Page 38 of The Secret of Flirting
Even at the risk to her own life?
She shuddered. For all she knew, Gregory had engineered this afternoon’s shooting just to frighten her into telling the truth. She had best tread very carefully—with the countandwith him.
Pasting on a tight smile, she faced him. “Are you absolutely sure that someone wants to kill me?”
Frustration knit his brow. “Aren’tyou? Do you really think anyone wants to do away with me or Flora? We have no holes inoursleeves, after all.”
“But how could anyone have known we would be at the park?” she pointed out.
“Oh, for God’s sake, servants talk—sometimes idly, sometimes with malice, and sometimes for pay. I daresay it would have been easy enough to learn your schedule.”
She raised an eyebrow. “All our staff here was hired byyourgovernment. Are you saying that your foreign office hired servants who couldn’t be trusted?”
“I’m saying thatno onecan be trusted when it comes to politics.”
“Even you?” she asked.
Her candor seemed to take him aback. Then a dark cloud shadowed his brow. “You don’t thinkIhad anything to do with this.”
“Why not?” she persisted, ignoring his scowl. “You were the one who convinced me to go for a drive, the one who then turned your curricle off into a more secluded path.”
The deadly calm that came over his features was far more frightening than any anger. “And why exactly would I plot to have you killed?”
When he put it so bluntly, it seemed... rather unlikely. And accusing the undersecretary of the foreign office of attempted murder was probably not the wisest tactic. But, to paraphrase the English saying, in for a sou, in for a franc. “Because you wanted me to be frightened enough by the shooting to admit to this... masquerade you keep accusing me of.”
His jaw flexing, he bore down on her. “So you think I hired people to fire on you in a public place where anyone might get in the way. You think I risked the chance that my lackey might miss and instead hit me or the servant my office hired, and all toscareyou into admitting what I know to be true? I daresay that if I did such a fool thing, it would make me the most reckless man in politics, and undeserving of my very career.”
She swallowed. He had a point.
“Look,” he went on, “I realize I rubbed you the wrong way the first time we met in Dieppe—”
“We did not mee—”
“But no matter what you think of me,” he continued, heedless of her protest, “I do have a conscience. I’m not the sort of man to risk a woman’s life—any woman’s life—for a political reason. I would certainly never risk yours.”
The fierce tone of those last words took her by surprise. “Then who would?” she asked, her heart in her throat.
“I don’t know. And until I figure out who might have reason to assassinate—”
“Stop using that word!” The very thought of this being about assassination stripped the breath from her throat. “As my uncle said, no one is trying to assassinate me.”
“And you believe him?” Cynicism edged his voice. “Hasn’t it occurred to you that there’s areasonyou were asked to masquerade for Princess Aurore? Perhaps your precious count didn’t want to riskherbeing the one killed. Perhaps he knew she was in danger.”
The words sank into her flesh like shark’s teeth. He was wrong—the masquerade had come about because Aurore had been sick with—
Wait. What if Aurore hadn’t been sick, butpoisoned? It could look the same, could it not? What if the villain had assumed that he’d botched the murder when Monique showed up in Aurore’s place, so he’d come here to finish the job, thinking she was Aurore?
If so, Lord Fulkhamcouldbe right about her great-uncle. The count had realized he must protect the real princess, and had put Monique in her place to draw the killer away.
Lord help her.
“What?” Lord Fulkham pressed her. “Tell me.”
The urgency in his voice snapped her out of her musings and reminded her that for all his apparent concern, Lord Fulkham was not her friend. Perhaps he hadn’t orchestrated the attack, but he could still be trying to use it to trick her into confessing all now that he’d learned whatever his spies in Dieppe had told him. Because clearly he’d found out something from them.
Apparently not enough to feel comfortable confronting her great-uncle with his suspicions, though. Which meant she still had a chance at brazening this out.
She stripped off her gloves with all the nonchalance she could muster. “If I were an impostor, your claims might make sense, but since I wasnotasked to masquerade for anyone, your supposition that someone is trying to assassinate me is absurd.”
