ANN
Hugh had not offered to join me in the marital bed, but rather, to resume spending his nights in the dressing closet. Was he trying to balance my failure as a wife with his pride before a house full of gossiping servants? Hoping that familiarity would breed attraction?
I was wildly attracted to my husband. I had been in a reluctant way even in Spain, even while married to another. I had not liked that Hugh was a physician and that he dealt by choice with the human body in its most inglorious frailty, but I had liked him.
His determination, his intelligence, his honor. Women in a military camp quickly learned who was an officer and who was a gentleman. The two did not overlap as neatly as we had been led to hope, a fact to which I could testify in disgusting detail. Hugh, no matter how exhausted, frustrated, or angry, had occupied the most rarefied end of the gentlemanly spectrum.
He’d married me not out of pity, but rather, out of duty, which was in a way worse. A pitiful object could provoke compassion. A duty… duty and love struck me as mutually exclusive, though a soldier was taught that they were one and the same.
I puzzled on my marriage as thunder rumbled in the distance and Fiona stumbled through her work at the pianoforte. I pretended to embroider the hem of one of her pinafores, but the foul weather meant poor light for close work.
Hugh was in the estate office, which had become his husbandly retreat. I was loathe to intrude on him there, even more so after our conversation earlier in the week regarding sleeping arrangement, regrets, and losing bets.
Fiona brought her piece to a close on a bungled cadence. “Today is Saturday,” she said, hopping off the bench and joining me on the sofa. “Will we go to the hound races?”
I hated those hound races. They symbolized for me the rot lurking beneath St. Ivo’s rustic veneer. Frau Rutherford’s mysterious black eye, Mr. Purvis betting on the races he purported to abhor, Mrs. Cooper’s head injury inflicted by a person unknown. Donnie Vaughn, village alderman and bully-at-large. To use Hugh’s terminology, the village appeared to be in the grip of a wasting disease.
“If the rain keeps up, the races will be postponed,” I said. “Would you like to try a few stitches?”
She joined me on the sofa, took my hoop, and studied the section I was working on. “Un papillon bleu. Do they have blue butterflies in France?”
“I imagine so. France is little more than twenty miles over the water where the two countries are closest. On a clear day, you can see from one shore to the other across the Strait of Dover.”
Fiona took up the needle and added carefully to the butterfly’s wing. She had her father’s fine dexterity, his steady hands. How I loved the touch of Hugh’s hands, had gloried in his capacity for tender caresses…
“When will Papa take us to France?” she asked.
“We haven’t been at Belle Terre that long, Fiona. Why this interest in France?”
Her tongue peeked out of the side of her mouth. “Papa was born in France. He has a French accent, and he speaks French the best. Then he went to England, and Scotland, and Spain, and France, and back to England, and again to Scotland. You saw him in Scotland and said, ‘That is Papa! He is alive!’ And so we came to England.”
Hugh read to Fiona at bedtime. He was too shrewd to view that exercise simply as a means of sending his daughter off to peaceful slumbers.
“You have been subjecting your father to interrogations.”
“What is interrogations?” Her stitches were as good as mine.
“Questionner.” I mentally rooted about for the closest Gaelic term. “A cheasnachadh.”
More stitches followed. “Papa travels much.”
Ah. “He does, but you won’t lose him to France or Spain, Fiona. He might have to travel to Berkshire, or elsewhere on business, but he will always be your papa.”
“He was my papa when we lived in Scotland, and I never saw him. He never read me stories. He never took me up on Charlemagne. I don’t want him to be that sort of papa again. I want him to be my Belle Terre sort of papa.”
Had the child plunged a dagger into my heart… “Parents must travel sometimes, especially fathers. Your papa has business in London, a house there. A house in Berkshire. He cannot take us with him everywhere, Fiona, but he will come back to you.”
She speared me with one of those looks a child aimed at an adult who had let the truth inadvertently slip into view. “He comes back to us, Mama. I want French butterflies on my pinafore. I will ask Papa what color the butterflies are in France.”
She shoved the hoop at me and popped off the sofa. “I hear a carriage! Is Papa going somewhere? Is somebody having a baby? Maybe Benedict has come to play!”
