“As did I. But I’ve never seen him so foxed.”
“That explains why it took so long to find him.” In a softer voice, she added, “You don’t have to hedge. I know he didn’t come home last night.”
Ian made specific plans to hunt down and fire every one of his brother’s traitorous, gossiping servants before the day was through. “Jared wasn’t where his friends said they were going.”
“You didn’t join them?” She seemed surprised he’d refrained from carousing with his brother.
He couldn’t decide if this flattered or insulted him. “No. I left early to attend to business.”
“Do you think he was…interfered with?”
She brushed her fingers against the necklace in a casual motion that agitated him. If she had an inkling about what they truly were, she wouldn’t handle them with such little care.
His father’s will had included an eccentric instruction to gift the necklace to “his son’s intended” to wear on their wedding day. Diana wore it now out of respect for him, and the deathbed promise she’d made him to wed Jared. If she had disliked the look of the thing, she could have bought a hundred other jeweled collars without putting a dent in her fortune.
It made Ian feel slightly guilty about his plans to steal it from her.
“We should come up with a plan. The guests will arrive in less than an hour,” Ian said. “Perhaps we’ll ask people to attend the breakfast first, until Jared recovers, and then do the ceremony?”
“You didn’t answer my question.” A small furrow surfaced between her lovely brows. Most of Diana’s admirers would have interpreted it as an adorable look of puzzlement, but Ian knew her face too well.
She was angry with him.
The trouble was, he liked her angry. She behaved unpleasantly when she was infuriated, and it was one of the few honest things he knew about her. It made him want to forget about all the lies between them.
“Was Jared interfered with?” Diana repeated.
The edge in her voice could have been the result of her frustration with him for withholding his answer. Or she was truly worried about her fiancé.
He hoped it was the former. “I don’t know.”
Her nod assuaged him.
Briefly.
“We must find out what happened.”
As she gathered her skirts and crossed the room, Ian was so distracted by the hypnotizing sway of her bustle that he was slow to process her words.
He scrambled to block her path. “You don’t need to do anything. I’ll take care of it.” Like he always did.
“Don’t be daft. We both know it will be hours before Jared wakes, and I can’t sit here.” She deftly dodged around his larger frame and headed toward the back of the room, where a small shade concealed the dumbwaiter.
Horror washed over him, along with a chilling sense of déjà vu. “Don’t try it.”
“That’s what you said last time I dared you to beat me down to the kitchen.” She lifted up the shade with a devious grin. “How old were we?”
He’d been twelve; she ten. “It was a foolish idea then. It’s a mad one now. The draw rope will snap and—” He couldn’t threaten that she’d plummetto her death out loud because his superstitious constitution would not allow him to speak the words he dreaded coming true.
“Nonsense. Do you know how much a silver service weighs?”
With characteristic grace, she tucked herself into the dumbwaiter.
And then, in a diabolically sweet voice, she asked, “Are you coming after me or not?”
Chapter Two
Asthedumbwaiterlurcheddownward, Diana prayed Amelia hadn’t caused too much commotion in the kitchen, and that her friend had enough coin to bribe the footman to keep his mouth shut.
