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“What better way to conceal a weapon,” his brother often said. Alex preferred to wear his weapons openly, just as he liked his whisky neat. Let a thing be what it was, just as he was always himself, with no pretense otherwise.
    He stood like a green boy in the entrance hall, listening outside the parlor door while some benighted soul pounded out Beethoven very badly on the duchess’s pianoforte. He waited until the noise had stopped before he stepped inside and found Robert trapped against the arm of one settee by Mrs. Angel herself. Robert shot him a harried look, and Alex smiled. Catherine’s mother had clearly run the boy to ground.
    â€œGood day,” Alex said, bowing to the lady. Robert stood as if to be polite, barely masking his intent to escape the clutches of Mrs. Angel. A little girl waved to him from behind the pianoforte, before barreling into the same song all over again. Perhaps it was the only one she knew.
    He scanned the room: the angel and his sister were not there.
    â€œIf you’re looking for Mary Elizabeth, she’s taken her quarry to play among the rafters on the third floor.” Robert’s brogue was thick, for he could not care less about the fashionable necessity to leave one’s Scottish roots at home.
    â€œAre the knives locked up?” Alex asked.
    Robert frowned. “Aren’t they always?” Before Alex could relax, Robert added, “Of course, Mary Elizabeth has the key.”
    Alex caught himself before he swore in front of Mrs. Angel. The lady stared at him, her blue eyes taking in every aspect of his person, as if he were a stoat on sale at market.
    â€œCatherine went to the ballroom with her friend, Mr. Waters. Perhaps you may go and seek her there.”
    â€œI had better do so, madam. I do not trust what my sister may have gotten up to.”
    Mrs. Angel smiled blithely, as if she could see not only beneath his words, but beneath his very skin. “Indeed, you must. Catherine needs protecting, you know. And in case she forgets to say so, thank you for the beautiful flowers.”
    Robert’s eyes were as sharp as a dagger on him, no doubt seeing everything his brother wanted to hide. Alex ignored him valiantly, though there would be hell to pay later.
    The child at the pianoforte piped up then. “Catherine liked your flowers best.”
    â€œThere were others?” Alex asked before he could stop himself.
    The girl did not answer, but her mother did, her smile shifting to feigned innocence. “Indeed, our household received a great many bouquets this morning. Such a warm welcome for a young lady just up from the country. London gentlemen are ever so kind.”
    Alex could not trust himself to speak without cursing, so he did not. He bowed once, turned, and left the room. He thought he heard laughter in his brother’s voice, as Robert said, “Shall we have another tune, then, Miss Margaret? Alexander may be a while hunting your sister and mine.”
    Alex closed the door on Mrs. Angel’s pointed gaze and his brother’s amused voice, and climbed the stairs to the third floor two at a time. There was only one room free of furniture where Mary Elizabeth indulged herself in knife play.
    Pray God she had not stabbed their guest by accident already.

Five
    Catherine held the throwing knife in her hand. It wasn’t a long steel blade, as she had heard was used in the former colonies of America. It was nothing like a machete that she had read had been used to cut through the jungles of Africa. It was a deadly sharp blade, rounded along its edges, except for the tip, which was quick to draw blood. As she had discovered to her chagrin as soon as she handled it carelessly.
    Mary Elizabeth had showed her how to dress her wound quickly with her own handkerchief, ripping it neatly into thirds and tying a makeshift bandage into place over her wrist where the shallow cut lay. She had never experienced a small wound