The Tempting of Thomas Carrick (13 page)

Mrs. Kennedy exchanged a glance with Gwen. “From what Joy said, Alice was on the last leg of the training.”

Gwen nodded. “Almost, but not quite done.”

“She’s been sent for to come and fill Joy’s shoes.” Mrs. Kennedy grimaced. “She’s another would have taken Joy’s death hard, but the Wattses sent word she’ll be along as soon as she’s packed her things.”

“She knows she has to come and live here,” Gwen added. “She should be here tomorrow.”

Lucilla reviewed the list of questions she’d wanted to ask, then nodded. “I think that’s it for the moment. If you could show me where the still room is, I won’t take up more of your time.”

Both women shifted, but neither moved. They exchanged another glance, then Gwen made a get-on-with-it gesture at Mrs. Kennedy. The housekeeper primmed her lips, then she drew breath and looked at Lucilla. “We don’t know if this is the right thing to ask, miss—my lady—but we, all the staff, we were wondering if you might be able to convince the laird to take something. So dragged down he is, yet beneath it all, he’s a strong man.”

“I can build a body up with food,” Gwen said, “but with him it doesn’t seem to stick, not anymore. Joy was certain she could give him something that would help, but she didn’t think it her place to push, especially not with him being her laird, if you know what I mean.”

Lucilla did. She seriously doubted many people had the backbone to inveigle Manachan to do anything, much less on an issue that might well have touched his pride.

Mrs. Kennedy leaned forward. “If you could see your way to saying something, Lady, it would mean a lot to us.”

Lucilla held up a hand to stay further pleas. “I’ve already decided the laird needs my help—the sort of help such as I can give. That’s partly why I’m here.” She paused, then added, “No one in the Vale had any idea he was so poorly, or I, or my mother, would have been here earlier.”

The relief that shone in both women’s faces was clear. “So you’ll speak with him?” Mrs. Kennedy asked.

Lucilla couldn’t lie. “I’ll help him. Quite how I’ll go about it, I can’t yet say. He isn’t the easiest person to persuade to do something he’d rather not do.”

“Howsoever you manage it,” Mrs. Kennedy said, “you’ll have the gratitude of the entire clan.”

Rising, Lucilla smiled and let that comment pass, but she doubted it was accurate. Something very serious was going on at Carrick Manor and on the estate, and whoever was behind it was, almost certainly, a member of the Carrick clan.

She stepped over the bench seat. “If you could show me the still room?”

“Of course.” Mrs. Kennedy rose and waved to the door. “I’ll take you—it’s back along the corridor and off to the left down some steps.”

* * *

Lucilla didn’t spend much time in the still room. As Joy Burns had left the room prior to meeting her end, Lucilla hadn’t expected to find any clues. After a few minutes circling the room, noting and approving all Joy had done and finding everything she expected neatly labeled and stored, she stepped out, pulled the door shut behind her, and headed back into the maze of corridors. Following the directions Mrs. Kennedy had given her, she made her way into the disused wing.

The spot at the bottom of the wing’s main stairs where Faith Burns’s body had lain was easy to identify; even in the dim light that seeped past the drawn curtains and drifted down the stairwell from uncurtained windows on the first floor, Lucilla could see that the dark floorboards were covered in an inch of dust except for the area at the bottom of the stairs, which had been scrubbed.

She’d seen Faith Burns’s body when she’d directed the staff in properly laying out the sisters in the ice-house; Faith had been taller and bigger boned than Joy. Faith had fallen with such momentum she’d fetched up against the wall on the other side of the corridor, her neck broken.

Given what she suspected about Joy Burns’s death, and what she could now imagine of Faith’s, and how both might tie together, Lucilla stood in the corridor, staring unseeing at the lower treads of the stairs while she wondered whether she should press for the magistrate to be summoned.

But she couldn’t prove anything. Most importantly, she had no idea what it was that either Joy or Faith had suspected and spoken to the other about while they’d been in the servants’ hall and kitchen; she felt sure such a conversation had occurred, and that it had led to the deaths of both sisters. That was her theory, but that was all it was—a theory, a conjecture, a set of connecting suspicions.

