Suzanne Robinson (27 page)

Frowning, she opened her mouth to ask him what he meant, but he was gone. She ignored a feeling of foreboding and looked around the room for the papers she had
dropped when Alexis had picked her up. It was almost time for dinner, and though some of the guests had left, it would be another terribly formal event. She would need time to wash and dress. And she needed to rest. Being with Alexis was more tiring than washing five tubs of miners’ laundry.

Rest proved an impossible goal. She lay down, but kept seeing lines of women dropping at Alexis’s elegantly booted feet. Ophelia led the parade, followed by Hannah, the countess, and several beautiful but unnamed victims. In her vision, Alexis did nothing but stand in a cloud of vapor and accept homage. Until she approached. Her he grabbed and pulled beneath him. They disappeared into the mist.

Kate groaned and sat up in bed. In spite of the resolution she’d made at Thyme Hall, she’d acted like a grain of sand again. Her only consolation was that Alexis was as confused as she was.

She was tired of being confused, though. It was time to corner her elusive love and get a few things sorted out. She wanted to know how he felt about her; she wanted to ask why his mother accused him of crimes Kate knew were against his nature to commit. And most of all, she wanted to know if he still considered their betrothal a farce.

Of course he didn’t show up to escort her downstairs. Kate was of the opinion that he sensed a showdown and was avoiding it. He made a habit of irritating her anyhow. Why should tonight be any different?

She went down to dinner with her mother instead. Everyone was assembled in the State Dining Room when they arrived, including Alexis. Juliana greeted Kate and Sophia, and the woman’s air of martyrdom irritated Kate. Ever since the betrothal announcement, Alexis’s mother periodically warned Kate of her impending doom. Juliana went about in a state of melancholy even more dramatic
than usual. It was especially at odds with the frantic enthusiasm of her poodles and marmoset.

Alexis went to Kate as soon as he saw her, and spared enough time to talk to Mama. Then he was gone. He chatted with the dean. He cast showers of compliments on the Dinkle covey. He coaxed a silent and grave Valentine into a flirtation with Lady Churchill-Smythe. He exchanged hunting stories with the Earl of Cardigan. He affectionately insulted Fulke. To Kate it was clear that he was willing to spend time with anyone as long as it wasn’t her.

As a result, Kate couldn’t eat. When dinner was over and the gathering moved to the Red Drawing Room, her despondency fermented into anger. How dare he ignore her? She wasn’t the one who couldn’t control her passions. It wasn’t her fault that whenever they were together, they ignited like an oil-fed fire. After all, he was the one with the artist’s model body and erotic walk. It was all his fault.

Kate sat on a crimson damask couch and pretended to listen to Juliana talk about the Queen and Prince Albert. Alexis was slinking over to a window, alone for once. Kate scowled at him, but he wasn’t looking at her. He was looking outside. He leaned closer to the window. Without a word to anyone, he scooted around the room made crowded by the ladies’ crinolines and slipped away.

It took her a little while to get to the window, but she made it. Looking out, she at first saw nothing but blackness. As she scanned the lawn below, a movement caught her eye. It was a skirt. She cupped her hand against the glass, blocking out the light from the drawing room. Beside the skirt was a leg encased in black, a leg well-muscled from riding and too long to be anyone’s but Alexis’s or Fulke’s. Fulke was in the drawing room.

“Hellfire.” Kate clamped her arms down to keep her crinoline where it belonged and sailed out of the room. She gained the lawn, but not in time to see where the two went.

“The snake,” she muttered as she scanned the lawn. “The worm. Two-faced, rutting ass. Tries to make me into a human rug to wipe his feet on and then goes about sticking his unmentionable into whoever is close enough to make it stiff.”

She set off toward the Ghost Tower. “If he’s in Lattice’s room, I’ll take a pair of scissors to his lordly gifts. And I won’t cry. Maybe later, but not until I tell him where to put this engagement.”

They weren’t in the Ghost Tower. Kate didn’t want to think of what she would have done if they had been. Not giving herself time to contemplate, she searched a few more rooms. Finally she walked out onto the lawn again. Picking up a twig, she started breaking it into little pieces as she paced back and forth in front of the Ghost Tower. The castle was too big to search. Hellfire. She wanted to catch him with his pants down. What she needed was a whip. There might be one in the keep. She headed for the old tower. The door was unlocked, and she stepped inside.

