Gabriel took a few more steps and swallowed the urge to sound like Brentworth. “When was this?”
“Several days ago. In the evening. I was sitting to dinner and someone came to the door and old Gerard came in with her card. She was alone.”
“I hope your dinner was better than what you usually eat, if she joined you at it.”
“It was. However, we ate very little.”
Gabriel discarded several responses to that. First, the warning that Harry be most careful with Emilia’s reputation. Harry would know that without reminder. Then an unkind comment about flirts who only find men attractive when the men refuse to play their games. Finally, the urge to nudge Harry to provide some particulars regarding what was done besides eating.
“She was distraught. A proposal came. She found herself less than excited at the prospect of life with this gentleman. She wanted to talk to me about it.”
“Ah. She needed her good friend.”
“Yes.” Harry paced on, his face serious and thoughtful. Unexpectedly a little smile broke, and suddenly Harry appeared a bit roguish. Even devilish. “However, not merely a good friend when she left.”
Gabriel was about to give a good devil to devil punch to his arm, when Harry’s attention diverted to the house. “Is that Miss Waverly? Coming around the corner?”
Amanda indeed appeared at the back corner of the house, the one that faced Sir Malcolm’s property. She wore a pretty bonnet and the cream dress he had given her.
“She is lovely, Gabe. Quite beautiful.”
Gabriel introduced them. Amanda gave Harry all her attention, and engaged him in conversation about his research. Periodically Harry would narrow his eyes on her, however, and lose his thought before finding it again.
“Forgive me,” he finally said. “You are vaguely familiar to me. Have we met?”
“I think that unlikely,” Amanda said. “We have had very different circles.”
“We have a few calls to make, Harry,” Gabriel hastened to add. “We should take our leave now.”
“I will walk you to your carriage.”
They were closest to the spot where Amanda had emerged and she aimed there again.
“The other side has a better path,” Harry said.
“I enjoyed looking at the odd decoration on the house next door,” Amanda replied, continuing to retrace her steps.
Harry joined her and, once on that tiny path, told her about Sir Malcolm’s house and its history, pointing to the exuberant moldings around the upper windows. Amanda stopped a few feet down the path and turned to examine it all, with Harry’s details flowing in her ear.
Gabriel’s gaze fell from the house to the hedge, remembering a dark blotch there not so long ago. And right where that blotch had laid, something else now caught his eye. It sent little darts of light up through the hedge’s leaves.
He worried that Harry would not notice it, that Amanda had been too subtle. Not that they had agreed to do this. His own plan had been without risk. Hethoughtshe had agreed with him.
She asked Harry why the lowest windows showed no arabesques. Harry’s gaze naturally turned down to them. He stopped talking in the middle of a sentence. He narrowed his eyes.
“What is—” He stepped close to the hedge, reached over, and plucked something from the depths of the branches. “I say, Gabe. Look at this.”
Amanda bent her head over the gold buckle. “How odd that such a thing was there. What is it?”
“An ancient buckle,” Harry said. “Sir Malcolm thought it had been stolen.”
“Perhaps it dropped out of the thief’s pocket while he made his descent,” Gabriel said. “Sir Malcolm will be relieved it has turned up, I am sure.”
Harry examined the buckle. He looked at Gabe. He looked at Amanda. Then he slipped the buckle into his coat. “I will bring it to him this afternoon and explain how it was found. Now, you have calls to make and I have a book to write.”
* * *
“We agreed to simply post both items to the owners,” Gabriel said while they walked up the street.
