Once Upon a Wallflower (19 page)

Mira leaned forward in eager anticipation. “What did she say? Did she know anything beyond what we have already heard?”

“Did she ever!” Nan said, a flush of excitement staining her cheeks. “The day Miss Linworth was found? Liddy said she went to light the fire in Miss Linworth’s chamber early that morning, before anyone knew that anything was amiss. She noticed straight off that Miss Linworth’s trunks were packed and stacked near the chamber door. Not packed well, though. There were bits of Miss Linworth’s pretty gowns peeking out from the lids. Probably ruined the gowns.”

“Hmmm. So either Miss Linworth’s maid packed her mistress’s things in a scandalous hurry or perhaps, Miss Linworth packed for herself.”

“Liddy also said that, a week later, Lady Beatrix sent her up to Miss Linworth’s chamber to scrub the carpet. It was stained with blood.”

Blood. The word hung in the air between them, ugly and dark.

“Is she certain?” Mira breathed, reluctant to disturb the grim hush. “How can she be certain? How can she know it was blood?”

Nan shook her head, her bright, anxious eyes fixed on Mira. “Miss Mira, a chambermaid would know. You have to figure out what a stain is before you can remove it. Dried blood has a distinctive color, a peculiar odor. Liddy may be a gossip, but she is not daft. She says it was blood, and I believe her.”

“Why was there blood in Miss Linworth’s bedchamber?” Mira mused aloud.

Taking a deep, fortifying breath, Nan drew herself up and captured Mira’s gaze with her own. She swallowed hard. “I think perhaps Miss Linworth was planning to flee,” she said, voice measured and carefully neutral. “I think Lord Ashfield saw her packed trunks and realized she was leaving. I think maybe that made him angry. Angry enough to kill her.”

Mira sat silent for a moment, deep in thought, staring at one of the whimsical birds painted on the wall. “Mmmm,” she murmured, shaking her head. “No.”

She fell silent again, collecting herself. Finally she faced Nan. “No,” she repeated emphatically. “It makes no sense. If Nicholas struck Miss Linworth, injured her in her own bedchamber, how did she end up dead at the base of the curtain wall?”

“Perhaps he struck her there, in her room, and she fled,” Nan suggested gently. Her brow was knit in an expression of pity. “Perhaps he pursued her onto the allure and pushed her off.”

Mira shook her head with more force. “No, Nan. If Miss Linworth was trying to escape from Nicholas, why would she run away from the main house, run instead toward the tower where she knew she would find no help?” Unless, she thought, Olivia was in a panic and became lost in the maze of Blackwell’s hallways. “Besides,” she continued, almost to herself, “would she not have thought to scream? No one heard a scream, and, while the house is large, it is not
that
large.”

Lifting one shoulder in an uncertain shrug, Nan countered Mira’s uneasy logic. “So perhaps he struck her in the bedchamber and rendered her unconscious or even killed her, then carried her out to the allure and threw her off the curtain wall.” Nan wrapped her arms around her middle, the image of such a cold-blooded act mirrored in her far-off stare.

“Still, it is not logical,” Mira insisted. “If Nicholas struck Miss Linworth and wished to, um,” Mira stumbled, flustered, “um, dispose of her, why would he carry her toward his own room? Would that not incriminate him? It simply is not logical.”

Nan huffed an impatient sigh. “Miss Mira, people do not always behave in a logical fashion. I should think that someone mad enough or angry enough to murder a young woman, that person might not think so clearly.”

A little bubble of panic welled up in Mira’s chest. And then a thought struck clear and sharp in her mind, and the panic instantly evaporated. “Motive.”

A puzzled frown marring her delicate features, Nan pulled back. “Motive? Miss Mira, what on earth are you talking about?”

A smile crept across Mira’s face, a smile of serene satisfaction. “Nan, our entire discussion is premised upon your assumption that Nicholas saw Miss Linworth’s bags, thought she was leaving him, and attacked her in a rage.”

Nan nodded slowly.

“But, Nan, that assumption is flawed. Nicholas already knew Miss Linworth was leaving. He gave her his blessing, offered to help her leave.”

Mira couldn’t help laughing at the comical look of surprise on Nan’s face. “It is true,” she continued. “Nicholas knew that Miss Linworth and Mr. Ellerby were in love, and he offered to step aside. He even offered to help them elope. So he would not have been angered to see Miss Linworth’s bags packed. Nicholas might have even packed her bags himself,” she concluded with a mischievous smile.