Conversely, although it stretched credulity in some ways, it could easily be argued that Joy had died by eating something poisonous by accident on the same night that her sister had died by accidentally falling down the stairs.

“Preposterous,” Lucilla muttered. But how to prove it?

A footstep, soft, muted by a rug, had her glancing up—all the way up to the top of the rather steep stairs.

Thomas looked down at Lucilla standing at the base of the stairs, her upturned face lit by the soft daylight washing through the windows beside him.

He saw her fine brown brows slowly rise. The look she directed at him was plainly interrogatory.

He mentally sighed. “I was trying to work out why Faith might have come this way. It’s not a faster way back to the kitchens.”

Lucilla reached for the banister and started up the stairs. “According to Gwen, the cook, and Mrs. Kennedy, Faith wouldn’t have been returning to the kitchens. She had no reason to.”

He frowned, conscious of his attention bifurcating—his mind following their discussion, his senses locking on her. “What about the tray she took to Manachan’s room?”

“She left it with Edgar, as she usually did.”

He forced himself to move back, further from her as she reached the top of the stairs.

She stepped into the upper corridor, halted, and met his gaze. “If Faith had followed her usual habit, she would have taken the staff stairs up to the attics and her room.”

She leaned sideways to look past him, along the first-floor corridor. “What’s along there, and does it connect to the area where Faith should have been?”

He stifled another sigh; she’d already learned more than he had. Maintaining a decent distance between them, he turned and waved down the corridor. “There’s a door a little way along that opens into the gallery. In the gallery, it’s just past the entrance to the staff stairs for the main wing—the ones Faith would have used to come up from the kitchens, and presumably, later, to continue up to the attics.” He met Lucilla’s gaze as she looked at him. “So why did Faith come this way?”

“Because she heard something?” Lucilla glanced at the windows; three sets along the corridor had their curtains open. She nodded at the curtains. “Were those left open?”

“No. I opened them so I could see to search.” He glanced down. “But there’s only one scuff.” He pointed to a fresh mark in the layers of old beeswax at the top of the stairs, just to one side of the threadbare runner. “The sort you might expect if she’d tripped, skidded, and then fallen. Other than that…the runner in this area was flat and all looked normal.”

Lucilla glanced around at the floor just back from the stairs. “But what did she trip over?”

Her own feet?
He didn’t say the words, but that was the only explanation he’d come up with. He wasn’t sure he liked or approved of Lucilla’s involvement, but as had happened in the crofter’s cottage ten years before, he felt a sense of connection with her, an affinity that had nothing to do with any physical phenomenon but was rather an instinctive ability to interact and work with her, fueled by a recognition that, together, they were more effective than either working alone.

She was the only person he’d ever felt such a connection with, which was another aspect of her he didn’t want to dwell on.

Still glancing around, she frowned. “Where did Faith’s candle go?”

He blinked. “I don’t know. But if she tripped and fell, it should have fallen with her.”

They peered down the stairs, but the runner and the dark-stained wood of the stairs showed no evidence of any spilled wax.

“Hmm. The staff would have picked it up.” Lucilla stared at the stairs. “They must have straightened the runner, too. It would have been pushed around, wouldn’t it? As Faith tumbled and fell?”

They both considered the runner, which lay smooth and taut beneath its wooden restraints.

Focusing on the clear patch in the dust coating the floor below, he grimaced. “She must have pitched forward quite dramatically to have landed all the way over there, up against the wall.”

Lucilla made a
hmm
sound, then turned away from the stairs. “Did Edgar and Manachan know anything?”

“No. Assuming this happened shortly after Faith had delivered Manachan’s nightcap, both he and Edgar were awake, but they heard nothing.” He caught her eye. “What else did you learn from the staff?”

She readily gave him what he suspected was an edited, but essentially accurate, accounting of all she’d learned. At the end of her recitation, she paused, then said, “I know that the deaths of both sisters
could
be ascribed to accident, but it’s the timing I find most troubling.” She drew breath, then looked along the corridor. “I’m having difficulty accepting that Joy and Faith spoke in the kitchen—with Faith in the kitchen itself and Joy in the servants’ hall, so they would have spoken loudly—and then Joy dies of poisoning and Faith falls down the stairs.” She looked back and met his eyes. “Especially as I can now see how someone who was in the house at the time, who was close enough to the servants’ hall to hear Joy and Faith’s conversation, could have poisoned Joy, and then later pushed Faith down the stairs.”

