“Come with me.”
She faltered, almost startled. “Rowan, please. There is something very important that I must tell you.”
“There is no time.” His jaw tightened, the strain in his face cutting through whatever anger had carried him there. “We have urgent business.”
Her lips parted, and for an instant he saw something flash through her expression.
“What has happened?” she asked. “Where are we going?” “Frederick’s.”
Her expression changed so quickly that, had he not been watching for guilt, he might have missed it.
His chest tightened.
“Now?” she asked.
He held her gaze. “Yes.”
Her eyes filled with something like fear. Still, she nodded. “Very well.”
When the carriage stopped, Rowan was out before the footman could lower the step properly.
The butler paled when he saw him. “Your Grace?—”
“Where is Calham?”
“My lord, I?—”
Rowan pushed past him. “Frederick!”
His voice cracked through the house like a gunshot.
Emmeline hurried in behind him. “Rowan?—”
“Frederick!” he roared again.
A door opened somewhere above. A servant appeared at the corridor’s end and vanished again.
Frederick entered the parlor moments later in shirtsleeves and a hastily tied cravat, his face pale beneath the lamplight. “Must you wake the dead as well as my household?”
Rowan crossed the room in three strides, caught him by the lapels, and drove him back against the wall hard enough to make the pictures rattle. “Where is she?”
Frederick’s hands came up at once, gripping Rowan’s wrists. “Lower your voice.”
“Where is she?”
“Rowan,” Emmeline said behind him, breathless, urgent. “Please?—”
“Stand back,” he said, without looking at her. Not harshly. He could not be harsh to her. “Do not come near.”
Frederick’s gaze flicked toward her. It was quick, but Rowan saw it.
The last thread snapped.
“You knew,” Rowan said, his voice dropping into something far more threatening than shouting. “I traced the paper from Juliet’s note. It led me here.”
Frederick’s jaw tightened.
“I should have seen it sooner,” Rowan continued. “The dancer, was it? The mysterious woman who required so much of yourattention these past weeks. My God, you made a jest of it in front of me!”