After a beat of stunned silence, Nan narrowed her eyes in skepticism. “How do you know this, Miss Mira?”

“Nicholas told me.”

Nan closed her eyes and dropped her head back, groaning in frustration. “Miss Mira, why do you believe him?”

Mira’s chin rose as her spirits fell. “I just do.”

Nan groaned again.

“Well,” Mira added, “what he told me is consistent with what Mr. Ellerby said, that he and Miss Linworth were in love.”

A miserable silence filled the room. Elbows planted on her knees, Nan leaned forward to rest her head in her hands. Mira sat as still as a stone, only her eyes moving restlessly about the room, searching for something to inspire her.

“And,” she began cautiously, “Nicholas seemed not to harbor any strong feelings for Miss Linworth at all. I brought her up directly, and quite suddenly. The subject must have taken him by surprise. Yet he did not react strongly, only seemed distracted.

“Her death was only a year ago,” Mira continued, warming to her cause. “If he had been deeply affected by anything about Miss Linworth—his own engagement to her, her affection for Mr. Ellerby, her death—he did not let on in the slightest. He seemed sad that she met such an end, as anyone would, but he did not seem distraught.”

Nan raised her head and pierced Mira with a searching stare. “Are you certain, Miss Mira? Are you certain he was not feigning his indifference? Are you certain you are not allowing your own feelings to color your perceptions?”

“Absolutely.” Mira spoke with far more conviction than she felt.

“All right,” Nan conceded, “what if you are correct? Then who would have come to Miss Linworth’s chamber and attacked her?”

Mira’s eyes slipped out of focus, and she raised her hand to cover her mouth as a vivid picture of what might have happened that night filled her head. “Mr. Ellerby. They were eloping, so she would have been expecting him, would have allowed him into the room without a fuss.”

“But if they were in love, and eloping, why would he kill her?” Nan prompted softly.

“Perhaps he changed his mind. Or she did. They quarreled, and he struck her. It might even have been an accident. Maybe he did not mean to kill her. And then, to cover his crime, he carried her to the allure and threw her off. Perhaps he hoped that people would think her death an accident. Or perhaps Mr. Ellerby intended to implicate his brother. There is certainly no love lost between them, and Nicholas stands between Jeremy and the Ellerby fortune.”

Mira shivered. She shot a sidelong glance at Nan. “It might have happened.”

“Yes, Miss Mira, I allow it might have happened,” Nan said. “But didn’t you say that someone had been following Miss Linworth about in the days before her death? That someone had broken into her room just that morning? Why would Mr. Ellerby behave like that toward a woman who had agreed to run away with him? That seems to me more like the behavior of a spurned suitor, someone obsessed. Someone obsessed with something—or someone—they cannot have.”

“Quite right, Nan. It does seem strange that Mr. Ellerby would burgle the bedchamber of his betrothed the day of their elopement. So perhaps Miss Linworth had yet another admirer. Someone who learned of her intention to elope with Mr. Ellerby and became angry enough to kill her. Not Nicholas, he does not seem to have cared one whit for her defection. But another man.”

Mira stood, and began pacing the same path Nan had been following earlier. Head bent in concentration, she saw nothing but a blur of blue and cream carpet and her own skirts.

What was she missing? Someone with money had been involved with Bridget and Tegen. And someone, other than Jeremy and Nicholas, must have been infatuated with Miss Linworth. Was Miss Linworth’s unhappy suitor the same man who had been involved with Bridget and Tegen?

All three girls had been killed near Midsummer, so perhaps it was a guest at the annual Blackwell house party. But Bridget, at least, had been intimate with her lover at Christmas, because that was when she conceived her child. Midsummer and Christmas. Why did that seem important? Why was that niggling at the edge of Mira’s mind? Midsummer and Christmas.

Mira froze.

The blood drained from her face in a dizzying rush, and a peculiar buzzing sound rang in her ears.

“Sweet heavens,” she whispered. “Lord Blackwell.”

Mira stood outside of Nicholas’s tower room and rapped on the heavy door with all the force she could muster.

In her hurry, she had braved the allure and gotten caught in a quick rain shower. Now a dripping ringlet slipped across her cheek in a clammy caress. Mira was vividly aware of how bedraggled she must appear, the fine muslin of her dress clinging to the sapphire satin of her underslip, droplets of rainwater sliding down her nose. But she could not wait to share her revelation with Nicholas.