Benedict would not arrive in a carriage. The rainy weather would induce Thaddeus Freeman or Nigel Bellamy to take a carriage, though I wasn’t in the mood to entertain either man.
Hugh appeared in the doorway. “Are we expecting guests?”
“We are not, but somebody might be making a morning call.”
Mrs. Trebish was perfectly capable of answering the door, but she would have to be summoned from belowstairs, and Fiona had already pounded down the corridor. As Hugh and I entered the foyer, I could see that the coach coming up the drive was a fine vehicle indeed.
A foursome of matched grays pulled a heavy, well-sprung conveyance. The wheels were painted blue. The coachman wore silver and blue livery. Behind the coach, a sleek chestnut mare trotted daintily through the muck.
“She couldn’t leave us alone,” I muttered, straightening Hugh’s hair with my fingers.
“That coach does not belong to Lady Violet,” he said, holding still for me.
“The coach likely belongs to Dunkeld, and that mare is doubtless his pretext for calling. Had he come alone, he would have waited for decent weather and brought the mare over on a lead line. That rolling barge is for the benefit of her ladyship, Hugh, and you are not sleeping in a guest room if she is to spend the night.”
A procession of emotions flitted through serious brown eyes. Puzzlement, astonishment, and then—of all things—humor.
“It shall be as my wife wishes,” he said, tucking a lock of hair behind my ear. “Fiona, away with you. This is not Benedict, but rather, Lord Dunkeld and Lady Violet. They will doubtless insist on visiting the nursery, and you had best make us proud.”
“His lordship talks like Mama!” Fiona observed, scampering up the curved main stairway. “I like him.”
I liked Dunkeld, too, mostly. He’d lifted a considerable weight from my conscience when he’d offered for Lady Violet. I hoped they were here to inform us of their nuptials, but apparently not. As Hugh shepherded us through a round of overly cheerful greetings, Lady Violet was still addressed as Lady Violet rather than Lady Dunkeld.
She was, to the eye of a careful observer, carrying a child. Because her dress was of the old-fashioned empire design, the pregnancy was not immediately obvious, though I noted Hugh making one of his characteristic visual inventories, and his gaze lingered on her ladyship’s face.
She was in anticipation of motherhood, and she and the marquess were as yet unmarried. Some difficulty apparently required sorting out, and a small, complicated part of me was pleased that they’d come to us at Belle Terre with their problems.
“How are the denizens of St. Ivo’s treating you?” Lady Violet asked as I passed around the requisite cups of tea. We were in my private parlor, because I’d had the fires lit, and because… Violet and Sebastian, Marquess of Dunkeld, were family after a fashion.
The men exchanged a look, and Hugh left it to me to answer her ladyship’s inquiry.
“Carefully, not quite cordially. The former vicar’s daughter is friendly, though she’s also relieved not to have to fill her aging mama’s shoes as midwife now that Hugh is on hand. Vicar and Mrs. Cooper are welcoming, in their way, and Freeman has dropped by once or twice. Hugh has been asked to serve in a medical capacity on several occasions when no other resources were available.”
“So we must wonder,” Dunkeld murmured, studying his tea, “are the rest of them leaving you in peace out of shame because St. Sevier was treated so shabbily earlier in the year, or are they lying in wait?”
The marquess was a handsome man, in a dark-haired, craggy Scottish fashion. I liked him, and not only because his burr was the sound of home. He had the particular humor unique to the Scot, both subtle and hilarious, and he trotted it out at the most unexpected times. Then too, he was honorable, and I would always esteem a man of integrity.
“Or is the village doing a little of both?” Lady Violet mused, helping herself to a second cup of tea. “Some resent you. Some want to welcome you, but don’t know how.”
“Is Fiona managing?” Dunkeld asked.
The question was shrewd, because the subject upon which I would expound most enthusiastically was my daughter—our daughter.
“She is recovering,” Hugh said, surprising me. “The father she barely knew was taken away without warning, and she is alert for any further mischief. She distrusts Freeman, but she has taken a liking to some of the children in the village. With children, one needs patience, non?”
