The Devious Duchess (8 page)

“Perhaps I’ll join Nevil upstairs. You can bring it up to us."

“Sir Nevil, he’s not here, miss. He took one bite of Anna’s roast joint and said he’d be putting up at the inn in Banting, but he’ll be back tomorrow morning. He better do it, too, or I won’t be here!”

Deirdre looked a startled glance at her. “Why, what do you mean, Polly?” For a brief, wild instant the girl sounded like a possessive lover. It darted into Deirdre’s head that Polly was very attractive in a common way that would by no means disqualify her for Nevil’s affection. He was a trifler with parlor maids and milking maids, though, of course, when he went into society, it was with a lady.

“Didn’t they tell you? They’re bringing the old gentleman back tomorrow for waking, right here in his own saloon. I’m not staying in the house with a corpse and only Anna Wilkey to keep the spirits away.”

“But the duchess gave no such order. You must be mistaken,” Deirdre said.

“Oh, no, miss. Sir Nevil gave the order. He said he’d be here, and he’d better be.”

“Mrs. Haskell might be back by then, Polly, and she won’t let the spirits pester you. I wanted to ask you one other thing. About that bowl of mulligatawny my aunt brought to Lord Dudley . . ."

“The constable knows all about it. He asked me and Anna till we’re blue in the face, but we didn’t touch it. I know it’s gone, miss, but I didn’t break it. How could I? He had the door locked and took the key away with him. I didn’t mean to tell him your aunt had a key. It just slipped out like, when he was asking who could have got in."

Deirdre realized that her aunt had been busy behind her back. It was true that she had keys for all the doors at the Grange. Had them in her possession forever, for no reason, like the arsenic. Auntie had sent one of the servants over to the Grange to collect that important piece of evidence, which looked so terribly as if she were guilty. It required a strong act of faith to go on believing she was innocent.

“That’s all right, Polly. I’ll have a word with Anna before I go. Is she upstairs?”

“Sir Nevil ordered her to dust and sweep and polish the saloon for the waking tomorrow. He’s told me to make up these sweets to serve the mourners. Not that there’ll be many. In such weather, I mean,” she added hastily, when she recalled to whom she spoke. Polly was a thoughtless, loose-tongued girl, but there was no vice in her, and Deirdre wasn’t in a condemning mood.

Anna was applying her turpentine and beeswax to the tables and didn’t welcome any interruption. “If Polly goes before Mrs. Haskell comes back, I ain’t staying here alone,” she announced as soon as she recognized Deirdre. “I’m not staying alone in the house with no ghost.”

“If Mrs. Haskell isn’t back, there will be someone from Fernvale here, Anna. Indeed, either the duchess or I or both will be here in any case. You should know better than to believe in ghosts.”

“He was murdered—uneasy souls are the ones come back to haunt. And a murderer loose as well. We ought to get extra pay working under such unnatural strains.”

Anna was overwrought, and in any case Deirdre couldn’t think of any clever questions to ask her. She did hear one unsolicited piece of information, however. Anna looked up from her polishing and said in her sly way, “I suppose Polly’s in a fine snit with her beau not staying overnight.”

“What do you mean?”

“She was sore as a boil when she found out Sir Nevil was going to the inn. There’s something between them, miss. I don’t think it would be right for him to stay here when there’s no one else around but me. I caught him squeezing her when I went into the kitchen this afternoon. He looked as if to kill me, and then right after dinner, he said if that dry roast was the best I could do, he’d go to the inn, but I think he was just afraid of talk.”

“I’m sure you would never cause any scandal about Sir Nevil or Polly either,” Deirdre said at her most haughty. My, but Anna was a nasty piece. It wouldn’t do to encourage her.

Deirdre left very soon afterward. She was a little nervous after the girls’ prattle about ghosts. Not that she believed in them, of course, but suddenly the meadow looked less friendly than before and Fernvale looked farther away. She lifted her skirts and started across it at a run. When she was halfway home, she was short of breath and slowed down to a walk, her fear suddenly dissipated. Shep was her usual companion on such trips as this. How she missed him! In all the happenings of Dudley’s death, she hadn’t given Shep much thought, and it now occurred to her that she didn’t even know what had been done with his remains.

