Strike at Midnight(41)

“I don’t propose ‘we’ do anything. This is my case, isn’t it? I have it in hand. And I intend to go and question the staff on the Camembert and Crickets’ estates tomorrow to see if this Billy character turned up looking for work. Rapunzel is taking the Darlings and the Collinses. Then I just need to find a way to interview the people you gave me on that list.” I didn’t know how I was going to pull that bit off, but I didn’t want to let them know that.

“We can hold a ball,” Prince Andrew said as his face lit up. “All of those people can be invited, and between us we can ask subtle questions about the duke, about their staff, and if anyone else they know has been acting out of character lately.”

“What?” I asked, not really needing him to repeat it. But he was getting way too involved in this for my liking.

The guy just needed to go home—back to the sanctuary of his castle—and leave me to it. And leave me be.

This was all going to end in tears, and I had a fear that some of those would be mine. It was a very rare thing for me to shed a tear over anyone, let alone a guy, but with the way he was making me feel, I wasn’t about to risk it.

“It won’t take long to arrange,” he said. “We can make if for this coming Friday.”

“That’s a good idea,” Sir Raymond said, and he turned to look at me. “Don’t you think, Rella?”

“No, it isn’t,” I said. “I need Rapunzel to help me with the questioning, and she can’t come out to play at night. I also don’t have a gown, and I’m not paying for another. We need to find another way.” There you go. Feet firmly stuck in the ground.

“That’s no problem,” Prince Andrew said, happy to provide a solution for my problems. He obviously wasn’t getting the hint. “We can host a weekend event, a retreat of sorts. We can do a breakfast banquet and picnics, and hunting over two days. We usually host such things in the summer, but it’s not far off. It will just be a case of getting the invites out as soon as possible, and then you will have two days to question whoever you need to. We can all help with that.”

“And I will pay you an advance for the gowns you need,” Sir Raymond said, fencing me completely in.

“No,” I said again, but it actually wasn’t a bad idea. Apart from the fact that I would have to stay at the castle. Near the prince. And resist that fine bit of ass.

“It’s a good plan, Rella,” Marcel said. He knew when I was being stubborn. “You can take Melody too. Between the five of you, you will cover more ground.”

“The five of us?” I asked, and apparently, it was Prince Andrew who wanted the accolade of saying the names.

“You, Sir Raymond, your friends Rapunzel and Melody, and then myself. Perfect.”

“Not perfect,” I said, wanting to shake him for not getting it. “You can’t be a part of this. It’s too dangerous.”

“Rella, dear,” Sir Raymond said. “He can do pretty much anything he wants.”

Of course he could. I got that. But the guy wasn’t sensible enough to make his own decisions. Hadn’t he proved that by coming down here to find me?

He needed chaining up in his own tower, but then I realized I was openly resisting the idea too much for it to be normal. I wasn’t his keeper, so why was I showing them I was so bothered?

Crap. Melody wasn’t the only one who was going to give me shit for this.

“Fine,” I said, itching for another drink. So I got up to get one.





*



When I woke up the next morning, all I wanted to do was sink back into the covers.

The whiskey had proved too much of a solace against my reaction to the Prince, and I had ended up falling asleep as they had chattered away about the plans for the ball.

Marcel must have carried me up again because I was back in my own bed. Something else I would be charged for, no doubt.

Through the fog of the haze from the remnants of last night’s alcohol, I remembered that the invites would be going out today to invite people to the prince’s ball the day after tomorrow. That meant I had to get more than one gown sorted before then, and tell Rapunzel and Melody that they needed to get their shit sorted to come.

This job was really starting to piss me off, but then the worry for the duke overthrew it. Time was running out, and anything we could do to try and find him would have to be done.

The location of where the kidnappers had been taking the prince had played on my mind. They had to have been heading for a trail that led to the Nightmare Woods because there was nothing else in that direction. They could have been going to the docks, but even that would have been too risky with a kidnapped prince who would have been too easy pickings for other criminals. No. I was convinced they were going into those woods for a reason, and that was going to pose a problem.

The Nightmare Woods were vast, and to strike up a search in those woods would prove to be a fruitless task. They could have been going anywhere, or just using the woods as a shortcut to another place.

We needed more information, and I needed to find this Billy kid more than ever.

He had to have been employed by someone to kidnap the duke—I was certain of it. And even if he hadn’t been directly involved with the kidnapping, he could have been hired to drive the duke somewhere before he had even realized they had gone off track. It’s what I would have done.