Page 72 of Rogue with a Brogue
“Mrs. Mallister, Lord Fendarrow is in the front room,” he said. “Two other gentlemen are in there with him. Another nine are in front of the house, watering their horses.”
“Horses?” Sarah repeated, frowning. “He didn’t come in a coach?”
“Not that I could see, ma’am.”
She squared her shoulders. “Well. Let’s go see what’s brought Walter Campbell all the way to Manchester on horseback, then.”
When she stepped into the sitting room her gaze went to the sharp-faced man with the slicked black hair who stood by the far window. The resemblance to a young Walter was striking. For a moment she felt like the eighteen-year-old girl who’d begged her older brother not to allow her to be cast out of the family. Sarah shook herself. This man might resemble the Walter she’d last known, but he wasn’t her brother. A nephew, more likely. Perhaps the nasty Calder that her niece had described. She turned her head.
“You look older,” a dry, precise voice said. Seated in Sean’s favorite chair, a lean, gray-haired man crossed his ankles and gazed at her over steepled fingers.
So much for niceties. “What’s happened?” she asked, facing him directly. “Is it Father?”
A muscle in his cheek jumped. “No. The last I heard, His Grace was well.”
She nodded, swallowing. That couldn’t have been sympathy she fleetingly saw on his face. More likely he was worried that perhaps he’d guessed wrong about his daughter’s whereabouts and he’d come here for nothing. “Then why are you here? I’ve kept my word; I haven’t left Manchester since we purchased this house, and Sean only went to London last year for business.”
“Stop prattling on, will you?” Walter pushed to his feet. “I’m going to ask you a question, and you are going to answer me completely and truthfully. If you lie, if you keep anything from me, I will know—and I will burn this house to the ground.”
“I will not be threatened in my own house,” Sean growled, taking a step forward.
“I’m not speaking to you,” Walter commented, his gaze remaining on his sister.
Sarah was fairly certain this scene would have played the same way even if they hadn’t been hiding runaways in their closet, even if they had been genuinely surprised to see a dozen Campbell clansmen milling around her house. She put a hand out, stopping her husband’s advance even as the two younger men in the room moved up to flank her brother. “Ask your question, then,” she said, her voice unsteady. “I have no reason to lie to you about anything.”
“I don’t know about that, Aunt Mòrag,” the one who looked like a younger version of Walter said.
“Whose boy are you, then?” she asked.
“Your sister Bearnas’s.” He sketched a lazy bow. “Charles Calder, at your service.”
“Don’t bother introducing yourself, Charles,” Walter broke in, his scowl deepening. “You won’t be meeting her again.”
“For heaven’s sake, Walter, stop threatening us and ask your question!”
“Very well.” For a bare moment he clenched his jaw, but she had no idea if it was anger or embarrassment or worry. Given her own experience with him, she tended to believe it was embarrassment. “A week ago my daughter, Mary, was kidnapped by Lord Arran MacLawry. We came across their wrecked coach last night, not five miles from here. And so my question to you, Sarah, is: have you seen them?”
She put a hand to her chest. “Mary? Oh, no! That’s horrible! I—No, of course I haven’t seen her.”
“How would you know?” Charles Calder asked slyly. “You haven’t seen her since she was two years old.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Sean broke in. “We’ve spent nineteen years here, looking at the same neighbors. The last stranger to come through here was that fellow selling Paris silks. What was his name? Something Chambers. And that was three months ago. And so yes, we would know if we saw a strange woman about.”
“For the last damned time, banker, I am not talking to you.”
Sarah stepped between her husband and her brother. “Sean is telling you the truth. If we’d seen anyone being dragged about by some man, I would certainly remember it.”
“So she didn’t come to find you and ask for aid?”
“If she did, I certainly would have done what I could to help her. Whatever’s happened between us, I have nothing against your daughter. And to be taken against her will—she must be terrified. Have you gone to see Robert Daily?”
“No, I haven’t. The difficulty I have with this,” her brother said after a moment, “is that I don’t see where else she could go but here. I daresay Mary would find it irresistible, especially after their coach rolled over. She would hope to find you sympathetic to her plight, and that you would harbor them until they could find other transportation.”
“And then there was the blood we found there. One of them is injured.”
She looked at her nephew, using every bit of wit she possessed to follow only the clues they gave her, to reach the conclusions she would logically come to given what they were saying. “I—This doesn’t sound precisely like a kidnapping,” she said hesitantly. “I thought you meant she would come here to ask for my help in getting back home.”
Walter closed the distance between them and put a finger under her chin, forcing her to look up at him. “It is precisely what I say it is. Now. Are they here?”
