“About what?”
The sneer returned. “Now you are being disingenuous. I much preferred your frankness. Let us not play games, Miss Burloyne. Have you a message for me from my esteemed cousin?”
So that’s what he supposed. Very well, if he wanted candour, he could have it. She looked him in the eye. “The message is from me, sir. If you harm Giff, you had best be rid of me too, for I will bring the full panoply of the law down upon you.” She had the satisfaction of seeing him thoroughly taken aback and pressed her advantage. “Think carefully before you attempt to silence me, sir. Unlike Giff, I am not without friends or family.”
He was still holding the book and he waved it in an airy manner, smiling again. “My dear Miss Burloyne, acquit me. I have no desire to offer you the slightest harm. Nor, I may add, is it my intention to do violence to my cousin.”
“Oh? Then why have you hired bully boys to chase him down? Do they not intend violence? Why then did one of them shoot at him? And with me up before him too!”
“That was a mistake, my dear Miss Burloyne.” Evidently unperturbed, he ran an eye across the shelves and found the gap, setting the book back in its place.
“A costly mistake, sir, if the bullet had found its mark in me rather than Giff.”
He turned, an expression of regret in his face, in which Delia placed not the slightest belief. “Just so, ma’am. I was excessively angered when I heard of it.”
“But that did not stop you setting Sam and Barney to spy upon me.”
A muscle twitched in his cheek and the smile did not reach his eyes. “You see, it did strike me that my cousin might follow you here, as you surmised. My only desire, however, was to find an opportunity to discuss our unfortunate situation.”
And pigs might fly! But Delia refrained from the snort she wanted to make. Better to play along. “Why should you not send to him in that case?”
“My dear Miss Burloyne, if I had his direction, I might do so. He chose not to divulge it.”
“And what of the Reverend Gaunt, sir? Is he not related to you? Why did you not ask him?”
“I did. He denied all knowledge of my cousin.”
“So you hired those men to find him? A pair of thieving ruffians? Did it not occur to you Giff would suspect them of an ill intention towards him?”
She could not help the sceptical note and knew, by the rigid set of his mouth, that he was perfectly aware of her true sentiments. He made no reply and Delia lost patience.
“Come, sir. Did you not exhort me to stop playing games? You will not persuade me that your ruffians meant no harm to Giff. That was not the first time he’d been obliged to escape them.”
The mask slipped a little. The sneering look had bitterness within it. “Yes, a slippery customer is Giffard Gaunt. Yet I think at last he will see sense and take himself off back to India.”
Delia frowned. “That’s what you want?”
He laughed mirthlessly. “You suspected a more sinister outcome? My dear Miss Burloyne, there are ways of making someone vanish that need not involve violence, you know.”
Delia could barely speak for the rush of fury in her breast. She’d wanted him to admit the truth, but her reaction was unexpected. She forced her voice to calm. “Such as?”
“Why, if Giffard does not choose to take ship from choice, I am prepared to arrange his passage for him.”
“Willy-nilly, I dare say.”
The smile reappeared, this time in genuine amusement, she judged.
“Astute of you, Miss Burloyne. That is the matter in a nutshell.”
Could it be so? The reprieve from the threat of Giff’s death was balm. Yet Delia found it impossible to believe in this man’s sincerity.
“What should stop him returning, even if you did force him aboard a ship?”
“Stowaways, Miss Burloyne, do not in general fare well. I do not think Giffard, without means or assistance, would easily make his way to England from America.”
She could not prevent a gasp of shock. He smiled, and Delia almost recoiled. There was true evil in his eyes.
“You could not suppose I would make it easy for him by shipping him back to India? That would indeed be a fool’s game.”