There was a light burning in the stable, and she went to ask the groom about Shep. “We all miss that old dog. He had the sweetest temper I ever saw. What other dog in the world ever let a cat bite his ears? But his time was come, miss. He had an easy passing. Had a grand last supper and all, though he didn’t eat much of it. I gave him a proper burial, miss,” Evans told her in a kindly way.

“Where? I’d like to see the grave.”

"Come out in the morning and I’ll show you. You wouldn’t see a thing in the dark. It’s behind the barn.”

"I'd like to see it now,” she said, and went out by herself. Evans was mending a harness, and she didn’t ask him to accompany her. She wanted to be alone with her unhappy, uneasy thoughts.

The grave was easily found. It formed a black hump in the earth. Sad to think of poor Shep, buried in that frozen ground. The soil was so hard it sat in sharp-edged lumps. Evans must have had to use an axe to start the hole, to get below the frost line. They probably wouldn’t bury Dudley till spring. There was an old mausoleum in the graveyard where winter corpses were stored. But Shep would remain here, where he had been placed, and she’d erect some small sort of memorial stone—just a simple slab laid flat on the earth.

Her step was slow as she walked back to the house. As dismal as her visit had been, she wasn’t at all eager to be home. There was nowhere she wanted to be. She hardly wanted to exist at all, unless she could turn the clock back and live in the past. The future held nothing but fear and sorrow. She could almost envy Polly Shard. Her greatest fear was of a ghost.

It was after six, and her aunt was resting. The cook offered Deirdre some soup or a sandwich, but she didn’t feel that she could swallow anything, for the lump in her throat. She went up to the saloon and sat all alone, with only one lamp burning. No tears sprang to her eyes. She was gone far beyond tears. Uncle Dudley was dead. Her aunt’s very life was in danger, and she had turned Dick off. There would be no wonderful wedding, no honeymoon in Italy. The exciting life she had anticipated as Lady Belami was only an illusion. She had half known it would never really come to pass.

She hardened her heart against all these miseries and told herself that she wouldn’t marry Dick if he came begging. He had been insufferably rude to Auntie, and poor Auntie needed her now. All her life, she had been taking things from the duchess, and now it was her moment to repay. It would be unforgivably selfish to turn away. But why had Dick sent that sample off to be analyzed? What demon possessed him to go making new trouble when there was already such a surfeit of it?

She poured a glass of sherry and continued her thinking. It was impossible to avoid the most overwhelming question of all. Had the duchess poisoned Dudley? She denied it, and Deirdre tried to maintain her conviction that she was telling the truth, but it was difficult with so many contradictions staring her in the face. Especially the fear that gleamed in her aunt’s tired, old eyes and that had turned her, in the space of an afternoon, from an autocrat into a human being. And it was money at the root of it all. If Dudley had meant to change his will in Nevil’s favor, would Auntie . . . No, she wouldn’t let herself even think such a thought.

Whatever had happened, she would do everything in her power to protect her aunt. Deirdre had become the stronger force now at Fernvale. It was for her to make decisions, to do what had to be done to save the situation. She would discover from Nevil and Straus and the servants what Belami was up to, what tack the investigation was taking, and she would do everything in her power to protect her aunt. Because even if some wretched mishap had occurred, she knew in her heart that the duchess hadn’t willfully stirred arsenic into the stew and handed it over to kill Dudley. She wasn’t that black-hearted, no matter what they all thought.

That was one concrete thing she could do! She could ask the servants about the envelope of arsenic. She set down her glass and fled to the kitchen, where the girls were washing their own dinner dishes and Cook was preparing the dough for tomorrow’s bread. It was such a cheerful scene, with the aroma of yeast on the air and the friendly clatter of dishes.

She cleared her throat and prepared her speech carefully in what she considered a fiendishly clever manner. “I’ve discovered a mouse in my room and want to poison it. I was looking for that envelope of arsenic, and I see that it’s gone from the dining room. Do you know where I might find it?”

Cook looked up and stared at her. “There’s plenty of mousetraps in that drawer, Miss Gower. I’ll give you a piece of cheese to bait it.”

“No, I want the arsenic, Cook. Perhaps you know what became of it?”

“I don’t know what arsenic you’re talking about,” Cook replied blandly. “I seldom leave my kitchen.”

“You girls, have you seen it during your cleaning?” Deirdre persisted.

