Edwin played cards on the dining table and looked bored out of his mind. “Now that Liam is gone, we’re all safe,” he muttered.

“No one is leaving,” Frederick insisted. “If any evidence remains about who was firing that gun, I won’t provide an opportunity to hide it.”

The windows were open, but it was still sweltering with all these people crammed inside. Patrick felt smothered. Gwen sat on the floor, singing to the five-year-old twins, who gaped at her like she was a goddess. He grabbed a stool to sit beside her.

“You survived intact?” he asked, his churning stomach a sick reminder that while he’d been grousing about the Blackstones at the soda counter, she could have been killed.

Gwen didn’t go out of her way to make it easy on him. She glanced at her cousin Joshua, the useless one from Yale, who was playing cards with Edwin. The younger man’s face was riddled with ugly scratches.

“Joshua’s face took a hit when a bullet exploded a tree next to him. He was very brave as he carried Poppy to safety. We’re all quite proud of him.”

Gwen wouldn’t even look at him as she continued playing with the twins. It could have been Gwen’s face that was injured by flying shrapnel. While Patrick sulked, Gwen had been alone and vulnerable.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I should have been here to protect you.”

“Don’t worry, I survived without you.” There was no thaw in Gwen’s frosty demeanor, but perhaps it would only take some time.

Uncle Milton came over to deliver the letter that had arrived at Smitty’s store. The envelope was on college stationery, and she flipped it open without much interest, but her shoulders sagged as she read the contents.

“Bad news?”

“The Spanish monks turned down our request to send us the old date seeds.”

“Are they the same Spanish monks who own a piece of the bank?”

She nodded. “They’re rich, so they can’t be tempted by money.”

Gwen had once told him that if she ever pursued a doctorate in botany, she wanted to use those seeds as the focus of her research. She seemed unusually disappointed, but Patrick couldn’t get worked up over old seeds. The date seeds were three hundred years old, and if it took her a few more years to get her hands on them, it wouldn’t matter. She would never tear herself away from Blackstone College long enough to pursue a doctorate anyway.

Some of the younger children dropped off to sleep, and Patrick carried them to the far side of the room, where pallets had been laid out for them. He returned to Gwen, who looked exhausted and uncomfortable as she shifted to a new position on the floor.

“Why don’t you head up to bed?” Patrick prompted. “Everyone knows you had nothing to do with this.”