She knocked again, throwing her weight into her movement. Suddenly the door swung wide, and she stumbled into the warm amber haze of Nicholas’s room, colliding with a solid wall of male flesh as she did so.

“Honestly, Mira-mine, this is the second time you have fallen into my arms like this. Either you are quite the forward girl, or you are quite the clumsy one.”

Nicholas’s soft laughter vibrated through Mira’s bones, and the steady thump of his heart beat beneath her fingers.

She raised her head, and a trickle of icy water wended its way under her collar and down the curve of her back. She shivered as she met his moonlight eyes.

“I…I am sorry, my lord,” she stammered, struggling to break the spell of his gaze and remember why she had come. “I need to speak with you. I have the most alarming news.”

Nicholas quirked his eyebrows in interest, reaching out a finger to lightly brush the raindrops from her eyelashes. Mira’s eyes blinked shut at the gentle touch, and another shiver gripped her.

“Your alarming news will wait. You are drenched. How did you manage to get so wet so quickly?” He shook his head in mock wonder. “Come here.”

He drew her into the chamber, his warm hands keeping her body close to his as he moved. When they reached a long, low sofa angled into the center of the room, Nicholas gently pressed on her shoulders until she sat down. He rummaged about in a pile of laundry on the floor—Pawly did not appear to be much of a valet—and when he straightened, he held a woolen blanket. He draped the blanket around Mira’s shoulders, pausing to gather her soggy curls in his hands and lift them out of the way.

He next picked up a linen shirt. He frowned at the item briefly, then shrugged, and wrapped the fine cloth around the tangle of Mira’s hair. He tugged gently on her hair as he tightened the linen around her locks, squeezing the water from them.

Mira sucked in an unsteady breath. He stood so close, the long length of his legs brushing her own, the hard line of his waist just inches from her face. His arms embraced her as he ministered to her dripping hair, and the air was warm with the scent of him.

A molten wave of desire spread through Mira’s limbs. Without thinking, she raised a hand to brush Nicholas’s shirt, to feel his heat trapped in the soft weave of the linen. Then, she drew back, and raised her head slowly to see if he had noticed her bold move.

He had. His hands stilled on her hair. She watched in fascination as his pale gray eyes grew dark, as his lids lowered ever so slightly, as silver fire filled his gaze.

With only the smallest hesitation to betray his bad leg, Nicholas slid down to one knee before Mira. Silently, he drew his hands around until they cradled her head, and he began gently massaging her temples with his thumbs.

Mira’s eyes drifted closed, and she fought the languorous heat that was turning her mind to mush.

“Nicholas?”

“Mmmm?”

“Nicholas, I…”

“What is it, Mira-mine? Tell me what you want.”

What she wanted? Mira could not imagine how to describe what she wanted, the nameless yearning that consumed her. But what she needed…she
needed
to tell Nicholas her discovery.

In a voice weak with want, she murmured, “Christmas and Midsummer.”

Nicholas grew still. She opened her eyes to find him staring at her with unnerving concentration.

“What did you say?” he asked, his voice soft but steel-edged.

She straightened, blinking to shake away the fog of passion.

“Christmas and Midsummer. It is the dates, Nicholas. They are the key. Why should all of the murders take place at Midsummer, not at any other time of year? Because the killer was not here the rest of the year. Except at Christmas, when he got Bridget Collins with child,” Mira added, her voice growing stronger with every word.

“Nicholas, the dates are the key. Your father killed those girls.”

For an instant, Mira thought she saw a glimmer of panic in the depths of Nicholas’s eyes, but then it was gone, replaced by an icy blankness.

They sat in silence, his hands still holding her head, his body still sinfully close to hers.

Finally, in a voice as carefully neutral as his expression, he said, “You are mistaken.”

She waited for him to continue, to explain the flaw in her reasoning, to offer some proof of her error. But he was silent once more.

She lifted her hand to touch his face, but he flinched away. “Nicholas, I believe you must consider this possibility. Bridget and Tegen were involved with a wealthy man. Your father is a wealthy man, and, well, his…” A blush burned her face, but she forced herself to go on. “His appetite for women is quite well known. As for Olivia Linworth, it seems she had already packed her belongings and was ready to flee with Jeremy. If Blackwell found out that she was ruining his plans, running off to marry the wrong brother, perhaps he grew angry enough to kill her. Or perhaps he merely struck her, and did not mean to kill her. Whatever the reason, I think you must admit that the circumstances suggest your father as the most likely culprit.”