Molière surged to his feet, chair scraping against the floor. “Imbéciles,” he spat. “Stupid traitors!” He bolted for the door.
Gabriel was faster. He caught the cook by the scruff and slammed him against the wall, hard enough to rattle the sideboard.
“You’ve been feeding information to Miss Bourne,” he growled. That woman was the bane of his existence. “I don’t give a damn that you drugged my brandy. Who has my wife?”
Molière’s lips clamped shut.
Gabriel shoved him again, fury coiled tight in every muscle. “Answer me. Or you’ll be begging for the noose.”
Molière winced, hands raised. “Please … I had no choice.”
“Wrong answer.”
“They have my brother,” the cook cried, his accent thickening as panic overtook him. “In Lyon. In gaol. Miss Bourne, she said if I did not help, he would rot there.”
Gabriel’s grip tightened. “Help how?”
“She wanted information. To know when the lady was alone, when the house was quiet.” He swallowed hard. “I never meant for her to be harmed. I swear it on my mother’s grave.”
It took a saint’s will not to throttle the man.
“Where would they have taken her?”
“I don’t know!” Molière stammered, shrinking back, his feet slipping from underneath him. “I was never told. Only when. Only that it must be quick, and at night.”
And to make sure he couldn’t follow.
Gabriel cursed under his breath. “Get up.”
When the man hesitated, Gabriel seized him by the collar and hauled him upright. “You’ll be our guest in the pantryuntil I decide whether to hand you to the authorities or deliver justice myself.”
He dragged Molière down the corridor, shoved him inside, slammed the door shut, and turned the key, leaving it in the lock.
Facing the servants gathered in the hall, Gabriel’s voice rang like steel. “He doesn’t leave this house. Not for a piss or a prayer. The men are to guard the door until my return.”
The staff nodded, wide-eyed.
God help anyone who defied him now.
He gestured to Rutland. “We’re leaving.” But he was already striding down the corridor when his friend caught up with him.
“Was it him, dead in the watch-house?” Rutland asked. “Was it Lovelace? Gentry said he went to identify the body, but the resurrectionists stole it.”
Gabriel mounted the stone stairs, the image an unwelcome distraction. The similarities were uncanny: bone structure, hair colour, height, frame. Yet he would stake his life that it wasn’t him.
“I want to say yes.”
“But every instinct says it’s not,” Rutland finished.
Gabriel nodded. “Had I looked into his eyes, I’d have known. I’m afraid we’re no closer to knowing whether our friend is dead.”
Their footsteps echoed down the corridor, the truth still shrouded in doubt.
His thoughts turned to Olivia.
Where was she? Was she afraid? Had she fought, cried out? Did she know he would find her, whatever the cost?
Miss Bourne hadn’t taken her in a fit of jealousy. This wasn’t some reckless impulse. It was cold. Premeditated. Thework of revolutionaries, not a woman scorned. Molière had used the wordthey.
