“You could remain here and let him dangle over what we now know.”
“And wait to see what yer brother-in-law has found for me to wear tonight?”
I had shared that part of Aunt Antonia’s plan with him.
“The man is a bit shorter.”
“I thought instead that we might simply lock the door, lower the shades, and...”
“Och, ye are a brazen lass.”
“What I would have suggested issleep. You tossed about most of the night, after...”
He returned to where I sat on the edge of the bed, the blanket held against me, and leaned toward me.
“After?” A dark brow lifted in that maddening way.
“You know very well what I mean.”
“If ye are feeling neglected, Lady Forsythe, I suppose that I could be persuaded to accommodate.”
The smile was there, the way it lifted his mouth at one corner. Yet different, with that cut below his eye.
“In your present condition, I might injure you further,” I replied in consideration of those broken ribs.
He laughed and then winced. “Aye, for a moment last night there was the possibility that ye might have done me in.”
With that, he left, just out of range of the pillow I hurled at his head, which landed on the floor beside the doorway.
I attempted once more to dissuade him from that meeting, but he would hear none of it.
“There could be something important about the reception tonight. We have no way of knowing all those involved. And I gave me word to the man in exchange for the information he provided us.”
“He has no loyalty to anyone, except to Queen and country. I doubt he had any feelings for his mother.”
“I know yer feelings toward the man. Mine are much the same. But dinna look at me that way.”
“What way is that?” I replied, quite out of sorts over the matter.
“As if ye’d prefer to dump the man on the floor or run him through.”
I tried not to laugh. He was right, of course.
“He uses us and then is just as likely to hang us out to dry,” I objected, determined to make my point. “It is about power, and he uses it for his own end.”
“Aye, a government man to be certain. But I have the advantage that I know it and use it against him to protect meself and you.”
“Oh, very well,” I conceded.
“Will ye be waitin’ in bed for me?”
“That offer, Mr. Brodie, has come and gone. At any rate, Linnie is sending clothes over this morning for us to wear tonight.”
And he was gone.
I knew my sister’s taste in clothes quite well. She preferred soft, pale colors with lace and ribbons attached, while I preferred more subtle colors, devoid of lace and ribbons. My lack of appropriate clothes might not have been necessary except for the fire that had taken everything at the townhouse.
“You really must make an appointment to visit Madame,” Linnie had added at the end of that telephone conversation. “She knows your measurements and could easily provide you with gowns and other clothes, instead of the clothes you kept at the Strand before the fire. And you should pay more attention to those things, Mikaela. What must Mr. Brodie think that you have little to nothing to wear?”