He held her gaze for several long seconds, then demanded, “How?”

She told him. She concluded with “So I think we should find Joy’s canteen and see what the contents can tell us.”

“It was attached to her saddle. I’ll get Sean to find it.”

“Warn him not to drink from it.” She paused, then said, “I’m not sure I’ll be able to smell anything, not now. But we can test for such things, can’t we?”

Feeling grimmer by the minute, he nodded. “I’ll send samples with those from the Bradshaws’ well.” After a moment, he added, “But the results will take…probably weeks to come through.”

She shrugged lightly. “Both women are already dead… Oh, I see.” She met his gaze. “What it was they discussed and our hypothetical murderer heard and killed to conceal. There might still be a threat.”

“Indeed.” Jaw setting, he reached for her elbow. Ignoring the effect simply touching her had on him, he gripped and turned her along the corridor. “Let me show you which door leads into the main wing, so when in the gallery, you’ll know it’s the door you don’t need to go through.” The thought that someone in the house—or with access to it—was harboring some mysterious and murderous intent was unsettling enough; that she was there, under the same roof, made matters immeasurably worse.

Made an emotion he didn’t recognize rise up and grip him. Coerce and compel him.

Somewhat to his surprise, she made no demur at his taking control; instead, she walked beside him, courtesy of the narrowness of the corridor rather close, her velvet riding skirt brushing the material of his trousers. Once he was sure she was, indeed, consenting to leave the scene, he eased his grip, then released her altogether.

He would have increased the distance between them, but there was no space.

Lucilla found herself dealing with a rather odd fracturing of her awareness. On one level, she was increasingly exercised over the matter of the Burns sisters’ deaths, and very conscious of the tug of duty on that score, yet simultaneously her sensual awareness was reveling in Thomas’s nearness. In his touch, however brief.

The toe of her riding boot hit something, and she stumbled. “Oh!” She pitched forward—

Thomas caught her and hauled her upright. Hauled her to him.

She ended in his arms. Locked against him, her palms flat against his chest.

The first thing she registered was the heat of him, the warmth that seeped through the layers of fabric and sank into her.

Into her flesh, feeding her senses.

They came alive on a giddy rush of anticipation.

She raised her gaze to his eyes. In the same instant registered the sudden tension that had gripped him, that had turned taut, resilient muscle into granite and steel. The arms that held her so securely felt less malleable than iron.

But it was his eyes that most gave him away; the gold-flecked amber burned.

She didn’t stop to think. To question.

To give him time to snap his shields back into place.

The Lady might help and create the chance, but it was up to her to seize it.

Stretching up on her toes, she barely paused to whisper “Thank you” before she pressed her lips to his.

For one instant, her confidence wavered. What if he didn’t respond?

Then she sensed it—a sharp hitch in his breathing, a leaping, uncontrollable, barely reined impulse to seize.

She’d felt that reaction in herself—she recognized it in him.

All doubt evaporated. All caution fell.

She pressed her kiss on him, sure, certain.

Stepping boldly into him, she slid her hands up his chest and over his shoulders, savoring the heat and the strength beneath her palms, then she reached further, to his nape, and slid her fingers into the thick, heavy locks of his hair.

The feathery touch caught her, steadied her.

All her senses alive, she turned her mind from conquest to persuasion.

Drawing one hand from the silk of his hair, she placed her palm against one lean cheek and gave herself over to the communion of the kiss.

Thomas was lost, his anchor gone, swept away by a tide of ferocious yearning. His, but equally hers. Her longing had poured into him, inciting a response he had no hope of reining back. Of taming. Of restraining.

He wanted her; he always had.

But the part of him that wanted her—still, regardless—was the part of him he normally kept leashed, controlled. Hidden.

It hadn’t been her kiss, the sharp and shocking pressure of her lips against his, that had shattered the chains, that had broken the lock and flung wide the doors of his inner prison.