Lost in blackness, she felt her way through the entry, past a gap that was the foot of the stairs that led to the gallery and upper floors, heading in the general direction of the table she’d seen when Alexis had brought her there.

Above her head there was a rustling sound, then two thuds, a small one and then a louder one, and finally, a long scream. At the first sound, Kate had searched the darkness around her, seeing nothing. The scream brought with it a loud crash. Metal clanged against metal, stone, and wood. Something rolled past her feet. Kate stayed put, trying to decide where the crash came from.

At the same time, a light appeared from the direction of the stairway. A lantern floated toward her held by Alexis, his tie undone and his shirt open. Behind him was a hard-breathing Mrs. Beechwith.

“Kate?” Alexis stopped in front of her. “What have you done?”

“Don’t go accusing me, you Sybarite. The noise came from over there.” Kate pointed.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“Shut up and give me that lantern.” She snatched it from him and walked into the darkness.

Weapons were strewn all along the path toward her destination. Pikestaffs, axes, swords, shields, maces. Kate kept walking until she reached the great pile of armor and weapons Alexis had shown her. In the light of the lamp, the old metal gleamed dully. She held the lantern higher, and its glow spread upward over the pile to illuminate cuirasses, helmets, lances.

The light also revealed drops of liquid dotting the metal. Red splashes became a trickle which led to a hand. Kate’s own hands trembled, and she put both of them on the lantern. Barely aware of Alexis coming up behind her, she stood gaping at the body on top of the hillock of weapons and armor, impaled on a boar spear and a halberd.

Alexis rushed past her. “Hannah?”

There was a retching sound behind Kate. Carolina Beechwith gagged, doubled over with her hand to her mouth, then fled.

Kate swallowed hard herself. She felt her head swim and her arms become light.
Stop it. It’s not the worst you’ve seen. Remember that man the Indians caught out by himself in the Carson Desert.

She watched Alexis lean toward the grotesque pile, stretching across the weapons to grasp Hannah’s wrist.

“Don’t bother,” Kate said. “She’s dead.”

“But how?” Alexis asked. He shook his head and straightened. He kept shaking his head as if in denial of what he saw. “Dear God. Poor, poor Hannah.”

Kate knew she had to do something besides look at the dead woman’s open eyes and mouth. She tugged at Alexis’s arm.

“She fell. Hold the light up. I’m not tall enough.”

As Alexis’s arm stretched high, the glow of the lantern revealed a hand and arm hanging from the gallery floor above them. Without a word he raced for the stairs with Kate behind him.

On the gallery he halted. “Be careful. There are rotten boards.”

They walked slowly toward the spot directly above Hannah. Lying face down, one arm hanging over the edge, was the Earl of Cardigan. The railing above him was broken where Hannah had fallen through it. Alexis handed the lantern to Kate. He touched Cardigan’s head and turned the man over.

“He’s been hit from behind.” Alexis looked around and picked up a mace lying nearby. “With this, probably.”

“I don’t understand,” Kate said.

They remained beside the earl in silence. Alexis bent over the man to check his breathing, then stood straight, his body rigid. He stared into the dark emptiness of the keep.

“Val.”

Kate’s heart started fluttering. “Oh, no. The earl probably took liberties and Hannah panicked.”

“And hit him with the mace she always carries with her?”

“It could have been here all the time. She could have hit him and lost her balance.”

“But why would she be here at all? With him?” Alexis ran a hand through his hair.

“Maybe she wanted a more willing stud to father her child.”

It was a nasty blow. She knew it. Alexis started and looked at her as if she had struck him with one of the glaives. He said nothing for a long time, merely stared at her.

“Are you going to ruin her reputation after she’s
dead,” he asked finally, “or just make Fulke desperately unhappy?”

“Neither,” she said.

“Then go for help. Get my steward and don’t speak to anyone else. Carolina has probably fled to her room, and I know she won’t tell anyone.”

Kate left, and for her the next hours passed in a numb fog. The earl was carried off to his bed and a doctor summoned. Servants removed Hannah’s body while Alexis broke the news to Fulke. Officials came and went. Kate talked to them, as did Alexis, and it was sunup before she crawled into her own bed. In spite of her shock and unhappiness, or because of them, she slept until almost sunset.

