Traitor's Masque (43 page)

Malisse threw up her hands and stalked across the room. Of all the times for him to disappear! So many things on her mind and a visit planned this afternoon to some friends of Anya’s from Evenleigh. Butlers simply didn’t vanish! They counted silver and called for the coach. It was unthinkable!

Seething in frustration, Malisse left her study to look for him, quite forgetting the parlor maid, whose indiscretions paled in significance next to the need to find Sanderl. On her way down the hall, Malisse questioned Darya’s maid and one of the footmen, who both claimed neither sight nor knowledge of the man since very early that morning.

She checked the library and the spare bedrooms without success, then continued downstairs. The dining room, the silver closet, the linen pantry, the sitting room, the drawing room… still nothing. By the time she reached the back of the house, Malisse had encountered nearly every member of her staff and none of them seemed to have seen anything, let alone a portly and self-important butler.

Malisse paused before she crossed over the threshold of the kitchen. She would not have cared to admit it even to herself, but her cook was perhaps the only person she knew who had the capacity to intimidate her. In her own mind, Malisse had convinced herself that ladies did not enter the kitchen and had no need to communicate with such persons as cooks and scullery maids. In truth, the kitchen felt like someone else’s territory and for a woman accustomed to mastery, it was an unpleasant sensation she had never intended to repeat. Alas for unfortunate necessity.

Steeling herself against the vexation in store, Malisse stepped through the door, expecting to find it bustling with activity. She was not disappointed.

Her ears were immediately assaulted with undignified screams. The kitchen, she saw at a glance, was filled, not only with chaos, but with smoke! At once terrified and outraged, Malisse shouted for Sanderl before she remembered he was still missing, and certainly nowhere to be seen in the midst of the panicked kitchen maids. Even the cook was nowhere in evidence.

Beginning to feel just a trifle panicked herself, Malisse was momentarily frozen in indecision when one of the maids spotted her and screamed even louder.

“Fire, Mistress! Quickly! This way!”

The smoke and the confusion were too much for Malisse’s gently bred sensibilities and she did not, for once in her life, hesitate to follow the maid’s instructions. She followed her in the direction of the nearest exit, which happened to be the scullery. It could not, of course, have been blamed on the kitchen maid that they attempted to pass through the door at the exact same time that one of the scullery maids was attempting to do so, in the opposite direction. And it could not really be the scullery maid’s fault that she was hastening to put out the source of the smoke with a very large pail of washing water. The resulting collision ended rather badly for Malisse. And for her silk morning dress.

It was, of course, rather difficult for a lady to know what to do in such a circumstance. Torn between the need to escape the smoke, bemoan her ruined dress, berate the clumsiness of her underlings, and shriek incoherently at the feeling of dirty wash water running down her neck, Malisse found herself quite speechless for several endless moments.

The kitchen maid seemed incapable of doing anything but stare, her hands pressed to her cheeks in horror. The scullery maid had fallen to her knees, and was now sobbing in terror. The tableau remained frozen, except for the steady drip of water from once carefully coiffed golden hair, now sodden and featuring what was unmistakably a bit of potato peel.

It might have been the worse for the scullery maid had this interesting scene not been overrun by the sounds of an approaching stampede from the kitchen. There was little for Malisse to do but either run with them or be run down. She staggered gracelessly out the door, into the kitchen garden, suffering the first pangs of what would no doubt have been strong hysterics, had she not stumbled into the approaching form of Umbersley.

The poor man had, quite properly, been hastening to assist with the crisis. In fact, he had arrived so hastily that he had not stopped to put down his large basket of compost, only just fetched from the stable midden. Umbersley was a tall man, and impressively strong, capable of supporting a very large, very full basket on one broad shoulder. He could not, it must be noted, have foreseen that her ladyship would be coming out of the scullery, let alone with such indecorous haste, and nearly throw herself in his path. And he was, as must be expected in the lower classes, a rather clumsy man, who had been about to set down his burden when he was almost overbalanced by the collision. Rather than commit the ghastly error of permitting Her Ladyship’s person to fall into the mud of the garden, he had dropped his basket and caught his mistress. It was only an unfortunate accident that the basket upended itself on the way down. And it was no doubt coincidental that it did so directly over Her Ladyship’s head. Compost met wash water and their union was the source of indescribable delight to the eyes of what suddenly seemed like every menial in the house.

It was not one of Colbourne Manor’s finer moments. Unless of course you were to consult the servants, in which case you might find that it was considered, beyond all doubt, the most beautiful thing any of them had ever been privileged to experience. No one ever really did determine what happened afterward. The fire, if there had been one, was put out. The smoke cleared. The probable culprits seemed to disappear as a stunned and incoherent Malisse was led solicitously led away by her sympathetic dresser and a fluttering upstairs maid.

After such a morning, the chaos would have to sort itself out. The mistress could not really be expected to be herself under such conditions. Recriminations and investigations would have to wait. Her Ladyship was in very great need of a bath.

When Kyril finally rode up the drive at Westhaven, the sun was pouring over the trees. The grass was drenched with dew, but showed no tracks, indicating that no one had been there for a few hours at least. In fact, no one seemed to be about at all. If Ramsey had sent anyone to observe the house they remained well concealed.

Musing on the probability that he would be severely chastised for this escapade, Kyril urged his horse briskly up the front walk and dismounted in front of the door. Normally, by this time, an outraged butler would have appeared, begging him to wait until someone could be found to take his horse. Of course, normally, the front door would not be standing open on a silent front hall.

Suddenly aware of all the ways in which this might have been incredibly stupid, Kyril put one hand on the dagger under his tunic as he moved to investigate, leaving his horse munching unconcernedly on the shrubs. He could plead for clemency later, if that turned out to be necessary. Which, he knew within moments of cautiously peering through the doorway, it would not be.

