Chapter Four #2
As though summoned by the uttering of her name, Mrs Mifford appeared in the doorway. She looked a trifle more rumpled than she had at the bazaar and held a hand to her temple, as though it ached.
“I do not wish to hear the word wine uttered in this house ever again,” she sighed—then caught sight of Gabe and the viscount and gave a start.
“Though, perhaps,” she added quickly, glancing toward Nora, who was approaching the table with a tray, “I might require a thimbleful of something medicinal. Nora, you didn’t tell me we had visitors!”
“They didn’t ask for you.”
Had her hands not been full, Gabe was certain Nora would have shrugged. There was something distinctly Gallic in her bloodline, he thought, hiding a smile behind his hand.
“Mrs Mifford, I just wanted to have a look through your larder—to see if we can pinpoint whatever it was that poisoned Mr Postlethwaite,” Lord Crabb rushed to explain, for Mrs Mifford now looked most offended.
Gabe, who could not quite keep up with the English art of giving and taking offence, accepted a cup of tea from Nora with a quiet nod of thanks.
“Look all you want, Ivo dear,” Mrs Mifford declared, lowering herself onto a chair with a slight wince of pain, “But you won’t find anything poisonous in my larder.”
She cast a quick glance between the two men, as though daring them to contradict her, before continuing with a wave toward the maid.
“Nora, show Lord Crabb where to look—though before you do, I should like a cup of tea and a little glass of wine to clear my head. Or, as the French say, un petit verre, is it not?”
Gabe inclined his head in approval, and her smile turned slightly nervous. “Though there’s nothing petit about you, is there, Comte?”
“At home, I was known as l’ours,” he replied evenly, setting his ridiculously tiny teacup back onto its saucer.
“The Bear,” Mrs Mifford repeated, eyes widening. “For your size, I presume? Not because you eat humans for lunch?”
She gave a strained tinkle of laughter at her own weak joke.
“I shall let you decide, mademoiselle,” Gabe answered smoothly—and was rather amused to watch the colour drain from her face.
“Nora,” Mrs Mifford called nervously after the maid, “Where’s that wine?”
“I’ll just have a quick search while you’re enjoying your tea,” the viscount declared, waving away Mrs Mifford’s offer to assist.
Thus, Gabe and Mrs Mifford were left alone together at the table.
Gabe braced himself for a round of small talk, but Mrs Mifford appeared far too nervous of him to utter a word.
She picked up the wine Nora had brought, took a sip, set it down, made as though she were about to speak, then thought better of it and reached for the glass again.
As the silence stretched on, Gabe deliberated—against his better principles—whether he ought to offer a comment on the weather, or some other such polite nonsense, to put the poor woman out of her misery.
The sound of footsteps in the passage saved them both from whatever lacklustre remark he had been about to attempt.
“Nora, have you seen my stockings with the embroidered clocks?” cried a breathless voice as the door burst open. “I can’t find them anywhere, and I can’t possibly go to midnight service in plain stockings—that’s no way to celebrate the birth of our—”
Miss Mifford stopped mid-sentence, her eyes widening in horror as she took in the sight of Gabe seated at the table, holding his ridiculously tiny cup.
An awkward beat followed. Her cheeks flushed pink; Gabe suspected it was because she had uttered the word stockings in front of a gentleman.
Any other time, he might have scoffed at how prudish the English were—but he was too busy fighting the urge to glance down at her ankles.
Perhaps there was wisdom in believing that men’s minds could be fired up with mere scandalous words…
“Miss Mifford,” he greeted her, rising from his chair so quickly that he failed to take due care of his height and nearly struck one of the beams.
“The Comte is here with Lord Crabb, who is currently poking about my larder in search of poison,” Mrs Mifford explained to her niece, unable to hide her disappointment that Gabe remained uninjured.“They’ll be off soon enough.”
“Oh.”
Gabe tried valiantly to decipher whether Miss Mifford’s single-syllable reply contained disappointment.
“Lord Crabb is on magistrate duties,” he said, nodding toward the larder and the sound of Nora scolding the viscount. “This morning we visited the postmaster, whom we found in the rudest of health.”
“That’s good news,” Miss Mifford replied, shyly taking a seat at the table. “I was up all night worrying about him—and trying to decide if someone might have had motive to poison him.”
“Oh,” Gabe’s own single-syllable carried a definite note of disappointment—he had spent sleepless hours thinking of her, not the postmaster.
“Up all night worrying about an accident?” Mrs Mifford frowned, setting her glass aside. “You put Mr Postlethwaite out of your mind at once, Charlotte. I’ll have no more murder mysteries under my roof—we all know where that leads.”
Gabe suspected something had been lost in translation, because he hadn’t the faintest notion what Mrs Mifford was on about. Whatever it was, had caused Miss Mifford to blush in the most charming manner imaginable.
She opened her mouth to reply, but the moment was broken by the creak of the larder door. Lord Crabb emerged, brushing flour from his sleeve and looking faintly harassed.
“We’ve poked, prodded, and sniffed everything in there,” he announced, “And there’s no sign of whatever it was that caused Mr Postlethwaite’s collapse.”
“I could have told you that,” Mrs Mifford sighed. “If there had been poison in any of my ingredients, then the Comte here would have dropped dead after his mince pie—I made them fresh this morning.”
Gabriel swallowed—rather nervously—the remnants of the mince pie in his mouth.
Three pairs of eyes swivelled toward him and, after a beat during which he did not immediately expire, came three audible sighs of relief.
“Mr Postlethwaite must have consumed something else,” Miss Mifford deduced, her blue eyes thoughtful.
“If that’s the case,” Mrs Mifford huffed, “Then perhaps you, Lord Crabb, and the Comte can poke around his larder next.”
“It’s Christmas Eve,” Lord Crabb said cheerfully. “I’m happy enough to draw my investigation to a close. And Jane will never forgive me if I leave her to pay all our calls alone—she has a dozen gifts and baskets to hand out to the tenants before nightfall.”
“Yes, don’t let us keep you,” Mrs Mifford replied airily, though she was watching Gabe from the corner of her eye as she said this. “Lovely to meet you, Comte de Roche—I do hope our paths cross again before you leave.”
She did not sound in the least sincere.
Gabe felt a fleeting stab of worry that this might indeed be the last time he would see Miss Mifford during his visit. For one wild moment he contemplated throwing her over his shoulder and carrying her away—but thankfully, this thought was interrupted by Lord Crabb.
“You’ll meet again this evening at supper,” the viscount announced. “I’ve invited the whole family to dine at Crabb Hall, so that Nora may have the night off to go wassailing.”
Mrs Mifford’s face fell with disappointment.
“Won’t that be wonderful,” she said, casting another nervous look Gabe’s way.
“Indeed,” he replied, though his eyes were not on her, but on Miss Mifford.