Sheri Cobb South (25 page)

“I said, ‘shut the door’ means ‘I love you’ in French,” Lucy repeated impatiently. “Honestly, John Pickett! Just because some men don’t know how to treat a lady—

She got no further, for Pickett seized her by the shoulders and planted a quick, hard kiss on her half-open mouth. “Thank you, Lucy! You’re a brick!”

“And don’t you forget it!” she called after him as he ran down the street.

* * * *

Lady Fieldhurst, ignorant of the grim fate that awaited her, was occupied with troubles of a different sort. Pacing the floor of the best guest chamber, she reread the note hand-delivered by a liveried footman only moments earlier, then flung the offending square of vellum onto the counterpane. It missed the bed completely and fluttered to the floor, but her ladyship paid no heed.

“Can you believe the cheek of the woman?” she demanded of her lady’s maid, who was restoring her mistress’s freshly laundered gowns to the clothes press.

“Quelle femme, madame?” inquired the Frenchwoman without pausing in her labors.

“Mrs. Bertram—the viscountess, as I suppose I must accustom myself to calling her. She cannot wear sparkling stones until her mourning is complete, so why must she have the Fieldhurst jewels today? And to demand them in such a way!” She pitched her voice in a very fair imitation of her cousin-by-marriage’s shrill tones. “ ‘George—my dear Fieldhurst, you must know!—will call for them upon the morrow, after he has returned from Fieldhurst Hall.’ As if she feared I might flee with them during the night! I wonder she does not come to collect them herself, so that she might count the silver while she is about it.”

“C’est tres difficile, madame, but she is within her rights, n’est-ce pas?”

“Indeed she is, although far outside the bounds of good taste,” Lady Fieldhurst admitted grudgingly. “And that is why, when George Bertram calls tomorrow, I shall surrender the family jewels with a smile on my face, even if it kills me.” A fresh concern occurred to her, and she added, “My jewel case is still in my own bedchamber, is it not?”

“Oui, madame. As madame cannot wear the jewels at present, I saw no need to fetch them. Shall I do so now?”

For a moment, she was tempted. She had been careful to avoid the room since the night of her husband’s murder, and she did not look forward to entering it now. But tomorrow the Fieldhurst heirlooms would pass to new hands, and one part of her life would be irrevocably over. She would collect the jewels herself, in memory of the young bride who had once been so dazzled by the man who had bestowed them upon her.

“No, thank you, Camille, your forbearance has been tried far enough by my ill humor,” she said with a sigh. “You may go now.”

“Merci, madame.” The lady’s maid bobbed a stiff curtsy and exited the room through the servants’ door.

Alone with her thoughts, none of which were pleasant, Lady Fieldhurst retrieved the note from the floor and read the offending message once more. What a pity that one of the Bertrams could not be arrested for the murder! To be sure, it was difficult to picture poor, dull George as a killer; she could not conceive of him having the imagination to concoct such a scheme, much less the courage to carry it out. Caroline, however, was another matter entirely. George had been subject to petticoat rule for as long as she had known him, and Caroline certainly possessed ambition enough for two. Yes, she could readily imagine Cousin Caroline hounding her poor husband to murder, just like Lady Macbeth.

I must ask Mr. Pickett if he can somehow pin it on Caroline, she thought, and smiled to picture his reaction to this request. But Mr. Pickett had been making himself very scarce of late; indeed, she had not seen him at all since that day in Queens Gardens. She supposed his absence meant there was no new evidence in the case. Or perhaps there was new evidence, and he was busy pursuing a lead. How gratifying it would be if that were so, and the case was soon solved. It would be a relief to put all this behind her, to go somewhere far away where no one had ever heard of the murdered Lord Fieldhurst or his notorious widow. Still, it was strange to think that, with justice served, the surprisingly youthful Bow Street Runner, with his unfashionable queue and slightly crooked nose, would pass as completely out of her life as if he had never existed.

With a sigh, the viscountess wadded the vellum note into a ball and tossed it into the grate. The afternoon was advancing, and her bedchamber, facing northeastward across the square, would soon be growing dark. She had no desire to be in the room after night had fallen.

