The Rogue Read Online Free PDF Page A

tilted her frizzled head. “How adventuresome you are, dear girl.”
    â€œThat is all gossip and rumor.” Constance bound her hair into a tail at the nape of her neck. The countryside passed swiftly by. There were few miles from cloth mill to castle. She still had time to snatch a ride before dinner.
    Eliza proffered a pile of soft velvet. “You are depending upon your memories of Loch Irvine when you were bairns.”
    â€œI am.” She accepted the clothes eagerly. During her childhood at the castle she had worn skirts suited to riding astride and bodices and sleeves for shooting. Today, however, she had dressed demurely. A lady just up from London could not go ferreting out clues to a horrible mystery looking like a hoyden.
    â€œBoys change when they become men,” Eliza said darkly.
    â€œNot that much.” The boy she had known twenty years ago could not possibly have become a monster. “I must discover what happened to those girls.”
    â€œGossiping with mill workers will not accomplish that.” There was a tut-tut quality to her companion’s voice.
    â€œBut it already has! A man of low appearance ordered a dozen white robes from the mill not a sennight ago, to be delivered to Sir Lorian Hughes at the house he has just let in Edinburgh.” Her fingers worked at the buttons of the gown she had worn to take tea with the villagers. “A dozen robes, Eliza. And here is the astonishing detail: half of them were to be suitable for men, the other half for women.”
    Eliza’s birdlike hands folded in her lap. “Sir Lorian Hughes needn’t intend the robes for a devil-worshipping society at which they sacrifice maidens, child,” she said primly. “He might intend to throw a masquerade.”
    â€œWe shall see.” She lifted her hips to tug the gown down her legs. “I must find a husband. Quickly.”
    â€œYou should have remained in London. Candidates dropped from the trees when you walked through the park.”
    â€œWhen I left London I did not yet know I needed a husband, of course.”
    â€œI cannot believe that you actually intend to marry Loch Irvine in order to enter a secret society.”
    â€œWell, I cannot enter it un married.”
    â€œYour devotion to subterfuge is impressive,” Eliza said archly now. “I think you are enjoying this horrid mystery.”
    â€œI do not find pleasure in tragedy.” A fortnight earlier she had held Cassandra Finn’s mother in her arms and felt her heaving sobs against her breast, and she had recognized that grief. She had wept like that when she was fourteen and her mother disappeared. She had not been able to save her mother. But if Cassandra Finn and Maggie Poultney were still alive, she would save them. And if memories of her mother weren’t sufficient, her own fresh scars would compel her to rescue innocent girls from danger at the hands of a villain who hid behind a polished veneer.
    â€œI must remove to Edinburgh and begin investigating.” Only twelve miles distant from town, Castle Read might as well be twelve thousand.
    Eliza’s lips pursed. “The Edinburgh police—”
    â€œHave not done enough. I can.” For five years in London she had performed her role as the reclusive Scottish duke’s heiress with perfection: riding decorously, flirting subtly, gossiping cleverly, all for the sake of cozening information from others to help her fellow agents in the Falcon Club. She would do whatever she must now too, this time alone. Here, amidst rich green hills bathed in stripes of mist and sunshine, she was, after all, accustomed to solitude.
    Shaking her head, Eliza assisted her into the wide skirt. “Your father expects you for tea. Dr. Shaw and Libby arrive today.”
    â€œAnd I am eager to see them. I promise not to be long.”
    Eliza lowered her chin. “You are going there again, aren’t you?”
    â€œNot all