My brother paused and turned toward me. The look of surprise on his face was almost worth having to deal with him in this state. “Minnie? What the devil areyoudoing here?”
I crossed my arms. “Funny, I was going to ask you the same.”
He frowned in confusion just as our sister stepped into the hallway wearing a sheepish expression. “I rang him while you were in the study earlier,” she admitted to me.
“Oh,” I replied, feeling rather betrayed. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Delia shook her head, wide-eyed. “I suppose I just panicked and—”
Jack cut her off with an impatient huff. “Might we first deal with the more pressing issue before delving into a squabble?” Then he turned to the inspector. “You won’t get another word out of either of them without my solicitor present.”
“Jack,” I began on a sigh. “We are cooperating—”
“That’s all right, sir,” the inspector cut in with a self-satisfied smile of his own. “They are free to go. Your sister has beenveryhelpful. Though I strongly suggest they both remain in London, should we need anything more from them.”
I did not appreciate being discussed as if I wasn’t even in the room, and as the two men stared each other down, I couldn’t decide who was being more insufferable.
“Come along,” I said to Delia. “I have no interest in watching a battle of egos. We will wait for you in the carriage, Jack.”
Then I turned on my heel and headed for the exit, with my sister following in my wake.
Chapter 8
We had nearly reached the pavement outside when Jack caught up to us.
“All right,” he prompted, once we had all piled into the coach. “Care to explain yourselves?”
Before I could respond, Delia blurted out our entire evening.
When she got to the bit about the party, Jack shot me an accusing look. “You let her go to Lord Linden’s house? The man is a notorious scoundrel!”
“Well, how was I to know? It’s not as though his reputation has reached Corfu,” I said.
Jack grumbled something under his breath and bade Delia to continue. When she had finally finished, Jack muttered a curse, then fixed his dark gaze on me.
“And I suppose it was your idea to call the police?”
I balked at his derision. “What else was I supposed to do?”
“Anything, Minnie,” he insisted. “Anything else.”
“Right. And when the police came to call after realizing that Delia and I were among the last people to see Charles Pearson alive, you expected the two of us to simply lie?”
“It never would have come to that,” he said with his typical high-handedness. “And now we have a much bigger problem: keeping your connection to a murder out of the papers.”
“Really, Jack,” I scoffed. “That is what you are worried about?”
“Well, perhaps not so much you,” he said with a sardonic lift of his brow. “But Delia is a young, unmarried woman with her whole life ahead of her. There is no need for her future to be ruined over this.”
Delia inhaled sharply beside me, and I shot him an irritated look. “You are being needlessly dramatic.”
“Am I?” he challenged as he leaned forward in his seat. “You haven’t lived here in well over a decade. You have no idea what the papers are like. Especially for a man in my position—”
“Come off it, Jack,” I said, rolling my eyes.
“I am up for re-election next year,” he snapped. “And my challenger would love nothing more than to exploit a piece of gossip about anyone connected to me.”
“Of course,” I said. “Everything always comes back to your precious political career.”
