Chapter Seven
THAT EVENING’S HOSTING duties had passed from Mary to her sister Jane, Viscountess Crabb.
Sarah—who had half expected to have her invitation revoked, given the circumstances—pulled her shawl tight around her shoulders as she disembarked from the gig that had borne her and her father to Crabb Hall.
A groomsman rushed forward to relieve her father of the reins, while a footman solicitously invited them both to follow him inside the medieval manor house.
“See, no one is waving pitchforks,” Sarah’s father joked as they made their way inside.
“I’m not worried about pitchforks,” Sarah murmured in response. She was worried about the hangman’s noose.
“All the fuss will blow over in a week or so,” Mr Hughes assured her, patting her hand awkwardly.
Her father was not a man who expressed emotion readily and this was his way of telling her he understood her worry. It was also his way of underscoring that he did not wish to discuss Mr Hardwick’s murder any further.
Sarah held in a churlish sigh; it was rather hard to feel motivated to save a man’s name when he was being so vexatious.
They followed the footman in silence through the cavernous entrance hall—lit by heavy wrought-iron chandelier—to the slightly more modern drawing room, where they were warmly greeted by their host and hostess.
“Good of you to come, Mr Hughes,” Ivo, Lord Crabb said loudly as he shook Mr Hughes’ hand.
Sarah guessed the unusually loud greeting was meant for the benefit of the guests—those not related to the Mifford clan, at least.
In the corner by the huge fireplace, she spotted Dr Bates blinking nervously at them from behind his spectacles.
On the red-velvet Klismos bench, Colonel and Mrs Fawkes craned their necks to get a better view.
Even the dowager duchess—who adored a scandal—was surreptitiously watching them over the rim of her wine glass.
Sarah felt a surge of gratitude for Ivo; as local magistrate, it was his job to uphold the law, and such a public display of support would not go unreported.
“Miss Hughes, there you are!”
Lord Crabb was unceremoniously ushered out of the way by Mrs Mifford, who materialised at Sarah’s side, clutching the earl’s arm.
Her fingers were causing quite the dent in the fine merino wool of his coat, Sarah noted with alarm.
“I was just telling Ashford about the gardens,” Mrs Mifford began enthusiastically. “The knot garden is such a fine example of Tudor design. Thank heaven my uncle insisted on preserving it rather than rip it out and replace it with something more modern.”
From the corner of her eye, Sarah caught Jane lift her hand to her mouth to cover a smile.
The late Lord Crabb’s refusal to update the gardens had been due to parsimony rather than any wish to preserve history.
And, rather unfortunately, when he had at last been persuaded to update the gardens by his young fiancée—Sarah’s cousin, Prunella—he’d ended up dead.
“Would you be so kind as to escort the earl and I around the gardens?” Mrs Mifford continued, directing her question to Sarah—and Sarah only, “I’ve told him what a keen interest you have in topiary.”
Mr Hughes glanced at his daughter with confusion; like Sarah, this was the first that he had heard about her passion for shaping shrubs.
“I also adore gardening,” Mrs Fawkes called in a breathy whisper, as she rose from the sofa to join them.
The eye of every man in the room swiveled to appreciate her generous, silk-clad figure as she crossed the floor.
Even Lord Deverell was not immune; a brief—but painful—stab of jealousy struck Sarah as he glanced at the colonel’s dashing wife—only for his eyes to pass over her without the faintest flicker of interest. Sarah’s breath eased in her chest.
“Is that so, Mrs Fawkes?” Mrs Mifford mused aloud, her tone breezy but her eyes hard and calculating.
Sarah waited in trepidation for Mrs Mifford to pounce. She could see even Jane looked nervous as she tried to anticipate what barbed reply her mother might use to shoot down Mrs Fawkes.
Perhaps an acerbic comment that gardening wasn't the only pastime Mrs Fawkes employed in her husbands absence?