The sound of his boots echoed eerily down the silent hall as he stepped in and made his way to the foot of the staircase. Lady Isaura Westerby was not likely to be very worried about her shrubs, now or ever again.

He should have felt something, Kyril thought, as he gazed at the body of the woman who had tried to murder her king. Her neck was obviously broken, probably from falling down her own stairs. Or perhaps she’d had help? There was blood, staining her white gown and crusted on her still, white face. Someone had hit her very hard in the nose. A friend and fellow traitor, perhaps? Whoever they were, Kyril doubted they had remained in the house. Even the servants seemed to have deserted their mistress, and who could blame them?

Leaving the body where it lay, Kyril moved off to search the premises. Lady Westerby might be dead, but she may have left clues as to the identities of her compatriots. Even more importantly, he might find a clue as to the nature of the poison.

The first few rooms offered nothing much of interest. The sitting room and parlor seemed cold and sterile, empty of anything that might give them personality. The dining room was dark and seemed largely unused, so too the library. But when he entered what he thought had probably been the late Lord Westerby’s study, the story changed drastically.

The space was obviously in use. Lady Westerby had likely adopted it for her own work in the absence of her husband, but it remained a masculine room, down to the high, dark wooden beams of the ceiling. From one of those beams hung what was unmistakably a noose. The lady had perhaps planned a different death for herself than what she had suffered.

Crossing to the desk, Kyril was unsurprised to find on top of it a single paper, folded and sealed, addressed to Prince Ramsey Tremontaine.

Normally, Kyril would have been appalled by the idea of reading a note meant for someone else. But with the king near death and a body in the hall, he felt not even a twinge of guilt as he broke the seal and perused the text of the message, hoping to find some clue that would aid him in his search. A detailed recipe for an antidote, perhaps? Or maybe even a map. With Rowan’s location marked by a giant red “X.”

The note contained neither of those things, but as Kyril waded through the final words of a traitor and murderess, he began to gain a clearer picture of what had occurred. And why. Lady Westerby had been little more than a catspaw. The other members of her conspiracy had used the tragic death of her husband to goad her into action, into doing a deed they had no stomach for. Politics had been a secondary matter, at least for her. All she wanted was revenge, on the people she considered responsible for her grief.

It was fortunate indeed, Kyril mused grimly, that she was not only vengeful, but paranoid. Feeling betrayed, she had listed each of her confederates by name, with a brief but florid account of his or her transgressions. Elaine Westover’s name was conspicuously absent, as was Rowan’s. Even so, the list would no doubt prove to be fascinating reading for someone back at Evenleigh. Brawley, perhaps?

Kyril was briefly disappointed that of the three women listed, none were young enough to be the mysterious imposter who had warned them of the plot. For whatever reason, Lady Westerby had not seen fit to include her name, perhaps concluding that Ramsey would have already dealt with her perfidy sufficiently.

But in the end, there was nothing much to help him in his present situation. She made it very clear that she hoped the king would suffer, and that his loved ones would suffer with him, from the agony of unfounded hopes. Kyril was going to have to look elsewhere for answers and hope she’d been careless.

Tucking the note inside his jacket, he continued the search, opening doors, tapping on walls for secret panels, looking in drawers and rifling through books. Nothing he uncovered seemed odd or even remotely worth his scrutiny. From the study he moved to the kitchen, then upstairs, not without a grimace as he stepped over the body. Perhaps he should cover it.

Most of the bedrooms proved empty. Towards the end of the hall, there was one that seemed to have been occupied. The window stood open to the morning breeze, and the closet contained several dresses, one of which he instantly recognized as the russet silk that the false “Elaine” had worn to the ball. He paused for a moment to reflect on their brief acquaintance and contemplate her identity. She had seemed so wry and unaffected. Well-bred and well-educated, but utterly lacking what usually passed for social polish. And it was unlikely, considering the outcome of her attempt at intrigue, that she had been hired for her experience in deception. An amateur, playing a game that had quickly taken her out of her depth.

Or had it? Whoever she was, she seemed to have fled. Possibly ridding herself of witnesses on the way? It roused a flicker of anger in Kyril, anger with himself and with her.

He had liked her. Been utterly taken in by her combination of biting wit and innocent observation. Even if what Ramsey said was true and she was largely a pawn, he was not yet ready to forgive her for deceiving him.

Two bedrooms left, and precious little evidence of anything untoward had presented itself so far. The bedroom next to Elaine's had probably belonged to Lord Westerby, and looked unoccupied. Its connected twin, however, did not. Lady Isaura’s bedroom was largely as uncluttered as the rest of her house, though very expensive in its simplicity. The bed was neat, the linens undisturbed, and there were no discarded garments to be seen.

When he came to the bureau, however, Kyril knew he had found what he was looking for. The dark, polished top was swept clean of any ornamentation, save for one incongruous object in the exact center. A vial. Stoppered glass. With only the tiniest drop of liquid in the bottom. Kyril knew it instantly for what it was.

A taunt. It may or may not have contained the poison Lady Westerby had used on King Hollin. But she knew very well that they would not take any chances, or leave any avenue of possibility unexplored. They would be forced to assume it might be important, and go to any lengths to determine its origins. It would be especially sweet if all their efforts proved to be in vain.

Cursing the traitor’s thoroughness, Kyril pocketed the vial and decided his search was finished. He would return to report his findings to Ramsey, so they could decide together what should be done next. There seemed no evidence that Rowan had been there, and little reason for him to return. Kyril would continue the search elsewhere. He might even ask for Ramsey’s permission this time.