Although her vacated bedchamber was only a short distance down the corridor from the guest room she now occupied, she might as well have been stepping into another world. The servants refused to enter this room, so it remained exactly as it had been on the night of Frederick’s death. The cold ashes had not yet been swept from the grate, and the curtains remained slightly askew from Mr. Pickett’s examination of the window for signs of forced entry or hasty exit. The indirect afternoon sun turned the room’s cream-and-rose splendor to burnished gold, recalling all-too-vivid memories of the firelight that had danced across the viscount’s lifeless body.

“Stop it at once!” she chided herself as she closed the door. “You are behaving as foolishly as the silliest chambermaid!”

Nevertheless, she carefully averted her gaze from the dark stain on the Aubusson carpet. She sat down at the dressing table, noting that here too almost everything was just as it had been on that night, the one exception being the nail scissors which had been taken as evidence. She removed the small key from its hiding place underneath the edge of the table, fitted it into the lock of the polished mahogany jewel case, and raised the lid.

Cut stones gleamed dully in the dim light. Sapphires, rubies, and emeralds all rested regally in their velvet-lined compartments, each ready to adorn the ears and throat of the new viscountess, uncaring of the fate of the old one. The opals had once belonged to her mother, and Caroline Bertram would have them over her own dead body. This thought not unnaturally gave rise to another: that of Mrs. Bertram claiming the pale stones after her predecessor had perished on the gallows.

She scolded herself for allowing her imagination to run away with her. For all she knew, Mr. Pickett might even now be preparing to arrest someone—Sir Archibald Stanton, perhaps—for her husband’s murder. Resolving to keep a tighter rein on her thoughts, she forced her attention back to the task at hand.

As a diversionary tactic, it left much to be desired, for the next jewels to catch her eye were the same diamonds she had worn on the night of her husband’s death. She could not recall taking them off—many of the events following the discovery of her husband’s body remained a blur—but assumed the faithful Camille must have returned them to their rightful place.

Removing them from their case for perhaps the last time, she held them up to her throat and regarded her reflection in the mirror. The white stones glinted against the black bodice of her mourning gown. It seemed a lifetime ago that Frederick had stood here beside her as she prepared for the ball, his cold fingers stroking her neck. She shuddered at the memory, just as she had shuddered at his touch. He had found her revulsion amusing and had offered to summon the chambermaid to light the fire. And she had said no...

The diamonds slipped through her fingers and fell to her lap as the significance of this memory began to dawn. He had offered to have the fire lit, and she had said no. Why, then, had there been a fire burning when she returned from the ball to find Frederick dead? Who had entered her room and started a fire against her wishes, and for what purpose?

She rose from the dressing table, dropping the diamonds into quite the wrong compartment, and moved slowly to the fireplace, where she knelt before the grate. The powdery gray cinders gave away no secrets, but several small, round lumps caught her attention. She reached in and plucked one from the ashes. It was hard and round, and when she wiped it clean on the skirt of her gown, she discovered two tiny holes on one side. It was a button: a button which, made of metal, had survived unscathed the fire that had consumed the garment it had once adorned. How very odd, and yet somehow familiar. Where had she seen such buttons before? She reached into the ashes again and found another, and still another. There were ten of them in all—ten small, round buttons, enough to fasten a woman’s gown from neck to waist.

Mr. Pickett must be told. But what could she do? She would not embarrass him by bursting into the Bow Street office again and demanding to see him, especially not as she appeared now, with her skirt and hands and—yes, a glance at her mirror confirmed it—even her face liberally dusted with powdery gray ash. No, she must write him a note instead, and instruct Thomas to deliver it at once. Seating herself once more at the dressing table, she pushed the jewel case away— she had no time to waste on such trivial matters now—withdrew crested stationery, pen, and ink from the top drawer, and began to write.

“Dear Mr. Pickett,” she began, then frowned. The greeting seemed rather too intimate. She wadded up the paper, withdrew a clean sheet from the drawer, and began again.

Mr. Pickett, something has come to my attention that may have a bearing on the case. Please call in Berkeley Square at your earliest convenience.

