Page 80 of A Rogue at Stonecliffe

“What the devil—”

“You’re joking, surely.”

“He’s not joking,” Annabeth assured them. “Though he certainly could have said it with a little more grace.” She shot an irritated look at Sloane. She went on to explain their visit to the workshop and what they had discovered there, as well as the two attempts on their lives, though she glided over the details of those.

There was another lengthy silence as they absorbed the news. Finally Nathan said, “And you think Miss Cole is the one who attacked you? But she was working with you.”

“Mr. Asquith thinks there could be a traitor in his own organization, someone working on the inside,” Annabeth explained. “He thought it was possible that it could be Miss Cole.”

“But that’s mad!” Nathan exclaimed. “She was with us. How could she have attacked you in two other places?”

“She could have someone working for her,” Sloane pointed out. “Give herself a handy alibi with you and Lady Lockwood.”

“I thought she was your friend,” Nathan said.

“She is.”

“Well, thank God I’m not your friend if this is how you treat them,” Nathan said scathingly.

“I don’t believe it’s Verity,” Sloane replied. “But there have been a few things that point to her.”

“Such as defending Annabeth from kidnappers and robbers?” Nathan shot back.

“I have to consider all the possibilities,” Sloane told him. “Blind trust can be a fatal mistake. When lives are at stake, you cannot rely on your emotions.”

“That certainly suits you, then, since we all know you are impervious to emotions.”

Sloane smiled thinly. “It’s curious, though, how quickly you spring to Verity’s defense. You hardly know her. When did you become her champion?”

“I’m not. Miss Cole is an excessively irritating woman, but she’s no murderer,” Nathan responded.

“You are naive if you think Verity isn’t capable of that and more.”

“She may be capable of murder. That doesn’t mean she would try to kill you and Annabeth. It’s not in her personality. And if you think she would, then I’d say you are the one who hardly knows her.”

Lady Lockwood rapped her cane on the floor, drawing attention back to herself. “All this is beside the point. The curious thing is why would anyone have murdered Annabeth’s father?”

Annabeth and Sloane exchanged a glance, then she said, “We think it is because of the document we’ve been searching for. A confession Papa wrote. We think someone murdered him to keep him from sending it to the authorities.”

“A confession?” Lady Lockwood said dismissively. “What could Hunter possibly have to confess? We were all well aware of his various follies.”

“Not all of them, I’m afraid.” Sloane pulled the folded paper from inside his jacket and handed it to Annabeth’s grandmother.

“Papa killed a man,” Annabeth explained. “It was an accident, of course.”

Lady Lockwood, scanning the confession, gasped. “Traitor? That idiotic man. The accident would have been a scandal one could weather, but this...”

“What?” Nathan yelped, and Lady Lockwood handed him the piece of paper to read. “Good Lord!” He read it through a second time, then looked up at Annabeth, his eyes filled with sympathy. “I am so sorry, Annabeth. I know how much this must have hurt you.”

“Thank you.” Trust Nathan to think of the pain her father had caused, just as her grandmother’s first thought was the family name.

“So this is why you and Miss Cole and the government are concerned in the matter,” Nathan said to Sloane. “Miss Cole told us this Asquith chap is looking for a traitor among his workers. You thought Mr. Winfield would name him in his confession.”

“Miss Cole was certainly chatty while we were away,” Sloane said.

“I asked her,” Lady Lockwood said, as if that settled the matter.

Nathan gave Sloane a sardonic glance. “Have you ever been interrogated by her ladyship?”