The ensuing silence suggested that with spouses, prospective spouses, and former prospective spouses, one needed patience as well.
“Tell me about the mare,” I said. I knew Dunkeld to be quite the equestrian, and if Hugh had any confidant at Belle Terre, it was Charlemagne. His lordship obligingly waxed eloquent about bloodlines, conformation, and temperament while I wondered what my husband was feeling at the sight of his former and now enceinte lover.
What was I feeling, for that matter?
Some apprehension, simply because Lady Violet and her Sebastian were unexpected callers, but I myself had insisted that we construct a history of cordial relations with them.
I was also uneasy for more private reasons. Hugh and I had not made much progress toward normal marital relations, and that was my fault. Would Lady Violet, with her nose for puzzles, ferret out the marital details and lecture me for failing to fulfill all the wifely offices?
I almost wished she would, but then, she had yet to become the Marchioness of Dunkeld, and therein doubtless lay a tale as well.
“You must stay the night,” Hugh said. “I know Violet to be an intrepid traveler, but the roads are miserable at present. I request that her ladyship exercise caution for the sake of my nerves.”
Another silence ensued, and I realized that Hugh and Violet had not addressed each other directly in fifteen minutes of polite conversation.
“How are you feeling?” I asked her ladyship. “And you might as well be honest, or Hugh will conduct a medical interview over the soup course at supper.”
Dunkeld rose and began a circuit of my parlor. He pretended to study the pressed forget-me-nots framed over the sideboard, then the cutwork Fiona had recently completed. The effort was simple, but it was hers, and I treasured it.
“You might as well tell them,” Dunkeld said, back to the assemblage, “or I will.”
My mind flew back to the many women who’d consulted my mother and grandmother regarding the progress of a pregnancy. Lady Violet was still carrying, but perhaps the child had ceased moving?
Hence, her unwillingness to marry the marquess.
“Shall I leave?” I put the question to her ladyship, but I was also giving Hugh the opportunity to send me away.
Lady Violet turned a magnificent glower upon me. “Please do not abandon me to the fussing and fretting of two grown men. One is bad enough.”
“Perhaps there’s nothing serious to fuss about?” I suggested.
“Precisely.” Her ladyship sent a fulminating look at Dunkeld’s rigid back. “I am unwilling to entrap his lordship into holy matrimony until the arrival of a healthy child is all but a given. This has vexed him exceedingly, but then, he is easily vexed of late.”
Dunkeld took out a flask and half turned to salute in Violet’s direction. “A Dhia, thoir dhomh neart.”
Hugh could apparently translate that—God, give me strength—because his lips quirked.
“Violet,” Hugh said, “stop prevaricating. Has the child ceased moving?”
“The little fiend goes on regular maneuvers,” she replied, her tart words belied by a violent blush. Her ladyship then sent me—me?—a beseeching look.
“She bleeds,” Sebastian said. “A few drops, streaks… Don’t ask me how I know this—I was not snooping—but I know.”
Hugh studied Violet with a lips-pursed, brow-furrowed expression that I recognized. He was mentally diagnosing, sorting symptoms, causes, and treatments with an efficiency that had saved many a life.
“When did this start?” he asked.
Violet, for the first time, met his gaze. “From the beginning,” she said. “At first, I thought, ‘Well, maybe I’m not carrying.’ But it was never more than a whisper. It’s still no more than a whisper, but Dunkeld will fly into the boughs over nothing, and I am still very much with child.”
“Is there a pattern?” Hugh asked. “Every few days, every few weeks, always in the morning, never upon waking?”
Dunkeld had ambled to the window, where he stood, flask in hand, watching the rain.
“I don’t notice anything upon waking. Usually, only at the end of the day, and I will go for weeks without any symptoms.”
“Any cramps?” I asked, because I suspected Hugh might avoid that inquiry.
“Never. I am as healthy as that mare Sebastian is so proud of.”
A particular tension seized the marquess’s shoulders. I would not have been surprised to hear the sound of teeth grinding.
“No,” Hugh said, rising to face her ladyship, “you are not. Some traces of blood early in a pregnancy are common, particularly after vigorous activity or at the time when the courses would normally have arrived. You are no longer early in your pregnancy, my lady.”
