Whisper To Me of Love (42 page)

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Authors: Shirlee Busbee

BOOK: Whisper To Me of Love
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He didn't answer her, only grasped her arm fiercely and pointed. She gazed in the direction he indicated, and with dawning horror, she stared at Ratter, the cat's lifeless body frozen in the last act of an agonized writhe, the partially finished saucer of milk inches from his horribly contorted body. Milk that she had been about to drink ...
C
HAPTER
26
T
here was a tense silence as they stared in growing horror at the cat's still form, and then, with a sob, Morgana buried her head in Royce's chest. His face grim, he held her protectively next to him as he murmured soothingly in her ear, meaningless phrases that were, oddly enough, comforting.
Eventually her shock and fright lessened somewhat, and pulling slightly away from him, she gave one last watery hiccup; looking up into his set features, she asked disbelievingly, “Someone just tried to kill me, didn't they?”
Royce would have liked to deny her simple question, and for one instant he seriously considered trying to cloud the truth, to console her with empty words, but she deserved better than that, and if, as it appeared, someone was trying to kill her, she needed to be alert and watchful for danger. His arm tightened around her shoulders and bleakly he said, “It would appear so—and I would very much like to have a conversation with young Clara.”
“Clara?”
Morgana uttered dumbfoundedly. “Why would she want to kill me?” Her face clouded. “Why would anyone want to kill me?”
Royce had no answers for her. This unexpected attack on Morgana momentarily had him baffled. There were only two people who could have more than a passing interest in Morgana—the one-eyed man and the Earl of St. Audries. The one-eyed man was capable of anything, even cold-blooded murder, but Royce had difficulty believing that the one-eyed man, having failed to kidnap her, now wanted her dead. And the Earl? What possible reason could he have? Granted Devlin might find it distressingly repugnant to discover his bastard daughter had become the mistress of a man he had made abundantly clear he disliked intensely, but murder? It didn't make any sense! Someone, however, obviously wanted her dead! But who? And more important, why?
Settling Morgana gently in a chair, Royce mercifully covered Ratter's pitifully twisted body with a pillowcase he snatched off the bed, and then, walking to the bell rope, he gave it a peremptory yank. Glancing across at her, he said harshly, “The next few moments may be exceedingly unpleasant. Do you wish to remain here?”
She nodded, keeping her gaze averted from Ratter's body. “You seriously believe that Clara knows something about what happened?” she asked quietly, incredulity apparent in her cat-shaped gray eyes.
“It seems a logical point to start. After all, she was the one who brought you the milk this evening, and Harry Bullard saw her dismount from a vehicle this afternoon driven by a stranger—a stranger who seemed to be taking pains
not
to be seen!” Royce would not tell her any more. Under the present circumstances, he certainly wasn't about to blurt out the fact that her father, the man who had callously abandoned her at birth, was lurking in the neighborhood and had been nosing around trying to elicit information about her! There was also no point in mentioning that Stephen Devlin was very high on his list of suspected poisoners—and he couldn't bring up one fact without the other!
Sooner or later she would have to know that the Earl of St. Audries was her father, but as she had just survived an ugly brush with death, Royce didn't feel that it was imperative she know that her father might have just tried to kill her! Let her concentrate on the stranger for the present, he thought reluctantly, but very soon, for her own safety, I
must
explain to her about Devlin.
Chambers answered his ring, a question in his blue eyes. “You rang, sir? Cook will have your tray ready in just a few moments.”
Royce nodded. “I'm not worried about
that!”
he said roughly. “What I would like to know is everything that you can tell me about one of the local housemaids who was hired recently. Clara is her name, and she just brought up Miss Fowler's usual glass of warm milk.”
Looking slightly flustered and just a little anxious, Chambers answered readily, “You must mean Clara Holbrook. Her family is a local one, farmers, I believe, and when I first inquired about additional servants, her name was mentioned to me by several people as an honest, hardworking young woman—and so she has proven to be. Has she done something wrong?”
