Bonfire Night. Deanna Raybourn

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      I thought a moment. “No. Although I can’t imagine why. It seems plausible enough. But everything about the man was just slightly off somehow. Call it intuition, but I don’t believe him.”

      “Neither do I,” he said firmly.

      “You’re a damnably suspicious pair,” Plum said, helping himself to a rose water biscuit. “It is possible that some generous old fellow was sincerely grateful for your aid, Brisbane. You have rescued any number of perilous situations from disaster.”

      “Yes, but I am more often responsible for putting people in gaol than keeping them out of it,” Brisbane retorted.

      “Can you think of a case where you might have earned the gratitude of a lady?” Portia asked.

      “That’s the crux of it,” Brisbane responded thoughtfully. “It might be any case. It’s far too vague to indicate any particular investigation. Did I restore a family treasure? Return a cache of stolen love letters? Destroy a purloined photograph? And it might have been any time in the past twenty years. That’s rather a lot of ground to cover.”

      I narrowed my eyes at him. “How many women do you suppose are gadding about with good reason to feel indebted to you?”

      He assumed an expression of innocence. “Just in London or on the Continent, as well?”

      I tossed a cushion at him which he caught neatly and slipped behind his head. “No, there’s no way of knowing which case, which lady. It’s all too vague.”

      “Deliberately so,” I added.

      “Piffle,” Plum put in. “You’re just too cynical, the pair of you. You are looking a very generous gift horse in the mouth, if you ask me.”

      “In my experience,” Brisbane said seriously, “gift horses are usually the ones with the most dangerous bite.”