A sudden nudge from his brother cut him off.
“I won’t ask how you came to decide that,” said Wrexford.
When the boys wisely said nothing, he continued, “As for your assailant, m’lady has a point. Are you sure our recent encounter with the intruder didn’t color your thinking? I can’t imagine why a stranger would hurl a rock at you.” A grim smile. “Unless he was thirsty.”
“Perhaps he wanted to send a message,” retorted Raven as he pulled a crumpled strip of paper from his pocket. “There was a missive tied around the rock.”
To punctuate his brother’s words, Hawk held up the fist-sized stone, which still had a length of twine tangled around it.
“Part of it isn’t in English,” added Raven as he offered the muddied note to the earl.
Wrexford took the paper and read it over, then handed it to Charlotte without comment.
It took her only a moment to take in the short message. She looked up, trepidation glimmering in her eyes.
“Off you go, Weasels,” he said gruffly. “M’lady and I wish to discuss this in private.”
“Don’t forget about the house rule that says everyone in our inner circle is entitled to attend a council of war,” responded Raven. “Just because we’re not at home at Berkeley Square in London doesn’t mean that it is any less binding.”
“She and I are merely going to share some thoughts.” He wasn’t ready to reveal the news about the murder quite yet. “If a council of war is necessary, I daresay it can wait until morning.”
It was likely wishful thinking, but he was hoping that Kit and Cordelia would decide to take an interlude of peace and quiet on their wedding night before having their world turned upside down by the Grim Reaper.
* * *
“What are they hiding from us?” asked Hawk once he and his brother had passed through the opening in the privet hedge and into the herb garden behind the kitchen.
“Dunno,” muttered Raven.
“Atten-dezz vooos, mess am-ees,” said Hawk, tentatively sounding out the foreign phrase written on the note. “What does that mean?”
“It meansBeware, my friends,” replied Raven. Cordelia had been tutoring him in French as well as mathematics so that he could read the works of the legendary French mathematicians Joseph Fournier and René Descartes in the original.
“Attendez-vous, mes amis!” he repeated with perfect pronunciation, then added the rest of the message, which had needed no translation. “Things are not always as they seem. Look beyond the obvious.”
Hawk scrunched his face in thought. “What do you think the rock thrower is trying to tell us?”
“A good question,” said his brother. “But an even more important one is, why did he write part of the warning in French?”
CHAPTER 5
The following morning, a pale but resolute Cordelia appeared in the breakfast room of the manor house. As planned, she and Sheffield had spent the night at the Dower House, a charming brick residence tucked in a secluded corner of the estate property, in order to have some privacy on their wedding night.
But Charlotte doubted that the occasion had been the perfectly joyful interlude it should have been.
“You are quite certain that you feel up to traveling to Cambridge?” she asked, after rising from the table and giving Cordelia a hug.
They had come up with a plan the previous evening. At first, Cordelia had wished to be part of the group accompanying Whalley and Goffe to positively identify the body. But her brother Jamie—Lord Mansfield—had insisted on being the one to view the corpse, as he, too, was well acquainted with Jasper Milton. Instead it had been decided that Cordelia and Charlotte should travel into Cambridge to speak with the three fellow members of the Revolutions-Per-Minute Society who were visiting the university for several days in order to attend a series of lectures given by an engineering expert from Bavaria.
Given that Milton had been murdered, it seemed that his closest friends would be the most likely to know if anyone had wished him ill. So Mansfield had dispatched urgent notes to them requesting a meeting, and the affirmative answers had been sent back with the same messenger.
“Of course I feel up to traveling to Cambridge.” Her friend poured a cup of coffee from the still steaming pot on the table. “Marriage hasn’t transformed me into a weak-kneed, spineless widgeon.”
“I wasn’t implying any such thing,” replied Charlotte. “Indeed, the union of kindred hearts and minds makes each person even stronger. But the murder of a loved one cuts to the quick. Don’t underestimate the toll it will take on your emotions.”
The memories of her own experiences caused her chest to clench. “You may think you are prepared for such an ordeal. But nobody truly is.”
A flicker of sympathy stirred beneath Cordelia’s lashes. The two of them had met during the investigation into the violent death of Charlotte’s cousin. Indeed, for a time, Cordelia was suspected of having committed the crime.