“No, miss,” they both said, staring at her with great, frightened eyes.

Deirdre continued with this fruitless questioning till she finally got an admission that the girls had some dim recollection of having seen the envelope there at some time within the past few years. But they had no more recent memory of it, hadn’t touched the envelope.

Cook walked to the drawer and pulled out a mousetrap. “You’ll be wanting this—for the mouse in your room, Miss Gower,” she said. “Just wait and I’ll get some cheese.”

“Never mind. I’ll take up the cat tomorrow,” Deirdre said, and left.

She was a failure as an investigator. Dick would have invented some cunning ruse to reveal the truth, but she was too tired. She went up to her bed no wiser than before. She didn’t undress, as there was a possibility Sir Nevil or some neighbor might call. She lay on the bed and saw Dick’s note on her dresser. She was too tired to pick it up, and anyway she knew it by heart.

Dear Miss Gower:

Thank you for a delightful visit. I would appreciate it if you would also convey my thanks to her grace. Your faithful servant, Belami.

That was all. Her passionate lover, her fiancé, had become her faithful servant—a written formality on a piece of paper, as meaningless as her life was without him.

Chapter 7

When Belami slammed out of the door of Fernvale to his waiting carriage, he thought he was glad to be leaving. He must have been mad to ever think of associating himself with such creatures as Charney and her crew. That no-good Sir Nevil Ryder—who would want to be any kin or connection to the likes of him? As to Deirdre Gower! If lying to his face was her notion of proper behavior, he was well rid of her.

This trip had been an unmitigated disaster thus far, not only for Belami but for Réal as well. The unfortunate groom now had the temerity to ask which direction to head the carriage, as his only instruction had been to harness up and bring the rig around.

“Have you no capability to think for yourself? Go to Beaulac, of course,” Belami told him, and strode to the carriage door while his valet hopped to get it open. There was no fooling around when his lordship was in one of his tempers.

The valet and Réal exchanged weary glances. To be heading off to Bedfordshire at this hour of the night, and in the dead of winter, too! It promised to be an extremely bad journey, made worse, of course, by this pelter the master was in.

Just as he ducked his head to enter the carriage, Belami pulled back. “Make that London, Réal. Or perhaps . . . Oh, damme, I don’t care where you go just so long as you take me away from this godforsaken spot.”

“Banting,
peut-être
?” Réal suggested warily.

“Now what the deuce would I want to go to Banting for?”

This seemed the proper moment to mention what Réal had learned in the stable. He’d get his ears chewed off no matter what he said, so he’d proffer that tidbit and hope for the best. “I thought the young lady with Sir Nevil might be of interest,” Réal suggested.

Belami straightened his shoulders and looked up at the box. “What young lady? Where did you hear this?”

“From the groom of Ryder. He travels to the inn with a young lady—Adelaide is the name. From Bath they are coming.”

“Why the hell didn’t you tell me sooner! Have I nothing but idiots and incompetents in my employ?"

He slammed into the carriage then and scowled at his valet, who had ducked onto the other seat. Réal assumed his destination was Banting and turned toward it. Already Belami was beginning to feel ashamed of his tantrum. It wasn’t Réal’s fault that Charney was a murderess, after all. He had a few qualms about that terse note to Deirdre as well. But there hadn’t been anything irreparable in it, had there? At least he hadn’t written any of the scalding things he’d been thinking at that moment.

He threw his curled beaver onto the seat and leaned his aching head back against the squabs. He felt a blistering headache coming on, and no wonder. Deirdre had a magic touch with his migraines. Her cool, gentle fingers—so soft and loving—eased away the pain and made him feel nearly human again. He’d go to the inn and order a bottle of brandy, then get well and thoroughly disguised. He wouldn’t he able to hold up his head tomorrow, but at least he’d sleep tonight.

But before he slept, he’d just make a few inquiries at the desk—find out about this rumor Réal had picked up at the stable. He’d probably gotten it wrong. Réal was falling flat on his rear this trip. Why would Nevil take Adelaide Pankhurst to the inn at Banting? What possible reason could he have for doing such a thing? And he was sly enough that he hadn’t mentioned a word of it to Charney, even when Adelaide’s name arose in the conversation. Something about Dudley making some provision for her in his will was all he said.