen half-closed, and a darker section of his lip suggested that he had been bleeding there, too. Maxence always went for the face when he fought.
“Pierre,” Arthur said, loading his voice with sympathy, “you must be in some distress, what with your brother missing and your uncle in hospital.”
“Yes!” Pierre exploded, and he glanced back.
When Arthur looked, Gen was leading the others on the legal team in glaring at Pierre and himself.
Beautiful.
“Howareyou doing?” Arthur asked him.
“This is terrible!” Pierre told him, sensing that he finally had a sympathetic ear. “My uncle is dying right before my eyes, which means the Council of Nobles will meet within a month after that.”
“Yes, the Council of Nobles,” Arthur agreed, nodding and commiserating. He still had no idea what that meant.