She underscored these last two words three times for emphasis. She then signed it, shook sand over it, sealed it with wax, and was just reaching for the bell pull when a faint sound behind her caused her to whirl around in surprise.

“Camille,” she said with a shaky laugh, discovering her lady’s maid standing just inside the service door. “How you startled me!”

Camille made no reply, but advanced silently into the room.

“As I said before, I am quite capable of sorting through the jewelry myself,” said Lady Fieldhurst in what she hoped was a tone of firm dismissal. “You may go.”

“What are you doing, madame?” Camille asked, sounding more like the mistress than the servant.

The viscountess gauged the distance to the door, and thought it politic to answer the question, however impertinent. “I am writing a letter for Thomas to deliver. I was just about to ring for him when you came in.”

“Give it to me, madame,” Camille said, holding out her hand. “I will see that he gets it.”

“That will not be necessary.” Seeing Camille’s gaze shift to the little pile of buttons on the dressing table, Lady Fieldhurst realized she had not the luxury of awaiting Mr. Pickett’s arrival. Her best—indeed, her only—course of action was to engage the abigail in sympathetic conversation while she inched toward the door. “I found your buttons in the ashes, Camille. Why did you burn your dress?”

“It was necessary because of the bloodstains, madame,” replied the lady’s maid with a Gallic shrug. “But I think you already know this, n’est-ce pas?”

“Oh, my poor Camille,” breathed Lady Fieldhurst. “You should never have made such a sacrifice.”

“Sacrifice?” Camille’s tone was one of contempt. “You think I killed him for your sake, because you quarreled with him? No, this thing I did for myself, because I loved him!”

To Lady Fieldhurst, confronted with her servant’s defiant tilt of the chin and her flashing, dark eyes, it seemed as if she was looking into the face of a stranger. But no, this woman was no stranger. She had seen her once before, gazing passionately out from a painted canvas, her long, dark hair, as yet untouched by silver, spilling over her bared bosom. “You were his mistress.”

“Long before you were his wife!” Camille spat. “You, who could not even give him the son he wanted so desperately! If not for the Revolution, I might have looked far higher than an English viscount for a husband, but no! My family’s lands were confiscated and I—I, Camille de la Rochefort, who might have married whomever I pleased— was forced to earn my bread on my back, while le vicomte married a country nobody too green to realize he had another woman.”

“Perhaps,” Lady Fieldhurst said, taking a small step toward the door, “perhaps he loved both of us, in his way.”

Camille, reliving past grievances, seemed not to hear her. “He was a man unlike other men, and so when he asked me to betray my homeland, I said, ‘Why not?’ Why should I not betray those who made it impossible for me to marry the man I loved?”

“You spied for England?”

“For England? Bah! What care I for England? I spied for my lover. It was one thing that you, his wife, could never do for him, just as you could never give him a son. And all the while, I said ‘oui, madame’ and ‘non, madame,’ and laughed because I possessed a part of him that you never could.”

“Then why—” The viscountess forced the question past lips that had suddenly gone dry. “Why did you kill him?”

“Because his love was false!” cried Camille, as if the words were torn from her throat. “Because it was all a lie! On that night I heard him talking to Monsieur Stanton below stairs, and I realized that he had been using me all these years. It was England he loved, not Camille de la Rochefort. I would have done anything for him, given him anything he asked, because I loved him. He did not have to lie to me.”

“Poor Camille,” murmured the viscountess, almost within reach of the door. “He betrayed us both.”

“His betrayal of me was worse,” Camille said, advancing purposefully upon her mistress. “For now he is dead, and you have his name, and his position, and the house where we once loved with such passion. And me, I have lost my lover and now I have nothing. And you will win again, for it is you who will join him in death.”

Realizing that her moment had come, Julia sprang for the door, but in that fraction of a second when she fumbled for the knob, the woman was upon her. The viscountess was ten years younger than her maid, but Camille was several inches taller and outweighed her mistress by more than two stone. Although Julia fought with every ounce of strength she possessed, kicking and clawing for all she was worth, the outcome was never in doubt. Camille seized her by the throat and flung her backwards onto the bed, then grabbed one of the thick goose down pillows and pressed it over her face.