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‘Not today, Mr Linton. Not today. You’ll find out in good time.’
‘What? And that from you, Mr Knowledge-is-power-is-time-is-money?’
He gave me a look that made me shiver all over—in a good way. ‘Some thing
s take time, Mr Linton. Some things are worth the wait.’
And with that, he turned and marched up the steps of the opera.
‘Hey, wait! I want to know more! I want to—’
But he had already disappeared through the door. Muttering a curse, I hurried after him. He wasn’t going to get away this easily! Pushing open the door—which didn’t have a doorman anymore, I noticed—I ran through the entrance hall, towards a door at the other end that was just closing behind Mr Ambrose. I wouldn’t let him get away! He would have to talk to me and—
‘Mr Linton! There you are. Oh, I’ve been looking for you everywhere.’
Oh no.
Oh God, please no. Saboteurs and assassinations, wars and devastations I could handle, but this…
Slowly, I turned, dread rising in my stomach, only to come face to face with my worst fear.
‘Mr Linton. Oh, how I’ve longed to see you.’
I managed a weak smile. ‘Good afternoon, Miss Harse. So nice to see you.’
Emilia beamed from ear to ear.
‘Did you hear the news?’ she gushed.
‘What news?’ I dared to sound hopeful. ‘Are you getting married to some nice French gentleman?’
‘Oh no, nothing like that!’ She gave a dismissive wave. ‘It’s my first performance. Did you hear who is coming to my first performance?’
‘The King,’ I guessed.
She covered her mouth with both hands. ‘Gosh! How could you possibly know? I only heard a few minutes ago!’
‘Let’s call it fem– um, male intuition.’
Emilia’s eyes started to gleam. ‘That is almost uncanny. It’s like we have this special connection between us that links us no matter how far away we are.’
‘Oh, err…yes. Really interesting. How about we test it by getting really, really far away from each other?’
‘Pardon?’
‘You think it’s a great idea, too? Spiffing! See you later!’
And I fled. I only stopped when I was up in my room, with the door safely barred behind me.
Even under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t have been too keen on Emilia’s company. But these weren’t normal circumstances. Mr Ambrose was plotting something. And worse—much, much worse—so was Lord Daniel Eugene Dalgliesh.
How could we possibly stop him? Auckland was his employee. Dalgliesh could direct him wherever he wanted, he could control his movements, whom he came into contact with, and pretty much anything else. How could you possibly protect someone under such circumstances?
Plus, part of me wasn’t even sure whether I wanted to protect Auckland. Even if he was better than the average minion, he was still in the service of Mr Ambrose’s arch-enemy, and Karim didn’t seem to like him very much, to put it mildly. I might not be a gentle, kind or considerate person, in fact I probably lacked ninety-nine out of a hundred positive character traits, but you go up against my friends, and I’ll be on you faster than you can say “Crap!”. Loyalty was everything. Protecting Auckland simply went against the grain.
Well, you’d better forget about your grain and come up with a plan, Lilly, or Karim’s people might end up paying the price.
How to protect someone who was by definition unprotectable? How to get someone out of Paris, one of the most famed and wonderful cities of the world? What would make Auckland return immediately?
