“He exaggerates. I’m sure it was just as you said: a hunter with a bad aim.”
She ate a piece of chicken flavored with almonds. “But I thought you walked only in the early morning and after dark.”
“I do.”
It took Claire a moment to understand him. “Are you saying that someone shot you after dark?”
“I like this chicken, don’t you?”
“Trevelyan, I want an answer!”
“Why is it that you’re so docile with Harry and so abrasive with me? You’d think that, wounded as I am, you’d be kind to me.”
She laughed at him. “I’m not in love with you. I don’t have to pretend with you.” As soon as she said it, her eyes widened. “I didn’t mean that as it sounded.”
Trevelyan took a sip of his whisky and looked at her. “What would you say if I asked you to go hunting?”
“Sit in the rain and watch you slaughter animals? You have lost your reason.”
“Yet you do it with Harry.”
“Could we change the subject? Who do you think was out shooting in the dark? Did you see the person?”
“I neither saw nor heard anyone.” He kept eating and didn’t say anything else.
“You don’t think someone actually did try to kill you, do you?”
He took so long to answer that when he did Claire knew his answer was a lie. “I’m sure it was an accident.”
Claire felt chills down her spine, for she knew without a doubt that someone had tried to kill Trevelyan. “Jack Powell,” she said softly.
“Ridiculous. Jack has no reason to hate me. As far as I know he still thinks I’m dead.”
“Brat said there was an article in the paper that said Powell was in Edinburgh and he was going to present irrefutable proof that he and he alone had gone into Pesha.”
That news seemed to startle Trevelyan a great deal. “Did the paper say what the proof was?”
“No,” she said slowly. “What do you think it is?”
Trevelyan took his time drinking his whisky. “Something that I thought was lost.”
“Something that you brought back from Pesha?”
“Yes.” He continued eating and said nothing for a while.
“We shall go to Edinburgh and get this thing. We’ll steal it from this man Powell. What is it, anyway?”
“The Pearl of the Moon.”
She leaned back against the post of the bed—Bonnie Prince Charlie’s bed—and sighed. “The Pearl of the Moon. It sounds exotic and valuable. In the morning we’ll—”
“We will do no such thing. You’re going back to your room so I can get some sleep. If you can’t sleep, why don’t you write a long letter to the man you love and beg his forgiveness? I hear your mother’s already charging clothes to the new duchess of MacArran. You’ve got to do your duty and marry a man who does little but kill animals so you can pay her dress bills.”
Claire put her plate down. “I had forgotten how very rude you can be.” She got off the bed. “I guess I’d better go now and let you sleep. If someone else shoots at you, why don’t you call a doctor?”
“I shall.”
Claire looked down at the silk robe she wore. “I’ll change and—”