A Marquess, a Miss and a Mystery Read online

  She peered into the corridor on the other side. It was narrow, with a woven rush mat running down the middle of the stone floor, presumably to muffle the sounds of servants going about their business. And it was lit by a succession of small squares of glass, high up on the facing wall. She’d probably be able to see them from outside, if she stood in the courtyard and searched for them. But they were so tiny she’d just think they were part of the elaborate decorations that smothered every inch of the outside walls.

  Lord Devizes followed her into the narrow passage and allowed the door to shut behind them. ‘Well, this certainly explains how Dr Cochrane managed to get from Lady Tewkesbury’s room to the portrait gallery so quickly.’

  ‘Indeed it does. This way,’ said Horatia, darting off in the opposite direction from that in which the girls, and the hapless nursery maid, were running. ‘It should bring us out somewhere in the ladies’ wing.’

  ‘Where we are going to search Lady Tewkesbury’s room for something that is not a code book.’

  She glanced over her shoulder at him and almost caught him smothering a smile.

  ‘You find this funny?’

  ‘I find you vastly amusing,’ he said with a grin.

  ‘Look, I have good reason to want to search Lady Tewkesbury’s room.’

  ‘I am sure you do,’ he said. Patronisingly.

  ‘Yes. She grew very agitated when I suggested going to her room with her. I’m pretty sure she’s hiding something. Not a code book. But...something.’

  ‘And will you know what it is when you find it?’

  ‘I hope so. I mean...it is as I was saying before. About everyone being good at hiding their feelings. The only one who is agitated, as far as I’ve been able to see, is Lady Tewkesbury. Only, I can’t see why she would betray her country. Or get mixed up with the sort of people who would murder Herbert just because he was on to them. She is far too high in the instep, surely?’

  ‘Ah, well, that is no indication of loyalty to the Crown, so I have discovered,’ said Lord Devizes, for the first time sounding anything but amused. ‘Being high in the instep, as you put it, can be a motive in itself. The way the present monarch and his son have been carrying on is enough to turn the most High Church Tory into a screaming radical. Especially those from families who are old enough to consider the pair of them German upstarts.’

  ‘Oh!’ Horatia had never considered that before. ‘But...to pass on state secrets to agents of the French government...what would they hope to gain from that? I mean, even if they could get rid of the Hanoverians, the French model of government wouldn’t be much of an improvement, would it? Especially when you consider that most of the French nobility either got killed or had to run away, and lost pretty much everything.’

  ‘As to what they hope to gain, in this particular instance, it is the hope of restoring the French emperor, I believe, since the agents we have in France have been informing us that there are many of his ardent followers attempting to get him released from his exile because they don’t want the monarchy restored there. Bonaparte did, after all, bring order out of the chaos that their revolution created.’

  ‘But...’ She paused and turned to him. ‘Surely, if he did leave Elba, not all the French would support him. Wouldn’t it mean...war?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said grimly. ‘Which is why people like myself have been working so hard to discover who, in England, is sending those...agitators so much information.’

  ‘And why you are even prepared to listen to my suspicions about who might be involved.’

  ‘Well, that, and the fact that we have to find some way of passing the time, since I have promised faithfully not to attempt to ravish you. On the name of an archbishop.’

  ‘You did no such thing! Not...the name of the Archbishop bit, anyway, because they never said his name. Oh...you...’ She just, but only just, resisted a strong urge to slap him. Then shook her head at allowing him to provoke her into reacting exactly the way his sister had done. A way which she’d despised as being childish.

  And he had deliberately provoked her, she rather thought. Because he’d been getting too serious. Letting her see too much of what he really felt, deep down. And making a joke of everything was his way, or at least one of his ways, of keeping people at a distance.

  Keeping her at a distance.

  ‘Stop teasing me,’ she said firmly.

  ‘Must I?’

  ‘Yes.’ There was no need for it. And it wasted so much time. Time they didn’t have. ‘Now,’ she said, scanning the corridor. ‘I wonder which of the doors along here will take us into Lady Tewkesbury’s room.’

