Jo Beverley (26 page)

What would the earl do?

She had no idea. The man was a mystery to her, and a rather frightening one. It was all very well for Mr. Chancellor to say Saxonhurst never hurt people, only things. The earl had never been married to a woman accused of murder before.

A woman who lied to him, and admitted that she kept secrets from him.

A woman, if he ever found out, who'd used Black Arts to trap him into a disastrous marriage.

She stopped with a hand over her mouth. Oh God, this was all the
sheelagh's
fault! This was the sting in the tail.

Look what had happened to her parents, after all.

She sagged against the trunk of a leaf-bare tree, grief
squeezing like a vise at her chest. Her mother would never have wished for her own death. Her love for her husband had been powerful, but she would never have deliberately abandoned her children. So, whatever wish she had framed had gone wrong, or the
sheelagh
had claimed her life as price.

And Meg had brought this evil into the earl's world.

As she made herself stagger on, she decided he and everyone else would be safer if the marriage was annulled. The duchess might know how to achieve that, and she'd certainly be willing. Saxonhurst would be better off, even with Lady Daphne Grigg, than he was with Meg Gillingham!

But first, she had to get into the hotel.

A rough voice curtly told her to “mind her back.” She hastily moved out of the way of two men with a barrowful of vegetables, then watched as they turned down a lane. They might be heading toward the hotel!

Cautiously, she followed. One man dragged the two-handled cart, whole the other helped heave it over rough spots. Meg felt around the two keys in her pocket, seeking the few coins she'd possessed on her wedding day. How much did she have? A sixpence and a few pennies.

What a dowry for a countess!

Determined to try, she came up behind the man at the back.

“I have to get in to see a lady in the hotel,” she whispered. “I'm desperate. I know she'll help me.” She showed him the sixpence.

He nudged the cart over a bump. “So?”

“Let me pretend I'm with you? I'll help unload.”

The man who was pulling stopped and turned. “Harry, we've no time now for that!”

“Nah,” said Harry. “She just wants to help unload.” Meg showed the sixpence again and Harry took it. “No reason for us to complain if she likes to work.”

“Half that's mine,” said the other man, going back to hauling.

Playing her part, Meg helped push the cart over the next rough bit.

“Pudding in the oven?” Harry asked.

“What? Oh”—Meg blushed—“no. Just in a bit of
trouble. The old lady in the hotel, she knows my husband. I think she'll help me.” Even now, Meg found it hard to tell lies.

“Fancy folk don't help the likes of us, ducks, but it's no skin off my back.”

Meg pushed the cart again, thinking of backs and skin. One punishment for minor crimes was whipping at the cart's tail. Being dragged around half naked, and whipped until the blood ran. Of course, they wouldn't do that to a countess.

Would they?

For murder, they'd hang her anyway.

Surely the earl could stop that.

Transportation?

She had no idea what powers the nobility had about such things.

But she hadn't done it!

She was so panicked, she kept forgetting. She hadn't done it. Someone else had murdered Sir Arthur. Who? Why?

Little Sophie?

But no. If the gossip was true, she'd died, too, poor child.

The housekeeper?

Perhaps. But why?

They were at the back door to the hotel by then, and the man in front rapped at the door. A manservant opened it.

“Provisions ordered from Samuel Culler.”

“You're late.”

“Came in from the country late.”

“Never mind your excuses, get 'em in that store shed over there.” The servant slammed the door.

Meg looked with frustration at the freestanding wooden shed the men were opening. Then she grabbed a net of brussel sprouts and stalked through the door.

She'd expected to walk into a kitchen, and had a number of good lines to try. Instead, she found herself in a deserted, dark corridor. Ahead, a half-open door probably led into the kitchen, judging from the racket and smells.

Almost past caring, she shed her foul coat and dumped it in a corner with the sprouts, then walked
boldly past the door and climbed a set of narrow stairs. Nobody stopped her.

At the top of the stairs, before a baize-covered door, she paused to gulp in air and tidy her hair as best she could. Now, in her decent dark gown, she might be taken for a guest, or at least the servant of a guest. That, of course, meant she'd be safer inside the hotel then in the servants' quarters. All the same, she didn't want to go out into the public spaces.

She went up past the main floor to a higher one where the guests would have rooms.

She'd been in a hotel like this once when traveling with the Ramillys, but she had no idea whether they were all the same. That one had dining and reception rooms on the ground floor, and a kind of drawing room on the upper one, where the guests could sit if they wished to, and take tea or other refreshment. The rest of the building had been guest rooms, some suites with private dining rooms, some just bedchambers.

She was sure the Dowager Duchess of Daingerfield had a suite, but that didn't help her find it. She'd never find it skulking here, however. She squared her shoulders, turned the knob, and walked boldly out into the guest part of the building.

A white-haired gentleman strode by briskly, hat at a jaunty angle, cane swinging. He did not so much as glance at her. Meg walked in the opposite direction, trying to look like someone's companion on a busy errand. Or a governess. She'd been that once. It should be easy.

Then a man in shirt sleeves and apron backed out of a room, carrying a tray. He must be a hotel servant.

“Excuse me,” Meg said. “I'm afraid I've lost the way to my mistress's rooms. The Dowager Duchess of—”

“That un,” he said with a grimace. “Bet she's waiting for you with boiling oil ready! You're on the wrong floor, blossom! Don't know how you got up here.”

“Oh.”