“Don’t you dare scold me, Hugh St. Sevier.” Violet was on her feet, skirts swishing. “You have no idea, none of you, what it’s like to carry a child and fear a third… disappointment. I want this baby. I want this baby desperately, and I feel fine, but then he,”—she jerked her chin in Dunkeld’s direction—“went rooting through the laundry.”
Dunkeld faced her, his flask in a white-knuckled grip. “I’ve told you and told you, I was searching for a receipt in my breeches pocket, Violet—”
“And he has been worse than the Regent with a gouty toe ever since. I am fine.”
She was not fine. She was worried half out of her mind, in a situation beyond her control, and in a body beyond her control.
“I had spotting with Fiona.” I poured myself a second cup of tea, though I was not particularly thirsty. “Started about halfway through. I was in France by then. My diet was less than ideal, and I went from marching for miles one day to sitting upon my backside for hours the next. The worst days seemed to be when I had the great good fortune to enjoy the loan of a mule. War and childbearing are an awkward combination.”
Hugh considered me as if I’d sprouted fairy wings. “I did not know this.”
“I wished I’d died once we put out to sea. If Fiona is a good sailor, I will be very much surprised.”
“You had spotting?” Lady Violet had lowered her voice on that last word. “Truly?”
“Streaking, never more than a few drops of anything approaching red. My family includes several midwives, so I did what I could to address the situation.”
Dunkeld raised a dark eyebrow at me. “And that would be?”
Hugh appeared unwilling to hold forth as the medical expert in the room, so I answered his lordship’s question.
“Rest,” I said. “If not lying abed, then at least putting my feet up. I became much more careful about any herbal teas or seasoned dishes I was offered. No cat’s-claw, pennyroyal, sage, thyme… My mother had a list, and she suspected some women have specific sensitivities.”
“Oh, now you’ve done it,” Violet said, plopping back down in a wing chair. “Now he will forbid me to walk and insist I follow a lowering diet.”
“No lowering diets,” Hugh said, very firmly. “Plenty of fresh greens and red meat, organ meat if you can.”
Violet shuddered.
“And she’s to rest?” Dunkeld asked.
Her ladyship was back on her feet and sailing across the parlor. “Do not refer to me in the third person when I am present. I grow weary of reminding you, Dunkeld.”
His lordship offered return fire, his burr thickening as he bounded over ye wee besom and drive a puir mon daft and galloped on to round the flag at the de’il knows why. In the midst of this verbal affray, Hugh caught my eye.
His eyes were dancing, and I could see a certain absurd humor in the situation too. I also realized that I cared for her ladyship and the growling marquess, as did Hugh—as should we both.
“Rest,” Hugh said, “is not complete inactivity. If her ladyship were to put her feet up for an hour in the morning and afternoon and avoid lifting anything heavier than a full teapot, she would be taking reasonable measures to ensure the pregnancy ends well.”
“And red meat and fresh greens,” Dunkeld added. “Not endless trays of bread and cheese.”
“I like bread and cheese,” Violet retorted, “and St. Sevier has not forbidden them to me.”
The combatants turned to Hugh for a decree. “Ann will make you a list of the items her mother found suspect. Other than those—and I caution you particularly against pennyroyal tea—your diet should be one of moderation and variety.”
“That means I can have my bread and cheese.”
“In moderation,” Dunkeld snapped. “Moderation is not half a loaf before noon, Violet.”
The bickering resumed, and Hugh took the place beside me on the sofa. “They have the stamina, non?” he muttered.
“They are frightened witless, Hugh.”
“As am I. I will never again be quite as convincing with my all-will-be-well speeches to the expectant papas. Did you really have spotting with Fiona?”
“Right up until the week she came into the world. You will be more convincing with the papas for being more sympathetic. Should we send the pugilists to neutral corners?”
Lady Violet was seized by a yawn, and Dunkeld possessed himself of her hand. Their voices dropped into a conspiratorial range, Dunkeld’s head bent near to her ladyship’s.
“He loves her,” Hugh said, his voice puzzled. “Truly loves her.”
