Bold As Brass. Christine Bell

      Angering the lunatic with a pistol was not one of her better ideas and she vowed to bite her tongue moving forward. So long as they kept their heads, surely she and Alistair could outwit John Rotham before the two days were up. They had no choice.

       Chapter Two

      A door slammed shut overhead and footsteps sounded on the stairs. Alistair sat up on the stool as best he could and pasted a bored expression on his face. No sense in giving Rotham the satisfaction of knowing just how painful the manacles around his wrists had become. The bastard was pleased enough with himself for capturing Alistair in the first place.

      If he hadn’t been so distracted, it would never have happened. He had suspected Charlotte’s fiancé was alive for a few weeks now. Some of the gossipy chaps at The Wakefield Gentlemen’s Club had begun whispering about Rotham’s disgruntled creditors. While John and Charlotte weren’t yet man and wife, news of their betrothal had rocked London, and the money grubbers hoped to capitalize on her guilt and extreme wealth by asking her to honor Rotham’s debts. Strange when a man, deep in arrears, dies in a tragic accident at the same time that a priceless invention is also lost. Once Alistair had realized the purviewers were destroyed and there was so little found of Rotham’s remains, his suspicions had grown. He’d already begun looking into the “accident” and had just hired an investigator to handle the legwork when Rotham had accosted him from behind and coshed him on the head.