“Oh, Maddie. When this is all done, we have some things to change at home.”
Madeline’s smile faltered, but she nodded.
Oliver noted the slip. She was holding something back. He excused himself and stepped aside, telescribing the name Chief-Inspector Conley had given him if he needed to contact Nigel Crowe. He quickly asked if Crowe knew of secret conversations between Lysette O’Shea and any other Committee members. While he waited for a response, he listened to Madeline.
“Your mother sent a package with me, rather secretively,” Madeline said. “I’ve only glanced at it, but it seems to contain two ensembles, colors I’ve never worn in my life. Lysette has always bullied her way into decisions about my wardrobe, so I wear pastels.”
“Do you prefer pastels?”
“Not particularly. In fact, one of the dresses Mother sent is aqua in color, and shimmery.” Madeline smiled. “I quite like the look of it.”
“Excellent! It will match your eyes, and you will feel like a princess.” Emme grinned at her.
Madeline sobered. “And Lysette will find a way to make me feel as though I’ve committed a criminal act for making a decision without first consulting her.”
“Lysette can chew on an angry stick. You and I are finished allowing her to rule over us.”
Oliver’s telescriber dinged with Crowe’s response.
Yes, secret conversations. Cannot ascertain the content.
Oliver frowned. He felt as though they were headed for disaster, and he was frustrated at his inability to see around the bend. He sent another message to Crowe.
When did Rawley become a close associate of Lysette O’Shea?
Crowe replied immediately.
Six months ago. Sir Ronald invited him on a big-game excursion to Africa. Most of the Committee are regular guests at the family hunting lodge here.
It was a pity Crowe hadn’t returned to Town earlier; his presence embedded with the Committee was helpful now, but he was a step behind.
A knock sounded at his door, and he crossed into his room to find the Blakes, the Picketts, and the MacInneses in the corridor. He ushered the couples inside and led them to Emme’s room.
Sam and Hazel joined Emme and Madeline on the sofa, while Lucy took an adjacent chair, her expression grim and eyes angry. Oliver had spent time with Lucy and Miles before they were married and Lucy had been a houseguest at Blackwell. Lucy had suffered a vampire attack, and Oliver and Miles had been her only company for a week as she convalesced. He recognized the frustration in her face at her inability to fix the situation, to solve everything immediately.
She looked at Emme. “Bryce Randolph hired someone to toss that explosive into the hall.”
“We don’t know it for certain, Luce,” Daniel said to his sister and joined Isla at the hearth.
“Who else would it be?” Lucy snapped back. “That smarmy little miscreant described him to the last detail.”
Oliver looked to Daniel. “You caught him?”
Daniel side-eyed his wife. “Isla ran him down. Surprised him with a throwing star to the back of the shoulder and then tackled him to the ground.”
Emme clapped her hands. “Of course she did. Well done, cousin!”
Isla inclined her head, and Oliver noted Daniel’s smile, his frustration and pride evident in equal measure.
Oliver looked at Emme’s pale face, the dark smudges under her eyes that bore evidence of her continued fatigue, and the cast on her foot. The similarity in a penchant for action was evident in the cousins, and he knew a moment of rueful despair. He was in for it every bit as Daniel was.
Emme would never slow down, and he realized with some surprise that he felt it would be a pity if she did. She would always take life by the throat, and he would always chase after her in a heightened state of anxiety.
It was a truth he could no longer deny. He’d been chasing after Emmeline O’Shea for two years, and the thought that there might come a day when that pursuit was no longer his role did not sit well in his gut. The thought of her eventually as a friend, a lover, a wife to someone else made him irrationally angry. Perhaps his reaction wasn’t so irrational, he mused as he looked at her. Any man would recoil at the idea of a woman he loved with another.
He looked back at Daniel, seeing a future version of himself in his friend. Daniel rested his hand beneath Isla’s hair and massaged the back of her neck. In all likelihood, the contact was probably more a comfort to Daniel than Isla, who seemed perfectly composed. She leaned into her husband, comfortable and content.
The men in the room, his best friends, had reached a place in life that Oliver now envied for the first time. He wanted what they had. He’d spent time with them socially for months and had never felt a wisp of desire to walk the path they had each pursued. Now, however, everything had changed. His world had completely spun and shifted. He didn’t want what they had with just anyone. He wanted it with the woman on the sofa who had turned her attention to him as the conversation continued.
She wrinkled her brow and tilted her head at him, and his heart thumped that even amidst the chaos of their circumstances, she was attuned enough to him to know his thoughts were elsewhere. Provided he could keep her alive, perhaps she might entertain the notion of receiving him in her drawing room for purposes other than arrest or interrogation.
“. . . you heard what I said, Emme?” Isla was looking expectantly at her cousin.
Emme blinked and turned her attention away from him, and he bit back a smile. “I’m sorry?”
“You seem a mite distracted.” Isla’s lips twitched.
“I was conferring nonverbally with my paid companion,” Emme said hotly.
Laughter met her remark, and Daniel, grinning, looked over Isla’s