And I love you. I did not dare say those words aloud, but they were true. When had they come true—come true again? Sometime between when Hugh had delivered Mrs. Grant of little Sixtus and when he’d stolen a sip of my tea two minutes past.
“She will be safe with him, Hugh.”
“But will she have sense enough to be happy?” The comment was interesting, for being just the slightest bit judgmental regarding her ladyship. “Shall we have my things moved from the blue guest room?”
“I asked Mrs. Trebish to see to that when I sent for the tea tray.”
“Bon, and his lordship will want the green bedroom. Her ladyship might be well advised to nap now.” The rest of my tea disappeared, along with a piece of shortbread.
“And I am to make that suggestion?”
“Violet sees an ally in you, not another pontificating male. She was raised with a surfeit of pontificating males, then she married one. I suspect part of my appeal was simply that I did not often attempt masculine proclamations with her. We will—”
A tap on the door heralded Matthews, the first footman, looking somewhat nervous. “Beg pardon, madame, monsieur. Mr. Nigel Bellamy has come to call. I put him in the library because the fires were lit in there. He said his business were somewhat pressin’.”
“He’s the magistrate now?” Dunkeld asked.
Hugh nodded. I wanted badly to reach for my husband’s hand—or send him off to Berkshire, with Bellamy none the wiser.
“Whatever pressing business he has,” Violet said, “he can air it before his lordship and myself as well as before his host and hostess.”
I could see Hugh equivocating, male pride, or something, warring with common sense. In the grand hierarchy of British society, the marquess was nobody to trifle with and neither was Lady Violet.
“Let’s not keep him waiting,” I said. “Matthews, another tray please. The weather is beastly, and Mr. Bellamy will appreciate a hot cup of tea.”
Lady Violet took my arm and accompanied me to the library. I gathered she enjoyed the dismay on Bellamy’s face when she made her entrance, with Hugh and the marquess arriving in our wake.
Bellamy bowed stiffly at the appropriate times, then announced that his errand was not social.
“So you’ve come to arrest somebody?” I asked. “Or perhaps we’re back to illegally detaining the innocent in this shire? Do tell, Mr. Bellamy, because nothing less than hanging felonies appear to bestir you from your abode.”
Bellamy stared at a spot past my left shoulder, and a cold skein of dread snaked through my middle. I would not survive watching my husband led away by the king’s thugs again—and neither would Bellamy survive any such attempt.
“As it happens,” Bellamy said, “I’m here to ask you a few questions, madame. Have you recently purchased yarn from the dry-goods shop?”
“I have. I made my selection on Sunday—a pretty blue—and my husband paid for it later in the week, as seems to be the local custom.”
Bellamy flicked a glance at everybody else in the room. “I would like to see your workbasket and your reticule.”
Hugh, the marquess, and Lady Violet all seemed to grow two inches in height at that demand, but we were dealing with rural England’s version of a petty despot. Placating him and sending him on his way was the wiser course, as I well knew.
I crossed the room and retrieved my workbasket from its place by the sofa. “You’ll find the yarn on top.”
He had begun rocking up and back on his heels, like a stall-bound horse weaved before the door. “And your reticule?”
“I’ll fetch it.” What on earth could he be about?
“I cannot allow that, madame. I’ll fetch it, if you don’t mind.”
“No,” Lady Violet said, “you shall not. Madame need not suffer the indignity of you rooting through her personal effects when I am on hand to retrieve the requisite item. And lest you think I am colluding with madame in some larcenous conspiracy, his lordship and I arrived less than an hour ago and have been nowhere but the public rooms.”
Her tone could not have been more disdainful.
“Take his lordship with you,” Bellamy said. “I’m told it is a beaded reticule, a pattern of roses.”
“You’ll find it in my wardrobe,” I said, “hanging on the left side, where it has been all week. I seldom need it between one Sunday and the next.”
Lady Violet and Dunkeld quit the room, and I felt Hugh’s fingers wrap around mine.
“We importune you,” he said, “to stop a local event that has grown so violent as to encompass attempted murder, and you do nothing but offer to scold a man who cares nothing for your lectures. Now you are here to accuse my wife of some petty crime based on nothing more than gossip. When his lordship and Lady Violet return, you will explain yourself, and you will do so most thoroughly.”
