Authors: Elizabeth Essex
And she could feel his big, agile hands cradling the back of her head as he held her still for his kiss, and she could feel the smooth rasp of his chin with her own palms and feel the reverberating hum of excitement that awoke her skin.
And then the door behind her was whooshing open on its silent, well-oiled hinge, and Tanner quite literally set her apart—he picked her up and set her away—just as the bristle of taffeta skirts filled her ears.
Her mother was coming.
“Your Grace?” It was not her mother, thank God, but Mrs. Dalgliesh, the housekeeper, and the dowager duchess’s right-hand woman.
“Ah, Mrs. Dalgliesh, thank you.” His Grace her Tanner did not miss a beat. “Tell me about the room. Who found it, and where did they enter?”
Mrs. Dalgliesh made no demur whatsoever to Tanner’s blunt question—he must have sent for her. “On the night of the ball, it was the Viscountess Jeffrey, Your Grace, who found the room in disarray.”
“Disarray?” It was getting to be a habit, Claire thought, this parroting of astonishing questions. A bad habit. “What do you mean?”
“Your room was ransacked,” Tanner told her, in his blunt, factual way. “Go on.”
“Lady Claire’s sister-in-law, I understand, had come looking for her. She entered through the door, I should think.” The housekeeper gestured over her shoulder to the door by which Claire had entered. “And when she saw that the room had been greatly disturbed, she sent for me.”
“Was there blood?”
“I beg your pardon, Your Grace?” The housekeeper shot a mystified and slightly horrified look at Claire, who did not understand. She did not remember anything about blood. Maisy had not looked bloodied. But then again, the poor girl’s body had been in the water.
“No, not
her
blood.” Tanner had already interpreted Mrs. Dalgliesh’s look and waved her away from Claire. “Think. Blood on the floor, or on the carpet, or staining anywhere.” He opened the empty wardrobe where Claire’s gowns would have been stored. “Anywhere in the room, or the corridor. Or the servants’ corridor. Somewhere in this house. Large drops, I should think. A dark rusty brown. Maisy Carter’s nose was broken, and there would have been blood.”
“Oh. I see.” The housekeeper blanched a bit, and swallowed, but she rallied and looked about the room as if she were trying to envision what it had looked like one night ago. “No, sir, there was no blood.”
“Are you sure? Who cleaned the room? When did they clean it?” His questions came out in rapid fire, one right after another, as if his mouth were slow in keeping up with his clever brain.
“I did, sir,” the housekeeper confirmed, as if it were a test of both her housekeeping skills and her loyalty to Riverchon. “I deemed it best to keep such a task private.”
“Absolutely. When?”
“When did I put it to rights? Almost immediately, Your Grace, though I did show the room to both Her Grace, your grandmother, and the Earl and Countess Sanderson.”
But Tanner didn’t seem interested in either housekeeping or loyalty at the moment. “Tell me what you saw. Describe it. In detail.”
“Every piece of furniture was disturbed—the bergere armchair cushions were on the floor, and one was smudged with ashes where it landed in the fireplace. Thank goodness the fire was cold—it was, if you remember, a warm night—or we might have had an even greater crisis on our hands.”
“I recall, Mrs. Dalgliesh. The furniture?”
“The small chair was overturned as well.” She pointed to the floor beside the bed. “The bed curtains had been ripped off the frame, and the bed linens overturned, and strewn about.”
“And the bed linens?”
The housekeeper shot another glance sideways at Claire. A nervous, discommoded glance. “If it’s all the same to you, sir—”
“Were the linens soiled?” Tanner’s impatience for answers made his voice stronger than it needed to be.
The housekeeper’s discomfort tightened her face into a moue of distaste. “Yes.”
“On the top, or beneath, on the sheets? Top sheet or bottom?”
The poor housekeeper sent another desperate look at Claire and swallowed nervously. “On the counterpane, sir.”
“And was there blood, as well as seminal liquor, on the counterpane?”
“Oh, good Lord!” Claire backed away instinctively. She hadn’t understood what he was talking about. She only was thinking about poor, poor Maisy’s nose and—
Claire felt her face heat and her chest tighten and her stomach flip all at once. But she must have made a sound of distress, because Tanner’s incisive gaze shot to hers.
