Page 152 of Courting the Wrong Duke

“So does Gabriel, and I would not trust him to distinguish between vermilion and crimson.”

Despite herself, Rosalind smiled. “You think about him rather often for someone who claims to dislike him.”

“I think about murder rather often too. I have yet to act upon it.”

Rosalind’s smile widened.

Isabella reached for the letter again, studying the familiar strokes that had fooled everyone for weeks.

Everyone except her.

The discovery had changed everything.

Her father had not written the letter implying his intention to leave London. Someone else had written it and taken considerable pains to make the world believe Edmund Carlisle had departed willingly.

Someone had wanted people to stop searching for him.

Rosalind had no intention of obliging them.

“What do we do tomorrow?” Isabella asked.

“Continue without William.”

The words hurt less than they had earlier.

Not very much less.

Isabella glanced at her but, mercifully, did not comment.

“We know the letter was forged,” Rosalind continued. “We know Papa left White’s in Algernon’s carriage. We know Augusta attempted to send us chasing a woman who appears not to exist, and we know Algernon lied about leaving London.”

“Which is quite a lot when one says it all together.”

“It is not enough.”

“No.”

Rosalind leaned back in her chair.

Somewhere there was still a piece they had not found. Something that explained where her father had gone after entering that carriage and why a man who had once meant so much to Algernon would have been taken at all.

A sharp tap against the window interrupted them.

Rosalind frowned toward the sound. “What was that?”

Before Isabella could answer, another small object struck the glass, followed several seconds later by a third.

Isabella was already on her feet. “Someone is throwing things at your window.”

“So it would seem.”

“At midnight.”

Rosalind rose and crossed the room, pushed aside the curtain, and peered into the garden. Moonlight stretched across the lawn, while the faint glow from a handful of windows illuminated little beyond the house itself. For several seconds, she could see no one.

Then a figure stepped out from beneath the shadow of a tree.

Her breath caught.