“I want one,” Samantha said.
“You can’t drink the stuff. You choke,” Warwick said.
“I want one,” she snapped.
James handed one to Warwick and then poured her a nip. She sipped, he was pleased to note, and even managed to not grimace.
“Wait!” Dev walked in with Max. “We are going to hear this too, and others are following.”
Warwick took the glass James handed him and wandered around the study. This was his favorite room in the Raven town house. Two walls were lined with tall shelves filled with books. Huge windows dominated another wall overlooking a park. It was a place where they, as a family, had made many decisions. A place he’d come with his sisters to sit on the floor and read from the amazing collection of books. Memories, he thought, looking around him, were plentiful in this room.
“Sorry. We had to promise to tell the others everything,” Cam said entering.
Nicholas, Marquis of Braithwaite, followed him. Cousin to Samantha and brother to Lilly, Dev’s wife. Last in the room were Rose and Gus. He was a professor and Raven cousin. Clearly this was a matter concerning a Raven, therefore they were heavily represented while there were only three Sinclairs.
“Does someone need to take notes?” Gus asked, moving to sit behind the desk. “I have the most legible handwriting of the lot of you.” He was a scholar, so order was important to him.
“We are the delegation,” Cam said. In one hand he held a large wedge of plum cake. “Plus, we cannot all fit in this room now that there are so many of us.”
No one argued, as it was the way of their family to share everything.
“Now talk,” James growled.
“I will recount the story, Samantha, as I saw it unfold,” Warwick said.
She nodded. “Very well if you must, but I will fill in the bits you miss.”
“I’m sure you will.”
Warwick looked to his brothers who stood behind the Ravens. They both wore odd expressions. He wondered what had put them there.
“The crossing from Ireland was terrible. Penny, Samantha’s maid, broke her arm, and then later that night, Samantha fell ill.”
“This is not important,” Samantha said.
“I’m telling them the entire story. Be quiet and let me.”
“I am well now,” she added.
“Be quiet, sister, I wish to hear the entire story and am sure you will cut out bits if you think it will upset me,” James said.
Her harrumph would have made any elderly matron proud.
“The next morning, we decided to start our journey, and I went to ready the carriage. I was talking to Bids and saw Samantha walking to the entrance of the inn courtyard. She had been really ill during the night, so I went to tell her to get in the carriage out of the weather—”
“It was fine outside,” she snapped at him.
“In the time that it took me to reach her, someone had grabbed her,” Warwick continued, ignoring her interruption.
“I beg your pardon?” Nicholas said. “Grabbed?”
“As in picked her up and put her in their carriage,” Warwick clarified.
Max swore.
“I took a guest’s horse who had just arrived and followed. I managed to get alongside and then climb on the carriage roof.”
“The driver shot at him,” Samantha said.