And then he stood, once again the cool, aloof Duke of Fenmore. “Forgive me. Perhaps…” He held out his arm, gesturing toward the door, as if she might like to leave the room. “Perhaps you might like to retire before—”
“No. No,” Claire insisted, even as she wanted to do exactly as he suggested and bolt from the room. Or at the very least throw open the windows.
Which he did. The cool evening breeze helped. A little. “The room just felt a little close. But I’m not going anywhere. I won’t be missish. I understand now.” She made herself say the words matter-of-factly, though her face was both hot and clammy with discomfort. “You said there were no coincidences, and I understand now. Go ahead and answer His Grace, Mrs Dalgliesh. Was there any blood?”
Mrs. Dalgliesh’s voice was the barest, choked whisper. “No, sir. Just the—”
In an instant, His Grace was back to the Tanner, like a dog with a bone. He all but growled at the housekeeper, “Are you sure? You examined them yourself before they were laundered?”
“I’m sure. But I— I hope you will forgive me, Your Grace, but I did not have them laundered.”
He brightened. “Did you save them?”
“No, Your Grace. I burned them myself, in the fire in my sitting room. I thought it best. To keep everything…” She settled upon the correct word. “Private”
Claire could see the disappointment slide across Tanner’s face like a cloud passing before the sun, and then he was past it and on to the next thought, the next clever idea. He turned a full circle in the room, his arms and hands outstretched from his sides. “So where then? Where did he kill her, if not here?” He went for the door. “Did anyone hear anything? Any of the servants coming or going?”
Claire and Mrs. Dalgliesh followed him out. “The ball was under way, Your Grace.” the housekeeper answered. “Most of the servants were attendant upon their duties and charges below.”
“So the hallway is empty. Does Maisy come up?” It was as if he were seeing it unfold before him. “What would bring her back to this room?”
“My shawl.” The realization sent an ache like a screw, tightening Claire’s throat. “I was late for the dinner, and she had followed me as I hurried down, handing me my gloves so I could pull them on as we went. And she gave me my fan, as well. But I said I didn’t need my shawl. It was too warm. So she would have brought it back up, and probably set about putting everything to rights, as we left in a rush—gathering up the loose pins and powder on the dressing table, and putting out the candles there.”
“Mrs. Dalgliesh.” His Grace of Tanner’s voice whipped back to the housekeeper. “The candles on the dressing table. You’ve replaced them. How long were the candle stubs you replaced?”
Mrs. Dalgliesh frowned and closed her eyes to concentrate. And then she shook her head. “No stubs, sir. I sent the tweeny up this morning to dig out the wax. They were guttered.”
“Just so.” Tanner nodded and turned round once again in the hall, as he had done in the room, and Claire could see now that he was imagining it, standing there with his eyes wide-open, seeing the scene as Maisy Carter herself would have seen it. “So she had followed you down the main stairwell? So she would have come directly back up it. And she comes to the door, here.” He stood on the threshold and pushed the door open. “But she does not go in to put out the candles, which continue to burn until they gutter.” He went utterly, completely still. “Ah. He’s here already, looking for Claire. But it’s Maisy he finds instead.”
The cool, damp air from the window chilled Claire’s skin, prickling it into icy gooseflesh.
Tanner went on inexorably. “So she sees him, presumably on the bed with some token, and likely boxing the Jesuit. And what does our Maisy Carter do?”
“Token? And boxing the—” Claire hadn’t the faintest idea what he was talking about. “Is that a nautical term? Like
boxing the compass
?”
He was too intent to do more than fix her with a solemn, pitiless look. “The seminal liquor. On the counterpane.”
Claire would have gasped if she had had any breath left in her body. She was nothing but empty aching space—pity had hollowed her out.
Tanner was still intent and unmoved, turning in the other direction, toward the far end of the hall where three narrow doors faced out into the corridor. “She would have gone for the servants’ stair.”
Tanner strode down the hall and tore open the central door that led on to the steep, narrow service stair. “Have these been cleaned?”
“Of course, Your Grace.” Mrs. Dalgliesh’s tone was more than defensive—it was nearly outraged and definitely proprietary.
But Tanner was like a hound on the scent and would not be turned. “But the blood, Mrs. Dalgliesh. We’re looking for the blood. Maisy Carter’s lifeblood, seeping out somewhere in this house, or on these grounds. It’s important, don’t you see?”