Hugh’s exquisitely polite tones told me he was furious. I was gratified to know that he was protective of me. Mostly, though, I was terrified, and thus I clung to my husband’s hand while Bellamy rooted through my workbasket like a terrier on the scent of a rat.
As Bellamy dumped the contents of my reticule onto the low table before the sofa, I caught a sympathetic glance from Lady Violet. Hugh and I occupied the sofa. She and the marquess had taken the wing chairs opposite, while Bellamy roamed at large.
To my very great relief, my reticule held only the usual items. Pocket comb, coin purse, a plain handkerchief, and one embroidered with the St. Sevier family crest. Also a pencil and small sketch pad with some of Fiona’s childish drawings, four plain hairpins, and two spare green hair ribbons for those occasions when Fiona lost one.
“No knives,” Dunkeld said. “No treasonous dispatches. Not even a volume of bawdy poetry. Madame leads a boring life, apparently.”
Bellamy blinked at the detritus of my life. “Have you an everyday reticule?”
“Because I do so little socializing and go on even fewer mercantile outings, I need only the one, mostly for Sunday. I leave it in my wardrobe from week to week, though the maids, footmen, and housekeeper would all have access to it if they sought to pry.”
Lady Violet gathered up my things and returned them to the reticule. “You owe Madame St. Sevier an explanation, Mr. Bellamy.”
“Or an apology,” Dunkeld added. “I myself would be very curious to see a search warrant.”
Bellamy appeared to realize only then that he stood like a dull scholar before the speech-day jury, while the rest of us sat.
“To be honest,” he said, “I had hoped it would not come to search warrants or arrests.”
The tea tray arrived, and Hugh asked Matthews to bring one of the chairs at the reading table over for Mr. Bellamy. I would not have been that gracious.
When the footman had withdrawn, Bellamy took his seat and declined a cup of tea.
“Items have gone missing from the dry-goods store,” Bellamy said. “Rutherford was insistent that I follow up. He is fanatic about his inventory and brought his complaint to me. My sister Elizabeth happened to overhear him and noted that you had been in the shop shortly before Rutherford noticed his goods were not where they should be.”
To my consternation, Dunkeld had taken it upon himself to pour out for Lady Violet. He added a dash and dollop to her cup and passed it over with aggressive solitude. Lady Violet set the cup down and poured out for him in turn.
“Your sister is a witness in this affair,” Hugh said, “and yet, you do not recuse yourself from the role of magistrate. Has it occurred to you, Bellamy, that if Elizabeth was in the shop at the same time my wife was, then Elizabeth must be regarded as a suspect as well?”
Bellamy, pale to begin with, looked positively cadaverous at Hugh’s question. “I grasp your logic, monsieur, and I had hoped the whole business was merely a misunderstanding. Madame put an item or two in her bag simply because one runs out of hands, then she forgot to add them to her tally. If so, then a few pence would address the oversight.”
Dunkeld put a piece of shortbread on her ladyship’s saucer. “If the local magistrate were enforcing the law, nobody’s shop would be open on Sunday, and allegations of customers walking out without paying for goods would not occur.”
“A fair point,” Lady Violet said, sitting forward. “Why on earth was the dry-goods store open on the Sabbath, Mr. Bellamy? Why would your sister be shopping on the Lord’s day? I find this very puzzling.”
Bellamy’s cheeks acquired a pinkish hue. “I’m not about to send anybody to jail simply for… for allowing people to browse when they have to be at the village for divine services anyway.”
“You don’t want to see anybody go to jail, ever,” Hugh said. “You would not arrest Donnie Vaughn for brandishing a torch at a man who could not defend himself. I suggest that sending guilty people to jail is part of the job, Bellamy.”
Too late, I recalled that Bellamy had been a captive during the war—as I had. “Are you satisfied that I am not the thief, Mr. Bellamy?”
He looked anything but satisfied. “Lord Dunkeld, do you give me your word that her ladyship removed nothing from this reticule prior to presenting it to me?”
Dunkeld turned his best lairdly glower on Bellamy. “I give you that assurance.”
