“Sorry I’m late for supper,” he said jovially.“Got involved in the very devil of a game of whist back at the Pony with Sir Winston, from over at Blanton Hall.Lost track of time.What did I miss?”
Sir Colin was on his feet in an instant, striding to the door.
“Get Bridges,” he shouted into the hallway before turning back to Dom.“You.Where did you say you were?”
Dom blinked innocently.“At The Prancing Pony, playing cards?With Sir Winston Lowood, of Blanton Hall.Why, do you know him?”
“We’ve met,” Sir Colin said, through gritted teeth.Casting a furious glance at one of the footmen standing against the wall, doing his best to pretend he couldn’t hear any of these extraordinary goings-on, he spat, “Send someone to The Prancing Pony to fetch Sir Winston, if he’s still there, or the landlady, if he’s not.”
“What’s all this about?”Dom asked loudly while Gabriel gave a nod to the hesitating footman to tell him to go ahead and follow Sir Colin’s directives.
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” Gabriel replied, entirely truthfully.He narrowed his gaze upon his cousin, who gave him a slow, very deliberate wink of the eye furthest from Sir Colin before turning back to the king’s man with a dire frown.
“I don’t believe we’ve been introduced,” Dom said dubiously, not bothering to hold out his hand.“But I can’t say I’m eager to become acquainted.”
“This is Sir Colin Semple,” Fitz explained, wiping ineffectually at the butter stain on his sleeve.“He thinks you’re The Gentle Rogue.”
“But that’s ridiculous,” Dom protested.
“No, I do not,” seethed Sir Colin, pacing the length of the dining table and back.
“Beg pardon,” Fitz said, looking confused.“Then do you think Thorne is The Gentle Rogue?”
“That’s even more ridiculous.”Dom laughed, and Gabriel was seized with the familiar urge to laugh with him and throttle him at the same time.
What the bloody blazes was happening?How had Dom got back here so quickly, and why had he given the name of one of Gabriel’s neighbors as his alibi when it would be so easy for Sir Colin to verify that Dom hadn’t been anywhere near the pub or the man who happened to be thelocal magistrate, for God’s sake.
Except when the footman returned nearly an hour later with a somewhat potted Sir Winston, it turned out Dom had been at The Prancing Pony all evening.
“Won twenty pounds off me, the rogue,” cried Sir Winston, his cravat askew beneath his ruddy face.“And I, for one, would like a rematch!”
Gabriel barely noticed his cousin’s genial agreement and thanks for coming up to Thornecliff at this late hour to satisfy Sir Colin’s curiosity.
He barely noticed when Sir Colin called his operative on the carpet and made him go through the report about the evening’s robbery step by step, an exercise that only confirmed there was no way Dom could have committed the theft at the hour and location reported and then made it all the way back to Thornecliff by the time he’d shown up.
He barely even noticed Sir Colin’s increasing ire as he demanded they all stay in the house so he could question them individually.
Gabriel made it through his own interrogation in a state of bemused bewilderment, able to answer nearly every question in complete honesty because he had no.Earthly.Idea.Of what was going on.
The only question that reverberated through his mind, echoing like a shout in an empty room, was the same one Sir Colin kept asking, over and over: If Dominic de Vere wasn’t the masked man who robbed a coach as The Gentle Rogue tonight…who was?
It was approaching midnight.Nobody had gone to bed.They were all gathered in the drawing room, sitting in tense silence as Sir Colin called them into Gabriel’s study, one at a time.
Gabriel wanted nothing more than to collar his cousin and drag him someplace private to demand answers, but until Sir Colin gave up and went away, he couldn’t risk it.
So, they sat.Uncle Roman pretended to read but only remembered to turn the pages every ten minutes or so.Dom and Fitz played a desultory hand of commerce, the way they had at school.
Gabriel just sat, mind churning and head aching.
When it was Fitz’s turn to be questioned, he was gone a long time, far longer than Sir Colin had spent with any of the others.He emerged very cheerful, with a spring in his step, while Sir Colin stomped into the drawing room after him looking as though he’d been through the wars.
“Lady Fitzwilliam next,” he all but snarled, and Fitz gave him a jaunty bow and went to fetch her.
Caroline came downstairs on his arm, still dressed in her evening gown from dinner but with her white-blonde hair in a loose braid that swung all the way down her back.
“What a lot of nonsense,” she said, not bothering to hide a yawn.“Well?Let’s get this over with.I’m tired.”
But her interview also lasted quite a long time.When she swept back into the drawing room nearly an hour later, Sir Colin was the color of a ripe plum.He looked close to apoplexy as he clipped out, “I will now question Lady Lucy.”
