Page 96 of Go, Rogue

Chapter

38

“Home Office?” McGann whispers to Rogers. “What the bloody hell?”

Rogers shrugs. “I may have omitted that part in my explanation of affairs. The Home Office extends its deepest apologies—”

“Stuff it,” McGann says. “I really don’t care.” He turns to Barclay. “Where’s the box?”

“I don’t answer to you,” Barclay scoffs. “You’re nothing. Less than nothing. A lowly—”

“Enough!” McGann’s had enough of being treated like nothing by his brother. Enough of believing it to be true. Enough of standing here, shouting at the arsehole when he could be somewhere calm and quiet with Catherine. “Not. Another. Word.”

He limps toward his brother, furious. Barclay takes a step back from him.

“Now look here,” Barclay begins.

But Rogers cuts him off. “James mentioned that you hid the box in your private study.”

Barclay tries to speak again but Rogers holds his hand up. “Before you say anything further, I will amend that statement to this one: James, during his full and quite detailed confession, stated that you hid the box in your private study. Quite a story that was, Your Grace. Double crossing the East India Company and endeavoring to sell stolen goods to the Crown? You have been busy.”

Barclay freezes, still as a deer caught in a hunter’s sight, and says nothing.

“Shall we just go and find it?” Rogers asks. “I’d rather get this over with. I could use a bite to eat and a chance at a doze. It’s been a trying few days.” He gestures for the door. “After you, Chief.”

Barclay, however, is closer. He lunges for the open entryway, and McGann can only track him with his eyes. He wishes he had the strength to go after him, but he knows he hasn’t. Not with his injured leg. But it becomes obvious soon enough that he needn’t have worried. His brother is no athlete.

Barclay has lived his entire life as a duke and is as soft and pampered, as swaddled and coddled, as the title might imply. His run is slow and lumbering, and he’s out of breath before he’s even made it down the hall. It takes only a moment for the constable to catch him and haul him back.

“What do I do with him?” the man asks the chief, holding Barclay’s arms behind his back.

“Have you no cuffs?” the chief asks, and the constable only shakes his head and shrugs apologetically. “I didn’t think we’d need them.”

“Just hold him then,” Rogers orders.

McGann, meanwhile, has turned to Catherine. “Shall we, Menace?” he asks, holding out his arm.

“Let’s,” Catherine says, looping her own arm through his. It makes his heart swell to have her there, as it does every time she slips her hand through his and lets her fingers tickle his bicep. He flexes it a little to show off.

“The cat with its cream,” she says quietly, just for him.

“Aye,” he whispers, “when I’ve you on my arm.”

Just as Sir Cleveland says, “Well then,” and glances nervously at the duke with his arms held behind his back by the constable. “This better be good or he’ll have all our heads.”

“It will be,” McGann says to the wide-eyed housekeeper who has quietly come into the room and lingers at the edge of it.

“Where is His Grace’s study?” he asks, and the woman points the way.

Catherine watches as the chief conducts a quick search of the duke’s study. The lockbox isn’t particularly hard to find. Barclay had hidden it, sloppily, inside a globe that forms part of the bar piece—originally made to house decanters in its hollow interior. He hadn’t even bothered to fasten the top, simply dropping the box in so the globe no longer closed properly.

The entirety of the search takes less than five minutes, during which Barclay stands in the doorway staring, the constable still holding his arms behind his back.

“That’s it,” McGann says. “That’s the box. Menace, do you still have the key?”

“I do.”

She turns from the others to pull it out of her bodice as discreetly as possible. It takes a bit of fishing and poking to manage it, for which she hopes the crowd behind her has averted their eyes.