“No. It’s not that, my lord. Or, well, it is. But it isn’t. It’s just that…”
“Spit it out!”
Hamish looked at the earl but then his gaze found Kat’s. His eyes went wider. His knuckles turned white, and for the first time in her life it seemed to Kat that one of the Bulletproof Bagshaws was trembling.
“You have guests, my lord.” Hamish turned back to the earl.
“Obviously,” the earl said, gesturing to his far-from-empty drawing room.
“What I mean to say, my lord, is you have callers.”
“In this weather?” The earl turned to the window. With the power out, it was pitch black outside, and, if anything, the sleet seemed to be falling harder. “Send them away.”
The lights flickered for a moment, as if fighting their way back on, and, a second later, the room felt almost too bright when the chandeliers sprang back to life.
“You’re still here?” the earl asked when he could finally get a good look at where Hamish still stood in the doorway.
“Yes, my lord. It’s just that—”
“I’m not going anywhere.” The man who appeared in the doorway was tall and broad. His black hair was cropped close and his coat and thick glasses were covered with snow and ice as if he’d walked through a blizzard to get there. And perhaps he had, Kat realized.
It said a great deal about him that Kat didn’t immediately notice the woman behind him.
“Who are you and why are you tracking snow into my house?” the earl demanded.
The man didn’t remove his coat.
He didn’t offer his hand.
He didn’t bow and the woman didn’t curtsy. He just looked at the Earl of Greymore and said, “I’m Jonathan Hoyt. Director of UK Operations for Interpol. This is my associate, Agent Bennett.”
Associate? Kat wanted to laugh. Or slap him. This is how the man referred to his second-in-command? No wonder Amelia had wanted to keep her friend’s situation secret from Director Hoyt. He was the kind of bureaucrat who would race across the country in the middle of the storm of the century just to impress an old man with a title.
But that didn’t change the fact that he was here. Now.
Amelia didn’t look at Kat. There were no signals, no secret glances that might have passed between the two of them—no hint that they had ever met at all, and Kat was glad the woman was so smart. Truthfully, it was a bit of a shame that she played for the other side on most occasions. Nick’s mom would have fit right in with Kat’s family.
The woman was smart and gorgeous, even if she had traded her fashionable heels for tall rubber boots and her hair was plastered to her scalp, wet and mussed from the wind and the freezing rain.
But no one else was looking at Amelia Bennett. They were focused on the man in the trench coat. “I’m sorry to interrupt your holiday, my lord, but we have had bad news.”
“And you couldn’t call?”
“The phone lines are down,” the heir reminded everyone, but the man from Interpol just shook his head.
“I’m sure they weren’t when I left London, but this is the kind of news one expects to receive in person.”
Gabrielle looked at Irina who seemed to remember that she was supposed to be a future countess, so she swept out her arms. “Won’t you join us, Director Hoyt? Miss Barnett?”
“Bennett,” Amelia corrected, but to Irina it was as if she didn’t speak at all.
“I’ll ring for a fresh pot of tea.”
The agents came farther into the room, but no one took their wet coats. It was like they carried the storm inside, and the temperature in the room seemed to drop with every step they took.
“Now what is it?” the earl snapped. “My Georgie was getting ready to play charades with the Hale boy,” the old man said as if everyone in the room couldn’t hear him.
Director Hoyt eased into a chair across from the earl’s. He studied the old man a moment, as if weighing the truth of the rumors and trying to decide how fragile the earl’s health really was.
When the earl snapped, “Are you mute?” Hoyt stopped weighing and began.
“It is my understanding, my lord, that you recently donated a very rare, very valuable Fabergé egg to the Magi Miracle Network.”
Kat was twenty feet away, but she could actually feel Hale’s blood pumping, his pulse rising as he turned to Agent Bennett. “What’s wrong?” he asked. He didn’t care what her boss had to say. He wasn’t concerned with protocol or appeasing aging, insane peers of the realm.
What Hale wanted was answers.
And he looked at the only woman who had them.
But Amelia just looked at the earl. Kat didn’t doubt, however, that her words weren’t intended for him.
“I’m very sorry to have to tell you, my lord, but your egg has been stolen.”
The duchess gasped. The viscount stared. And Kat stayed perfectly still, knowing the best way she could help Hale was to resist the urge to comfort him.
“No!” Hale snapped. His anger and his fear were real, even as the director turned his gaze in his direction.
“Perhaps you kids can go…somewhere else…while his lordship and I—”
“This kid is W. W. Hale the Fifth!” Lady Georgette shouted, cutting the director off.
“And I am Jolly Old Saint Nicholas. Now if you’ll excuse us, I’ve traveled a long way in treacherous conditions to discuss a very serious matter with his lordship.”