Trent was staggered. Like the Duchess, he had overlooked the fact that Molly Finucane was really an ally. Perhaps, if they had been wiser, Lady Alistair might have been made to take a different view of the situation in the past. But now it was too late.
He dared not risk a direct question about Hero.
“Well, you can’t marry anyone else yet,” he said, not very delicately. “The question is, what are you going to do?”
“Isn’t it what are you going to do? I am still under arrest, I believe.”
Trent fell back on his papers again.
“I told you I had seen the Prime Minister. He is willing to let the matter be hushed up, out of consideration for me.”
After all, he had ventured on a bluff; and, after all, it did not come off. Alistair merely smiled.
“I am not a fool, Trent, you know. I have never seriously supposed that I ran any danger of being hanged, drawn and quartered. So the resignation has been withdrawn?”
“It was declined,” the Minister corrected. “But if the papers get hold of the business, I shall have to go—for a time, at all events.”
Alistair seemed genuinely concerned.