A distraught Freya pushed her way into the room, tears glistening in her blue eyes. “Something is wrong with Thorfinn. I know it. I just know it.”
Astrid bustled in after the girl and threw her arm around her. “Freya, darling, we don’t know that for sure. We haven’t even read the contents of the sealed letter he left for Rose.”
“Is Thorfinn in danger?” A ripping sensation tore through Rose’s chest. Despite Astrid’s reassuring words to her cousin, Rose couldn’t help but absorb the child’s panic. Something suddenlydidfeel terribly wrong, and unlike the trio half in and half out of her room, Rose knew exactly what peril Thorfinn might be facing.
“He left this at the foot of my bed!” Freya waved an envelope with Thorfinn’s neat penmanship on the outside.
“Let’s not rouse all the guests,” Rose said nervously, shepherding them into the center of her room, including Young Thomas.
“He wrote on the envelope, ‘Freya, give this to Miss Van Etten if I’m not home by morning’ and ‘Rose, you’ll know what to do with this. It’s from a night ago. I had to know for sure before I told you,’” Freya said. “If that doesn’t sound important, I don’t know what is.”
The cryptic message, so much like Reggie’s dying one, rushed through Rose like an East Coast express train. Thorfinn was in danger! Around her, the conversation buzzed like the ominous shake of a timber rattler’s tail.
“But it’s not morning yet,” Astrid pointed out. “Perhaps Sinclair just hasn’t had a chance to return from whatever he was doing.”
“Something odd is going on. I heard Da come in late—and it sounded like he was talking to Mum. He kept apologizing over and over and over. He was slurring his words like he was drunk, and Da never gets blootered,” Freya told her cousin stubbornly. “That’s why I slipped out the back window and gotyouto help me row over here instead of Da.”
“I was manning ‘the front desk’ like you told me, Miss Van Etten, when they came in looking for you,” Young Thomas said worriedly. “I saw how anxious Freya was, and I thought I’d better bring her straight away.”
“You made the right decision,” Rose quickly told the lad, trying not to let any of them see her own fear. She turned then to Freya and held out a hand that she managed to keep steady only through sheer force of will. “Let’s see what your brother wrote to me.”
But when Rose pulled out the sheet of paper from the envelope, it wasn’t covered with Thorfinn’s precise letters but Reggie’s sweepingly dramatic ones. The viscount had suspected Astrid of espionage, and Thorfinn had clearly gone to investigate the claims. Now he was missing, Sigurd was seemingly begging forgiveness from his dead wife, and Astrid—Astrid was standing in this very room trying to discount their fears.
All sensation seemed to pool in Rose’s now-icy-cold hands and feet, leaving her not bereft butdriven. With her hand now unnaturally steady, she crisply folded the letter along the same creases that Thorfinn had. If she was to save her Viking, she could not afford to crack. She had tothink, not feel.
“Freya, Young Thomas,” Rose said, the words so disconnected from her, so automatic, that she felt like a ventriloquist’s dummy. “Would you please go and awaken my friends—Myrtle and Percy?” Percy knewnothing of the spying, but if Rose was to rescue Thorfinn, she needed to trust someone beyond Myrtle.
“Yes, ma’am.” Young Thomas lightly grasped Freya’s hand and gently guided her from the room.
As soon as he shut the door softly behind him, Rose shifted backward to her nightstand, where she kept her reticule, keeping her eyes on Astrid the entire time. “I want to grab my reading glasses. I didn’t want to worry Freya more, but I was having trouble deciphering it.”
Astrid frowned. “You upset her more by sending her from the room. What is the poor child to think?”
Rose felt for the knob and yanked on the drawer. Patting around, she found what she was looking for. Pushing aside the fabric of her purse, her fingers closed eagerly around the mother-of-pearl handle. Rose whipped her Bull Dog revolver straight at Astrid’s face and cocked it.
“Where is he!” Rose freed the fire—the utter rage—inside her, allowing it to blast through the icy stillness and erupt onto Astrid. She fed the empowering anger and buried her disabling fear for Thorfinn’s safety and her anguish at Astrid’s involvement.
“What!” Astrid clasped both of her hands to her neck and stumbled backward a step.
“Where. Is. He.” Rose advanced.
“Sinclair? I don’t know.” Astrid’s green eyes darted frantically around the room, as if she could find answers there. “Rose, have you gone mad?”
“I know the truth about the bird-watchers.” Rose watched her former friend’s expression carefully and saw nothing but frightened confusion. Had some of Reggie’s suspicions been incorrect? Were just the naturalists German agents? Was Astrid innocent? How was Sigurd tied up in all this? Rose had no time to consider the answers. She knew only that she could not afford to trust Astrid or to let doubts weaken her.
“Bird-watchers? My bird-watchers?” Astrid’s fingers clutched at her shawl. “What do they have to do with this?”
“You and I both know they haveeverythingto do with this. Do not think you can toy with me, Astrid. I have no qualms about shooting you if I have to.” Rose hissed out the words, and she jerked her gun, as if she could make good on her threat. She doubted, though, she would be able to put a bullet through this young woman whom she had once admired. But Astrid did not know that, so Rose added, “I know what I’m doing with a firearm. I was taught how to shoot by a Texas Ranger.”
“Shoot me? Good lord, what did Sinclair say in that letter of his? I swear I have no idea what you are talking about.”
Rose held out the missive to Astrid. The woman’s confusion seemed genuine, but if Thorfinn’s cousin had been working as a spy for years, she’d be very good at playing the innocent. And Rose wanted to watch Astrid as she read Reggie’s letter.
Astrid fumbled the paper several times, but she finally managed to open it. “This ... this looks like Reggie’s writing. How—why—I don’t understa—”
“Read it!” Rose fluctuated back to cold, her mind focused entirely on how to save Thorfinn, because hehadto still be alive. Rose couldn’t accept any other alternative.
“Good lord!” Astrid clapped her hand over her mouth now. “I told Uncle Sigurd about Reggie being saved by a nurse. He goaded me. He kept saying Reggie must be a German sympathizer with the way he managed to escape. But Uncle Sigurd isn’t a spy! I mean, he couldn’t be. He’sUncle Sigurd.”