But he'd already hurried off toward the stairs she'd used. Of course, the invalid duchess would be on the ground floor if there were guest rooms there.

She teetered between going back to the servants' stairs
or using the main ones, and decided it had to be the main.

I belong here,
she said to herself as she walked back toward the wide, carpeted stairs.
I am governess to some children staying here, engaged on a legitimate errand. I will not look like a fugitive from the law.

She walked down the stairs, not acknowledging a fashionable couple going up chattering about theater plans for the night. They ignored her as if she were a ghost. Down below, a porter stood by the door, constantly ready to attend to people coming and going. Close by, a powdered footman hovered, available for any request or errand. This being a quiet moment, they were chatting.

They paid her no attention, but they'd notice her if she looked lost. She slowed as she went down the last few stairs, trying to think what to do.

Where would a private suite be? Surely not at the front. Through one door she could glimpse a front room and it was a dining room.

At the bottom of the stairs, without pause, Meg turned around the carved newel post and headed toward the back. Two servants hurried by, one with a box, the other with a cloak over her arm. Another overtook her from the other direction. None paid her any attention except to swerve around her.

She thought of again claiming to be lost, but there could be so few private rooms down here that it would sound very strange.

She was going to have to open doors.

She picked one, and walked in.

Then walked right out again, the image fixed of two older gentlemen glaring at her through the smoke of their pipes.

Gentlemen's smoking room, and one portly man had taken his shoes off. He must be troubled with corns or bunions!

Tempted to giggle, Meg picked the next one, ready to apologize and back out again.

She walked right in to the hawk-eyed glare of the Dowager Duchess of Daingerfield.

“Get out of here!” snapped the old woman, who was on a chaise, a fur over her legs, a book in her hand.

Meg closed the door behind her and leaned on it, suddenly weak. “You probably don't recognize me, Your Grace. It's . . . it's Lady Saxonhurst.”

Color flared in the woman's sallow cheeks. “Why are you here?” The duchess's hands had tightened on her book, and could even be shaking. With rage? Fear? “Are you going to attack me?”

Meg stared at her, suddenly filled with pity. “Of course not, Your Grace.”

“Then what do you want?”

Meg wanted to shake the silly earl who wouldn't bend, and who had this belligerent old woman afraid. “You did say I could come to you for help, Your Grace.”

The yellow eyes narrowed and the duchess put aside her book, steadier now. “You want help? Then I'll go odds Saxonhurst doesn't know you're here. Sit!”

Meg obeyed the barked command, feeling rather like a puppy.

“Help with what?” the duchess demanded.

It was appallingly difficult to put things into words. “Well, Your Grace, I have landed in a pickle, I'm afraid.”

“Don't sidle around things like an ingratiating churchwarden. Tell me straight!”

Meg swallowed. “Some people seem to think I've done something . . . that I've committed murder!”

“Whom did you kill?”

“No one! But I think . . . Sir Arthur Jakes is dead, you see. And some people seemed to think I did it. So I ran. Or rather, Monkey did. And when he went, I couldn't think where to go. I don't want to go to jail. So I came here.”

“Monkey?”

“A footman.”

The duchess rarely blinked. Meg realized that was what made her stare so unnerving. “Who is Sir Arthur Jakes?”

“A friend of my parents, Duchess. And our landlord.” Trying to ignore the fixed, hawk's eyes, she went on to tell her story, leaving out the reason for the visit and Sir Arthur's disgusting behavior.

“You took no servants?”

Meg was beginning to realize how thin her story
sounded without the essential details. “I am not used to servants, Duchess. And I was just visiting an old friend.”

“You have no business visiting gentlemen without your servants. No lady does.”

Feeling like a scolded puppy now, Meg lowered her head. “I'm sorry, Your Grace.”

“I have never left a house alone,” the old woman declared. “Since becoming Duchess of Daingerfield, I have never gone on foot in a public thoroughfare. I would take a carriage, young lady, to cross the street!”

“But I'm not a duchess, Your Grace.” Meg added a silent, thank heavens.

“You are a countess. Learn to act like one. How will the world go on if people do not behave according to their station?”

She was, Meg saw, completely serious. Dangerous laughter teased at her.

“Well?” the duchess demanded.

“I really don't know, Your Grace.”

Too late, Meg realized her inner amusement must be showing. The duchess's whole face pinched.

“You have no intention of conforming to your new status, have you?”

“I will try to be a good wife—”

“That is not the same thing at all. I trained Daphne to fill the role of countess adequately. Daphne!”

An adjoining door crept open and Lady Daphne Grigg peeped in. “Duchess . . . ?” She trailed off at the sight of Meg.

“Come in here. You remember Saxonhurst's bride?”

Blotches of color flared in Daphne's sallow cheeks, but she curtsied. “Countess.”

“You can dispense with that,” the duchess said with a curl of the lip. “She doesn't hold with manners, do you, gal?”

Recognizing war, Meg sat straighter. “I wouldn't say that, Your Grace.”

“Then what would you say?”

“That good manners have little to do with rank.”

“Idiocy. But I don't suppose it matters. They doubtless aren't high sticklers in the Fleet, or wherever they send murderesses waiting to be hanged.”

Daphne gasped, fluttering a pale hand to her flat chest. The hand that wore the emerald ring she had said was her betrothal ring. “Murder . . . ?”

“She is believed to have committed murder.” The duchess made the indictment sound like the very epitome of bad manners.