Drat.The more lies she told, the more likely she was to be caught out. But how could she not answer him? “I arrived last week.”
“What day?” the inspector asked, picking his notebook up from the table beside the chair.
“Goodness, this feels like an inquisition,” Charlotte said. “Should I prepare an accounting for my whereabouts, also?”
The inspector frowned. “It’s just a harmless conversation.”
With a boldness she didn’t feel, Fiona asked, “Do ye normally take notes during harmless conversations?”
He snapped his notebook closed and pressed it against his chest. She had annoyed him. She could see it in the thinning of his lips, the huff of his breath, the muscle ticking along his jaw.
“What is your brother doing in London, Miss McTavish?”
All pretense of conversation vanished. “Trying to sell his new invention. Some chemistry thing. I dunnae understand it.”
The duchess sniffed. “No? A resourceful woman like yourself?”
“It’s quite beyond me, I’m afraid.” The words tasted bitter in her mouth, but she would say whatever it took to prevent Patterson from joining the dots between Finley McTavish and herself.
“What was your brother doing in New Palace Yard the day he was arrested?”
“I’m nae sure. Likely he was just there for a gander. Finley is too curious for his own good.”
“Not protesting the current distribution of representation throughout the boroughs? I was under the impression you come from a politically minded family. Your father was an instigator of last year’s Abingdale riots, was he not?”
She inhaled sharply. Sensing Fiona’s shortening temper, Charlotte dug her fingers into Fi’s forearm.
With a calm she did not feel, she said, “My father was protesting the eviction of nearly thirty farmers from the land they’d worked for generations.”
She shouldn’t be engaging with this man. She should end this conversation and walk right on out of this room. If he had more questions to ask, he could haul her back to jail.
“A boy died during those riots, did he not? And the factory your brother worked at was destroyed? Tell me, has anyone faced consequences for that night?”
She couldn’t keep her mouth shut. “Jeremy’s death was consequence enough for us all. There wasn’t a person in our village who wasn’t devastated by the events. ’Twas a lesson for everyone. Except the Karstarks. I dunnae believe they cared a whit.”
Her emotion was getting the better of her, and the investigator could tell. He leaned forward. “Yes, I can believe that the boy’s death would have been particularly hard for those who worked with him.”
“It was.” Her voice cracked and her eyes stung. Jeremy had just been a boy. A stupid, foolish boy who had gotten caught up in the web of dangerous men. She could not think of his death without contemplating her father’s part in it.
Patterson’s eyes lit up. “And who was that, who worked with him? Was it you or your brother?”
“I…” Oh, bloody hell.
Behind her, Edward cleared his throat in a murderous fashion she hadn’t heard before. She hadn’t noticed him enter but she was so very relieved he had.
“Mother. Patterson. What an interesting development to see you both here.”
The inspector’s face colored at Edward’s tone.
“Duke,” his mother said dispassionately. “I thought you were in session today.”
“I was,” he said as he took Fiona’s other side. “But you’ve so recently returned and been so poorly of late that I felt the unexpected need to come home to attend to you.”
His mother’s mouth pursed, drawing tight as though she tasted something sour. “I’m perfectly fine. As you see.”
“Yes, you are in your usual fine form.” He turned to the inspector. “Do you make a habit of interrogating peers’ households?”
The inspector’s jaw tensed. “You were so bereft of useful information, it made sense to seek information from elsewhere.”