“That remains to be seen,” Royce replied austerely. “Have her sent up here, will you?”
Chambers left immediately, his features betraying little of the rampant curiosity that roiled in his breast. A few minutes later, there was a timid knock on the door, and at Royce's command, it opened and Clara Holbrook entered the room.
Clara was not a prepossessing young woman. Just twenty years old, she was not very tall and was inclined to plumpness; her hair, which was a mousy brown, was stuffed untidily under a white frilled cap, and her large, faintly vacant blue eyes were the best features in a plain, moon-shaped face. Casting an avid glance around the room, an expression of excitement mingled with apprehension flickering across her features, she gave a brief curtsy. Since Ratter's body was hidden from her, she saw nothing strange in the room and recited woodenly, “Chambers said that you wanted to see me, sir?”
“Yes, I did,” Royce said neutrally. “I'd like you to tell me about the gentleman who was so very kind to give you a ride back to the cottage this afternoon.”
The slightly vacuous expression that she habitually wore instantly vanished, and Clara paled noticeably. “I-I-I don't k-k-know what you m-m-mean, sir!” she stammered, nervously twisting the corner of her white apron.
“I think you do!” Royce stated bluntly. “And if you are wise, young woman, you will tell me immediately what I want to know—if you don't, I shall have no recourse but to send for the magistrate and have you detained for questioning in the attempted murder of Miss Fowler!”
“I never!” Clara burst out indignantly. “Why, I wouldn't hurt a hair on Miss Fowler's head!” Throwing Royce a hostile look, she muttered sullenly, “Which is more than can be said for some folk around here!”
Royce lifted one thick black brow and murmured sardonically, “I'm sure that you know what you mean by that comment, but before you regale us with what is sure to be a fascinating explanation, perhaps you would like to tell us how the milk you brought up for Miss Fowler this evening came to be poisoned!”
“You're daft!” she protested vehemently. “It wasn't no poison that I put into Miss Fowler's milk!”
“Ah, so you admit that you
did
put something into her milk tonight,” Royce pounced immediately.
Clara glanced over at Morgana, who had been intently watching the swift exchange. Reassured by the encouraging smile that Morgana sent her way and feeling decidedly righteous, she answered boldly, “And what if I did?”
Royce contemplated her for a long moment, puzzled by her defiant air and the hostility with which she regarded him. Deciding that since she held him in such unaccountable antipathy, there was only one way to get to the bottom of this in a hurry, he commanded softly, “Come over here; I'd like to show you something.”
Mistrust evident in her face, she cautiously approached him. As she came nearer to him, the pillowcase that covered Ratter's body came into her view for the first time. Perplexity obvious, she glanced from Royce to the patch of white on the floor.
“Go ahead,” Royce said quietly. “Lift it up and look underneath.”
Some of the tenseness that gripped the other two occupants transmitted itself to her, and after darting an uncertain look at each of them, she took a deep breath and swept aside the pillowcase. In horror she staggered backward, her gaze fixed on the cat's grotesquely positioned body, the half-finished saucer of milk inches from the lifeless form. It would have been apparent to someone far less astute than Clara what had transpired, and her eyes nearly started from her head at the ugly sight; she gulped noisily and then, promptly burying her face in her apron, burst into tears.
Morgana rushed from the chair and put her arms around Clara's plump shoulders. “Please don't cry,” she begged gently. “Just tell us who gave you whatever it was you put into my milk this evening.”
Royce twitched the pillowcase from Clara's nerveless fingers and once again covered Ratter's body. “We don't believe that you meant your mistress any harm ... but someone did, and you can tell us who it was.”
It took a great deal of coaxing, but in between fits and starts and bouts of profuse tears, seated next to Morgana on the sofa in the sitting room, to which they had adjourned, Clara managed eventually to tell her story. In growing amazement Royce and Morgana listened to the preposterous tale that Clara had been told.