She woke to find that Juliana’s guests had gone, and the earl had been questioned by the head of the constabulary. Cardigan could remember nothing. He had been standing on the gallery with Lady Hannah when someone hit him. He passed out, then he woke up. That was all.

Sophia recounted all the events to Kate, and it was during this recital that Kate got her first taste of English justice tempered by aristocratic privilege. The investigation had been conducted quickly. Police had swarmed unobtrusively and left.

“They questioned Lord Fulke,” Sophia said, “and Mr. Beaufort, too, for a long time. But Lord Alexis wouldn’t let them take him away.”

“Who?” Kate asked.

“Mr. Beaufort, of course. You know how he detests the earl.”

“But there’s no proof.”

Sophia nodded. “Exactly what Lord Alexis said. Mr. Beaufort was supposed to be in his room resting after dinner. Lord Alexis said there were too many people roaming about who could have killed Hannah. He said
there were other officers at the Dower House who hated the earl. He wouldn’t let them take Mr. Beaufort.”

“And what does Valentine say?”

“Oh, he made the marquess furious. They almost came to blows.”

“Mama, what are you talking about?”

“You see, the marquess was protecting Mr. Beaufort from the superintendent. But Mr. Beaufort told both of them that he knew the difference between a lady and a fool, and that if he had set out to dump the earl onto those awful spears, he would have made short work of it, and no mistakes either.”

“Oh no.”

Sophia bobbed her head up and down. “Lady Juliana was spying on them and she told me about it. She said the marquess told Mr. Beaufort to be quiet and then asked the superintendent to leave. So there it is. Poor Lady Hannah is dead, and no one knows who did it or why.”

Kate said nothing of her own suspicions. Val could have tried to kill the earl and struggled with Hannah, but she couldn’t see the young man choosing to attack with a lady present. From Sophia she knew that Fulke had absented himself from the drawing room shortly after she, Kate, had left. Fulke. Could he have found out about Hannah’s infidelity? Perhaps he’d known all along and had been waiting for a chance to kill her. Also, there was the possibility that one of the recovering officers might have tried to kill the earl and fumbled it.

“But you haven’t heard the worst.”

Sophia’s voice interrupted Kate’s musing.

“What, Mama?”

“Lady Juliana accused the marquess of killing Lady Hannah. Right in front of those police people. In front of everyone.”

“That’s absurd.”

“That’s what Lord Sinclair said. Of course, they all
knew that you had been walking with him, along with that Beechwith creature. It was all quite clear, but Juliana didn’t care. She kept telling the constables to arrest the marquess, and dear Lord Alexis just stood there and let her accuse him. If Lord Sinclair hadn’t taken Juliana away, I don’t know what would have happened. It’s all so confusing and terrible.”

“So she humiliated him, and he didn’t defend himself?”

“Well, you know how Lord Alexis is with his mother, all closed up and frozen. I don’t understand it.”

Kate made for the bedroom door. “Where is he?”

“Asleep. Meredith finally got him to bed an hour ago.”

Slowing, Kate resigned herself to a wait. But she was going to face down Alexis de Granville, dead Hannah or no.

Kate emerged from the Watch Tower onto the wall walk. It was almost sunset of the second day following Hannah’s death, and she knew from Meredith that Alexis was up on the curtain wall. He was standing between two merlons with his arms propped on an embrasure. In profile his face was outlined with the gold haze of the setting sun. There wasn’t an unclean or bulging line to complain of in that visage, and its perfection made her all the more angry. He might have forgotten Mrs. Beechwith, but she hadn’t. Marching up to him, she stopped beside a merlon. It was pierced by an arrow slit.

“I won’t be a grain of sand.”

Alexis whipped about to face her. “Everlasting hell. You shouldn’t sneak up on a man.”

“I didn’t sneak. You were day-dreaming.”

He came close to her. “I was thinking of you.”

She threw out a warning hand. “Don’t bother to be nice. You won’t feel like it for long, because I have a few things to say to you.”

Sighing, he leaned on the merlon, folded his arms, and cocked his head. Kate scowled at him.

“I hear you managed to protect Valentine from justice, spare Fulke the knowledge of Hannah’s infidelities, and save your mistress’s reputation all at the same time.”