“Yes, sir. I suppose I can ask the tweeny who cleans and mops the stair, sir. But—”
“But what?” He nearly growled his question. The poor man was barely holding his irritation in check.
Mrs. Dalgliesh stiffened her spine. “But she’s a child, Your Grace. Just as I’ve known you since you were a child. You came here about the same age as the tweeny—twelve years old. So if you could,
please,
not upset her. These poor girls are frightened enough, thinking someone is out to murder them, without you adding to it with your talk of blood and
seminal liquor
.” If she pursed her lips any harder, Mrs. Dalgliesh was going to turn into a woody lemon tree.
Tanner straightened. “Ah. I see. Forgive me, Mrs. Dalgliesh.” Once again, Claire could see the straight, chilly mantle of the Duke of Fenmore descend upon him like a cloak. “If you would please, ask the child yourself. So we can be sure that I won’t upset her.”
“Yes, then. Thank you, sir.” The older woman inclined her head and bobbed a shallow curtsy. “If you’ll just let me pass by, I’ll see to it immediately, Your Grace.”
His Grace the Duke of Fenmore flattened himself against the wall of the narrow stairwell, and let his grandmother’s housekeeper pass by down the stairs. In her wake, he came out of the narrow space. “Good thing I’ve grown so tall, or I think she might have slapped the words
seminal liquor
right out of my mouth, the way she did when I was a child and said distressing things.”
Claire’s heart ached for him anew. What a strange unfrightenable boy he must have been when he became the duke. “And did you often say distressing things?”
“Always.” His eyes slid to hers before he turned his head to regard her fully. “But you’re not distressed.”
“Oh, I am, certainly. I’d be lying if I said otherwise. And you, I’m convinced, would know. It’s only that I’m determined not to give way to my distress. I’m determined to learn from this. Learn how to see things like you do, and protect myself.”
He nodded, and though he didn’t smile, the corners of his eyes warmed just a little. “You made a good enough start on that before.”
“Yes.” She felt her own mouth curve in answer and felt the sense of naive distress fade just a bit. Just enough.
He nodded again. “Good. Then you come.” He steered her a few steps back along the corridor and turned her to face the open servants’ stair. “Show me what you see. Show me what Maisy would have seen.”
“But she knew this house, did she not? She’d been here for several years. She would have known this was the servants’ stair, and that this was her best escape, wouldn’t she? And she was clever—cleverer than I. She would have known that Rosing was up to no good. She would have run straight for it.”
“Yes.” He agreed with her, but his eyes were regarding the two even-more-narrow doors that flanked the door to the servants’ stairwell. “But what if she didn’t make it?” He looked back at the door to Claire’s chamber from whence they had originally come, as if to gauge the distance. “What if he caught up with her? Where would he take her?”
“What’s there?” Claire pointed to the door on the right, keeping her voice as even as possible, even as the gorge rose in her throat at the memory of Rosing’s strong, merciless hands upon her. Perhaps they had been on Maisy as well. “He was right-handed.”
Rosing had opened the door to the boathouse with his right hand while he shoved her along with his big, merciless left clamped around her upper arm.
“We don’t know yet it was Rosing, Claire,” Tanner corrected quietly. “But that is a very good observation. Made under duress. Well done.”
“Yes, well. You said there are no coincidences.”
“I did. And there can be no accusations without proof. So what we need is proof that— Hello.”
It was a narrow broom closet unlit but by a very small window at the back such as maids and footmen would use for storage and supplies. There were copper tubs and buckets, an empty coal scuttle, whisk brooms, mops, and pails alike stored neatly on shelves and hanging on hooks.
But along the left-hand wall was a dark, smeared telltale stain that trailed down the to the very bottom of the beadboard wall.
Chapter Twenty-One
“Blood,” Tanner said before she had to.
The wall was dotted with blood both above and below the heavy smear. Just as he had predicted it would be. Maisy’s blood.
This was where Maisy Carter had been attacked. And most likely murdered.
Claire took a step back, and another, and another. She could hear the rising cadence and feel the panicked force of her own breathing, but she couldn’t seem to do anything about it. “I think I’m going to be sick. Again.”
He was at her side, leading her to a nearby chair situated against the wall and pushing her head down between her knees. “You didn’t vomit the first time, so you won’t do it again.”