“But, Clara, it is all
untrue!”
Morgana said fiercely. “Mr. Manchester has not drugged me!” A lovely flush staining her cheeks, she added passionately, “And you must believe me when I say that I have no other lover! Whoever this man is, he is
not
my lover and he has lied to you!
He
is the villain, not Mr. Manchester!”
Clara cast a nervous glance over at Royce where he sat in a chair across from them. His position and expression must have satisfied her, because looking back at Morgana, she said earnestly, “But don't you see, miss, if you were drugged, that's what you
would
say!”
“You're forgetting one thing, Clara,” Royce interjected reasonably, despite having a strong urge to throttle the silly twit. “Whatever he gave you to put into her milk tonight, it wasn't something to counteract the drug I have supposedly been giving her,
it would have killed her!”
His face exceedingly grim, he concluded harshly, “If my arrival hadn't delayed her drinking the milk long enough for the poison to kill Ratter, there would have been two dead bodies lying on the floor in the other room, and one of them would have been the young lady who is sitting next to you!”
This induced another bout of noisy sobbing and tears from Clara. Morgana threw Royce a mitigating look, and Royce grimaced disgustedly. It took Morgana a while, but once again she had Clara soothed and willing to tell them what she knew. But even though they questioned her closely, there was precious little else to be learned. She didn't know the man—he was a stranger to her. No, she had never seen him around the area, and he had made no plans to meet with her again. Beyond describing him as heavily bearded, a tall man, she thought, but she didn't know for sure since she had only seen him in the gig, she couldn't tell them much more about him. He did have ever-so-nice manners, she confessed unhappily, and a proper way of speaking, and he dressed far more nattily than any of the local men she knew, almost as fine as a gentleman, but that was all she could tell them.
Smothering back a frustrated curse, Royce eventually dismissed her, speeding her on her way with the command “And tell Chambers to come up here to dispose of the cat!”
As could be expected, Chambers was aghast at what had happened, and once he had removed Ratter's body and restored the bedchamber to a pristine neatness, he told Royce somberly, “I will take special care in getting rid of the milk so that it is not allowed to cause any further harm.” His face very worried, he asked quietly, “How is Miss Morgana feeling? What a terrible thing for her to experience! Who could have done such a viciously cruel act?”
“Morgana is just fine, although she is understandably shaken by what happened,” Royce answered candidly. “But as for who tried to murder her, I have no idea.” A steely glint in his golden eyes, Royce looked at Chambers and said bluntly, “I want Clara Holbrook out of this house at first light—and from now on, either you or Ivy are the only ones to touch
any
food or drink that is to be served to Morgana, and you alone are to bring it to her.”
Fear evident in his eyes, Chambers replied in appalled tones, “Sir! You do not think that someone will try to poison her again!”
“I don't know,” Royce retorted sharply, “but I am unwilling to run the risk! It was pure luck that I arrived when I did, and I'm not willing to wager that luck will always be on our side.” His features hard and dangerous, Royce added grimly, “Keep your eyes and ears open, and watch everyone—someone tried to kill your mistress tonight, and if we don't want them succeeding, we will have to take better precautions than we have so far.” He frowned and said, “I don't know if there will be any way of stopping Clara from spreading the real story, but I want you to give out that the cat died naturally—which, of course, upset Morgana since everyone knew how fond she was of the animal. I believe that Clara will probably go along with what you say, since this situation does not present her in a very good light—and even if her tongue wags from here to London, I still want her out of here as soon as possible! And keep a sharp eye on her until then!”
After Chambers had departed, Royce returned immediately to the sitting room, where he had left Morgana. Determinedly casual, he smiled tenderly at Morgana and asked lightly, “Would you mind waiting here for me while I go talk to your brother and Zachary and let them know what has transpired?”
Despite herself, Morgana yawned, and trying to match his mood, gave him a sleepy smile as she replied, “No, but don't be surprised if I am asleep when you return.”

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