  ‘How about,’ he said, peering at a slate in the wall next to the nearest door, ‘the one which has her name on it?’ He then turned and grinned at her over his shoulder.

  Drat the man for being so clever. Of course, the servants would have the names of their guests chalked up. Servants in a ducal household, that was, with a housekeeper as efficient as Mrs Manderville. No risk of any of the visiting staff stumbling into the wrong bedrooms, or using the excuse of getting lost when their mistress or master rang for them.

  ‘Should we knock, do you think,’ he said, ‘or simply barge in and hope there is nobody there making up the beds, or hanging up freshly laundered clothing?’

  ‘We will knock. At least,’ she said, ‘I will knock and, if there is a maid there hanging up the clothes, I can make some excuse about...’ Well, she was sure something would come to her. ‘And you can stay right here, next to the door, where nobody inside will be able to see you.’

  He nodded and gave her a mock salute.

  She shook her head at his levity. Gave a brief rap on the door, squared her shoulders and pressed down the latch.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The door opened into a bedchamber. An unoccupied bedchamber.

  ‘There’s nobody here,’ she said and stepped inside. She stood perfectly still, looking about the room. Rather than being divided into a separate sitting room with two small bedchambers off it, like the apartment she shared with Lady Elizabeth, this was one enormous space. There was a screen near the bed behind which she supposed there was a washstand and so forth, and a dressing table at one end. Chairs and a sofa grouped round the fireplace. A writing desk standing beneath one of the floor-to-ceiling windows. ‘What do you think I should be searching for?’ she said, whirling round to ask Lord Devizes, who was lounging in the open doorway, his arms folded over his chest.

  ‘This was your idea,’ he pointed out. Annoyingly.

  ‘Yes, well... I might have been wrong.’

  ‘What!’ He feigned astonishment. ‘You?’

  She ignored the jibe. ‘I know she was behaving oddly. For her. But perhaps she just didn’t want me in here because she dislikes me and values her privacy.’

  ‘That is,’ he said gravely, ‘a distinct possibility.’

  ‘You aren’t helping!’

  ‘What would you like me to do? Argue with you?’

  ‘No. Yes. I don’t know. Come up with some ideas.’

  ‘You already have plenty.’

  ‘Why are you being so calm? There are only a few days before the Duke’s wedding, after which we will all have to leave, then we’ll never find out who is behind Herbert’s murder. And I’m standing here, arguing about the wisdom of searching Lady Tewkesbury’s room, when for all we know the real culprit hasn’t even arrived yet.’

  ‘Or has just arrived,’ said Lord Devizes, inspecting his finely manicured nails. ‘Has it not occurred to you that the term “The Curé” might be a jocular reference to a religious man who might be more than a mere parish priest?’

  ‘You are surely not suggesting that an archbishop might be involved?’

  He glanced up from the inspection of his nails, an unholy grin on his face.

  ‘Oh, you are impossible! You are d
eliberately trying to annoy me. Why must you always goad people into losing their tempers with you? No, never mind, I know exactly why,’ she said, stalking back to the doorway and putting her hands on her hips. ‘It is a kind of armour, to repel people, in case they get too close and...’

  ‘Well, you should know,’ he said, the smile vanishing as he straightened up. ‘You do the same with those dreadful clothes of yours.’ He indicated her rather shabby, dyed gown. ‘I know Herbert could have made you fashionable, if you’d taken his advice. But, no. You would rather retreat into your shell like a myopic snail. I wouldn’t even be surprised if there was nothing but glass in those ugly spectacles of yours,’ he said, snatching them off her face.

  He was wrong. About the spectacles, if not the rest. The part about her hiding from society behind a shield of awkwardness and unfashionable clothing—that was all too true. It had been her inability to cope with the cut and thrust of so-called polite society that had made her dig in her heels and emphasise all the things people had criticised her for, insisting that she could never fit in, so why should she bother?

