Deadly Peril Read Online Free PDF

as to why Cobham says the things he does is anyone’s guess! Not even Selina can fathom him and she’s his sister. He wouldn’t even allow me to read the letter he’d received from Cosmo. He evoked some official edict about state secrets, and only those persons in confidence— persons in confidence indeed!—with a need to know are to have access to it. If he, too, weren’t my nephew I’d complain about him to the Privy Council, have him removed from his position as Head of the Foreign Department.” She sighed with annoyance. “It is too tedious being related to practically everybody!”
    “Yes, it must be,” Alec agreed with the twitch of a smile, a glance at his uncle, hoping he would refrain from launching into an inflammatory speech—as he had done many times in the Commons—on the vileness of nepotism within government, on what he called a corrupt system made up of unthinking relatives preferring blood over ability, to the great detriment of the country. Thankfully, his uncle kept his peace, so Alec added,
    “Best to leave Cobham where he can do least harm, Olivia. He’d only apply for another position someplace else, and where he could actually cause a mischief. As it is, he can hardly take a step in the Foreign Department without Shrewsbury breathing down the back of his stock. And as very little of significance happens in the northern countries of the Continent to worry us—”
    “Except for civil war, kidnappin’, and ransom demands!” the old man stuck in with a snort of derision.
    “Point taken, Uncle,” Alec murmured and dropped his gaze through his lenses to the Duchess’s letter. “You mention here Emily and Cosmo are prisoners of Prince Viktor and there has been a demand for money and jewels…” Again he looked up over his rims. “Quite frankly, I find this impossible to believe—”
    “That they’ve been taken prisoner?” the Duchess interrupted swiftly, a catch to her voice; hope rising.
    Alec shook his head. “No. Not that. That Prince Viktor would take hostages and make ransom demands. He just isn’t the sort of fellow who would do that. I spent time with him on and off over the period of three years I was in Midanich, and such behavior is out of character. It just doesn’t sit well with his nature. But, then, he was only a boy… As the son of a Margrave he is wealthy in his own right. So making ransom demands is uncharacteristic, and, to put it bluntly, beneath him.”
    “Perhaps he’s run mad or run out of money?” Plantagenet Halsey suggested with a shrug. “The Continent has just had seven—or is it ten?—years of war. Can’t be cheap equippin’ an army to send ’em off across the border to run amok in your neighbor’s garden.”
    “Will you be serious!” the Duchess demanded, though the old man’s précis of the Seven Years’ War had her smiling for the first time since entering Alec’s townhouse.
    “And there’s the fact that most of ’em are inbred. Got to be. They can only marry each other. Insanity must be rife in their family history. So coupled with the lack of funds… Madness and poverty are a deadly combination. Nothin’ to lose if your brain cracks. Oh, except y’life. But if you’re insane, you’d not think of that, now would you?”
    “For a man who abhors Lord Cobham’s politics, your views certainly align with his bigoted thinking,” Alec quipped, folding the letter and slipping it into a pocket, along with his spectacles in their case.
    When the old man winked at him, he raised his black brows, realizing then that his uncle was doing his best to get a rise out of the Duchess; at the very least, distract her thoughts from her granddaughter’s dire situation. So he fell in with these plans, adding dryly.
    “But I suppose you must. You are, after all, one of them.”
    “Alec? Are you accusing your uncle of being an inbred madman?”
    Alec bowed. “I am, Your Grace. And agreeing that Cobham must be one too.”
    “Your Grace must