Lady Violet sipped her tea with all the dignity of the queen mother.
“Then I will absent myself.” Bellamy rose and bowed in my direction. “With apologies for having had to pay this call.”
“I’ll see you out,” I said. “St. Sevier, if you would pour me a cup of tea?” I sent Hugh my best do-as-I-say smile, and he picked up the teapot.
Bellamy and I made a rapid progress to the front door.
“I do apologize, madame. It’s just that Rutherford sees thieves lurking behind every bush, and Elizabeth would not keep silent, and all of this over a length of satin binding. I don’t even know what satin binding is. Elizabeth says she saw you admiring some blue satin binding to go with the yarn you purchased.”
I had browsed the sewing notions generally and did not recall paying any attention to the available bindings. I would not have purchased binding until my project was complete and precise measurements were in hand.
“You’ve searched your sister’s effects?” I asked, holding his coat for him.
He nodded. “Elizabeth is shrewd. If she stole this stuff, she’d have it well hidden before she accused you. She’s my sister, and I love her, but as the oldest girl in the family, she learned to be devious when necessary.”
I passed him his hat. “Did you come here to exonerate me?”
“I hoped to, and I have, to the extent that searching for missing goods nearly a week after they disappeared means anything. I know that you of all women deserve to be left in peace, but the whole village is on edge these days, and this was the best I could do.”
“I will explain your motivation to my husband and to our guests, but I believe you have a point.”
He tapped his hat onto his head and pulled on his gloves. “You do? If so, yours is the minority opinion on the matter. I do not want to be magistrate, you know, but Freeman bungled the job, and Faraday took his turn before Freeman, and I…”
“You wanted to do your bit.” I disliked Nigel Bellamy, but I felt some sympathy for him.
He peered out at the bleak day and sent me an equally bleak look. “You had a rough time of it in Spain. A very rough time of it, from what I heard. When does one begin to feel normal again, madame? When does one start to live again?”
He could not know how rough, nor was I about to enlighten him. “You have started. This willingness to wade into the petty nonsense of the shire, to remonstrate with your sister, to take in a blameless hound… That is the beginning. Life beckons, and knowing full well we are not being invited to a feast, we yet take a step in life’s direction and find a few crusts or a ripe apple along the way. Time helps, but you must be patient and compassionate with yourself.”
“You are kind,” he said, taking up a gleaming mahogany walking stick. “Thank you for that. If we do hold another bedamned hound race, I will be plainly in evidence for the duration of the event, and I mean to have a word with Rutherford about all this Sunday browsing. If folk drink to excess Saturday night, they can buy their patent remedies in advance or suffer the consequences.”
He bowed smartly and took his leave, letting a gust of cold air into the foyer. I returned to the parlor, knowing exactly what I would find.
Lady Violet held the spool of blue satin binding. “I had it in my pocket,” she said. “We guessed that was the last place Bellamy would dare look. I made Sebastian remove it from your reticule so that he could attest to my innocence.”
I took my place beside Hugh. “Bellamy said he came here to exonerate me, but he has also all but told me that I have an enemy in Elizabeth.”
“We do,” Hugh said. “Why?”
“Maybe she was warning me,” I said. “Binding is used to edge fabric. On shawls and blankets so the stitching doesn’t unravel and to give the piece a pretty finish.”
“You mean that binding is bought to be displayed,” Dunkeld said slowly, “and you would never dare display an item you’d stolen.”
“Elizabeth knows that,” I replied, “or whoever sent me this warning knows that. Frau Rutherford might have put that binding in my purse. Hap Purvis was in the shop at the time, as was Mrs. Anderson, and… I forget who else. I also carry this reticule with me to the village on services, and half the shire mills around in the churchyard before and after services. All that aside, Bellamy certainly wasn’t interested in asking me about other possible suspects.”
Lady Violet was on her third piece of shortbread. “Then Bellamy isn’t fit for the job, but warning you about what? St. Sevier, is the shire up in arms against you again already?”
She sounded nigh delighted at the prospect. I wanted to dash my tea in her ladyship’s face, but I instead allowed my husband to take up the narrative.