  ‘I need my spectacles,’ she said, shaken. ‘I can hardly see my hand in front of my face without them. Please.’ She held out her hand. ‘I need... I need...’

  ‘Here,’ he said gruffly, placing them back in her outstretched hand. And sighed. ‘We are two peas in a pod, you and I,’ he said, running his fingers through his hair. ‘Hiding our true selves from the world behind masks of rudeness and clothing. Flashy clothing in my case. Ugly clothing in yours.’

  ‘Opposite sides of the same coin, you mean, then,’ she said pedantically, hooking the wires over her ears and taking a step back. ‘Not two peas in a pod.’

  ‘Horatia, I...’

  ‘I am going to...’ They both spoke at once. He gave her an ironic bow and extended his hand in a gesture that told her she should go first. ‘I have decided to have a quick look in Lady Tewkesbury’s Bible, now I am here,’ she said defiantly, turning and heading for the dressing table where she’d noticed one lying out in the open. ‘Just in case she has made any notes in the margins, or underlined any words for no apparent reason.’

  ‘And if that bears no fruit?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said grumpily.

  ‘You could, perchance, listen to what I think we should do next?’

  What, he’d had a plan all along? And had let her come blundering up here anyway? Ooh, if she wasn’t already halfway across the room, she would have been sorely tempted to slap him. Though, since any attempt to do so would have resulted in him grabbing her wrist well before her palm got anywhere near his smug face and making her feel even more inadequate while he had a good laugh at her, it was just as well she was halfway across the room.

  She took a deep, calming breath. Picked up the Bible that was laying, so conspicuously, on the dressing table next to her ladyship’s hairbrushes.

  ‘You have a plan,’ she said, as nonchalantly as she could, while flicking through the pages.

  ‘Of course I have a plan,’ he said, shaking his head in mock reproof. ‘I...’ He froze. Held his finger to his lips. ‘I think...’ He darted back into the servants’ corridor, swiftly pulling the secret door to just as the door to the main corridor opened and Lady Tewkesbury came in.

  ‘You!’ Lady Tewkesbury also froze, for a moment. ‘You impudent...’ she took a step forward ‘...meddling...’ another step ‘...infuriating creature!’ She looked at the Bible Horatia held in her hand and her face turned a ghastly shade. ‘He was right,’ she said, as though to herself. ‘I should have stopped you long before this. In London. But I couldn’t believe it was true. You couldn’t have known...’ She shook her head. Gazed desperately round the room. ‘Make it look like an accident, he said,’ she muttered to herself. ‘No more loose ends...’

  From the disjointed way she was talking, Lady Tewkesbury must either be touched in the upper works, or in the conspiracy up to her neck.

  Part of Horatia wanted to shout huzzah! She was almost certain that she’d tracked down one of the people behind Herbert’s death. Another part was shocked that it could be a lady with whom she was on, well, perhaps not exactly friendly terms, but she’d been in her house a few times and certainly considered her daughter her friend.

  But the most part of her wanted to make sense of those cryptic comments, if there was any sense to make of them. Could the he of whom she spoke be The Curé? The man behind it all? And had they really suspected Horatia was involved in Herbert’s work? Before she’d left London? And what did she mean about loose ends?

  Well, the obvious way to find out was to ask.

  ‘Who is making you do this? Who is The Curé?’

  Lady Tewkesbury went a shade paler. ‘How do you know his name...? He warned me you were dangerous. I wouldn’t listen. He told me I had to stop you, but I didn’t think it was necessary. You are just a...’ She waved a hand at Horatia in a gesture of disdain. And then her face twisted with hatred as she started stalking across the room. But not towards Horatia. Instead she was heading for the writing desk, from which she snatched up a long-bladed letter opener.

  Horatia only realised what Lady Tewkesbury intended a split second before she came running at her, slashing wildly with the letter opener. She just had time to raise the hands that were holding the Bible, using it like a shield, as the blade came slashing down with terrific force. Horatia was pushed back into the dressing table as the knife glanced off the thick leather cover of the Bible, then scored a line of fire across the back of her left hand. One of her elbows struck the mirror as she reeled back from the blow. And something went wrong with her fingers of her left hand. She found she couldn’t hold on to the Bible any longer. As she tried to right herself, clutching at the Bible which had saved her before, Lady Tewkesbury raised her arm to strike again.

