Page 42 of Gilded Locks

Grace winced. She should say something. Should tell them.

“Ralph Milner? Or Jonathan Ferrer?”

“It’s not Jonathan,” Grace said. Her parents turned to look at her. She didn’t look them in the eye when she said, “I think it’s James Patton.”

Father shook his head. “I highly doubt it. I don’t expect he’d be able to get ahold of a verdure cloak. And though he’s been neutral enough in political discussions, he never puts a foot out of line as far as the mayor is concerned.”

“We don’t cross the mayor either, really,” Grace said. “Well, I mean, James wouldn’t think we do. Except sitting out at the soirées.”

“She has a point,” Mother said. “First impressions may not be wholly reliable.”

But Father shook his head. “No. I’ve known the boy for years. I don’t see it.”

Grace sighed. They’d never believe her. Not even enough to hear out her reasoning. “Well, it’s definitely not Jonathan. He’s stealthy. And doesn’t have green eyes.”

Mother frowned. “He was several yards away. How did you see his eyes?”

Grace paled, looking down at her hands.

“Grace?”

Grace took a deep breath before admitting, “So… I may have seen the Rogue before tonight.”

Both her parents spoke at once.

“What?”

“Excuse me?!”

Grace bit her lip. “I thought I saw someone in the forest on the way back from the market. I forgot to tell you, and, well, I’m a Protector. So I dealt with it.”

“You dealt with it?” Father surged to his feet, and leaned toward her, arms outstretched on the table.

Grace squirmed, avoiding eye contact. “I went looking for him, and he left me a letter with instructions on how to find him, so I met him.”

“You met with him?”

Indignation eclipsed her guilt, and she pushed back from the table, fury in her eyes. “I’m a Protector, just as much as you. I’ll have to be more than you, eventually, because there will be no one to help me. But you don’t believe my warnings, so I handled it myself.”

“Mistaking a few chance encounters for spying is far different than a face-to-face meeting with someone acting as the Rogue, Grace. A Protector wouldn’t keep that from her fellow members,” Mother said.

Flames lit Grace’s cheeks. They still didn’t see that she’d been right about Garrick. “But Garrickwasfollowing me. Don’t you see? The Clairmonts and the mayor are coming after us. The taxes. That was the beginning. It won’t stop there. But you don’t believe me! Why would you believe anything else I told you?”

“Forget about the Clairmonts,” Mother said. “We have to deal with the man running around in a verdure cloak.”

Hot tears slipped from Grace’s eyes. “But we are in danger.”

“Everyone is in danger. James—or whoever it is—signed his own death warrant, and doomed us along with him.”

Grace’s heart lurched. Yes. James. What to do about James?

“Fine. What would you have done? Forced him to stop? How? Tied him up? Where would you keep him? On our estate? In the fortress?”

“We’d catch him, figure out who he is, and then decide what to do. But we definitely wouldn’t let him show up at the harvest celebration and catapult all of us into the nightmare that comes at the end of this.” Mother shook, be it with fear or with anger. “The sheriff will be organizing a patrol now. The Rogue may not make it to the morning before being caught. We’ll attend a hanging tomorrow.”

Now Grace was shaking too.Hanging. Tomorrow. James.

She thought of the Sheriff’s threats.Accidents happen when misguided rebels find themselves alone with me.

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