  But the second blow never came. For Lord Devizes was there and he’d seized Lady Tewkesbury’s upraised hand, holding it firmly in both of his own. Lady Tewkesbury screamed and for a moment or two went wild, kicking and clawing at him. In the struggle, Horatia got knocked to the floor. Where she sat, stunned and panting, and feeling slightly sick.

  ‘That’s enough of that,’ said Lord Devizes, pushing Lady Tewkesbury in the general direction of the bed, while somehow also wresting the weapon from her hand.

  ‘What,’ came a new voice from the main doorway, ‘is going on in here?’

  Horatia tore her eyes from Lord Devizes, who was standing over the bed with the bloodied letter-opener in his hand, to see Lady Elizabeth, staring at him as though he was a murderer. Horatia knew she was going to have to speak up before her friend could jump to the wrong conclusion.

  ‘Your mother tried to stab me,’ Horatia said. Then frowned, for her voice sounded funny. Come to think of it, the whole room looked funny. As if it was rippling. And going misty.

  ‘Mother, really,’ said Lady Elizabeth, striding over to the bed. ‘I know you have never liked Horatia, but surely attempting to injure her is out of line. One cannot give way to one’s urges to stab people we don’t like, no matter how strong the compulsion, else every ballroom would soon be littered with corpses.’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ moaned Lady Tewkesbury. ‘She means to ruin us. She knows...’

  ‘Knows what?’

  ‘Never mind standing there talking,’ said Lord Devizes, suddenly looming over Horatia. ‘You need to call for help.’

  Grim-faced, he started clawing at his neckcloth, while behind him, Horatia saw Lady Elizabeth run across the room and tug on a bell-pull.

  ‘Don’t,’ Horatia whispered as he started winding the strip of muslin round her hand. ‘You will ruin it.’

  ‘As if that matters,’ he growled, pulling it tight. Making her wince. ‘I have to stop the bleeding.’

  ‘Bleeding?’ Horatia tore her gaze from his face and looked down at her hand, which was
now wrapped in a makeshift bandage, which was going red. There was a small red puddle on the floor beneath her hand, too. And, come to think of it, her hand hurt. Rather a lot.

  ‘It will take for ever for someone to answer the bell,’ said Lady Elizabeth, from somewhere out of sight. Horatia heard her run across the room again and saw the door fly open, then heard her friend scream for help. At the top of her lungs.

  But then everything went dim.

  And then faded away altogether.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  She’d fainted away. From loss of blood. Or was it just the shock? How would he know? It was a doctor she needed, not a man who had never taken care of anyone else in his life.

  Nick looked impatiently at the empty doorway, then at Lady Elizabeth, who was fussing over her mother who was now lying face down on the bed, moaning. And then at Horatia, lying so still and pale in his arms. He fought the urge to crush her to his chest and weep into her hair. It wouldn’t do her any good. Like as not it would only make matters worse.

  Dammit, why didn’t anyone come? What would he do if Horatia died? He would be alone again. Horribly alone, after knowing what it felt like to have someone at his side these past few days. Someone on his side, come to that. At that point his own stomach rose up and almost choked him.

  But then, thank heaven, Horatia’s eyes flickered open. ‘What...?’ she murmured.

  ‘You fainted,’ he said.

  ‘Nonsense. I never faint.’

  ‘No, you are far too sensible,’ he said, stroking an errant strand of hair from her lovely face. She was back! His darling, prosaic, sensible girl...

  ‘Yes, and nobody has ever tried to stab me before,’ she pointed out. Although she was not making any protest about being held in his arms, or about him stroking her face. Even though they were not alone.

  ‘A glass of water might help,’ suggested Lady Elizabeth, from the bed. ‘Or sal volatile.’