"Well," Mrs Mifford began and the room as a collective held its breath. "How wonderful to have another enthusiast in our midst. Come, Mrs Fawkes, you must give me your detailed opinion on what we see."
Mrs Mifford transferred her iron grip from the earl’s arm to Mrs Fawkes’ and marched her from the room.
Sarah and Lord Deverell were left with little choice but to follow in their wake.
“Keep thine friends close,” Lord Deverell murmured with amusement, as he took Sarah’s arm to escort her from the room.
Outside, dusk had draped the gardens in a warm golden light. It was the kind of summer evening that was made for gentle strolls and light conversation. Sarah felt a brief stab of pity for Mrs Fawkes, who was being dragged ahead at breakneck speed through the low topiary maze by Mrs Mifford.
“You might be pleased to learn that my walk into the village yielded some interesting information,” Lord Deverell informed her, a quiet note of satisfaction to his deep timbre.
Sarah, whose attention had been trapped by the feel of his arm under his coat—so thrillingly muscular—gave a distracted squeak that she hoped conveyed interest.
“Three of our suspects are known for their deadly aim,” the earl continued, mercifully unaware of her inner tumult. He continued on to detail all that he had learned, then finished with his strange encounter with Mrs Vickery.
“It’s sounding more and more like Mr Leek is the man we should focus our attentions on,” Sarah answered, keen to distract the earl from his focus on Mrs Bridges.
“Everyone is a suspect until we are certain we have our culprit,” Lord Deverell replied firmly.
“Did you learn that from The Newgate Calendar?” Sarah teased.
The earl shot her a stricken glance as he lifted his free hand to his heart, to convey his hurt.
He looked so endearingly wounded that Sarah had a sudden, ridiculous urge to place her hand upon his chest and feel his heart beat.
It was just as all the stern matrons had warned: spend too much time in close proximity to a man, and one’s morals jumped straight out the window.
“That was shared in confidence, Miss Hughes,” Lord Deverell chided, though his eyes danced, letting Sarah know that he was teasing her in turn.
“I humbly beg your forgiveness, my lord,” she replied with a smile.
“If it is forgiveness that you seek, then for your penance I insist you call me Lucian. One can’t know a man’s greatest secret and then carry on addressing him so formally.”
“I do believe penance is for Catholics, my lord,” Sarah replied on a sharp exhale, her cheeks aflame.
Inexperienced as she was with romance, she knew this time that the earl was most definitely flirting with her.
His motives, however, remained unclear. Perhaps all male members of the ton were outrageous flirts?
“Humour me,” he said lightly, before adding with a boyish grin; “Sarah.”
She did not get a chance to admonish him for his use of her given name, for they were interrupted by Mrs Fawkes, who had managed to manoeuvre Mrs Mifford in their direction.
“Such fine gardens,” Mrs Fawkes said breathlessly, her cheeks charmingly pink from the exertion of dragging Mrs Mifford. “I should like dearly to know your thoughts on them, my lord.”
With practiced skill, Mrs Fawkes managed somehow to extrapolate herself from Mrs Mifford’s grip and place her arm on Lord Deverell’s. Not wishing to bolster the earl’s ego by having two women hang off him, Sarah pulled her own hand away.
Lord Deverell frowned as she withdrew her touch.
“Is that the gong I hear?” Mrs Mifford cried, refusing to be bested by Mrs Fawkes. “Let us return inside.”
“I didn’t hear anything,” Sarah overheard Mrs Fawkes complain to the earl, as the Mifford matriarch ushered them all back to the house.
By the time they had returned to the drawing room, the gong had actually sounded. With Mrs Fawkes still clinging like a limpet to the earl’s arm, Sarah found herself escorted to the dining room by Colonel Fawkes.
As the colonel was both affable and handsome, Sarah was not overly put-out.
“Dreadful news about Mr Hardwick,” the colonel commented, though his bored tone suggested indifference to the tragedy.
“Some say it was not unexpected, given Mr Hardwick’s ambitions for the farm,” Sarah replied carefully. “Though it is, of course, dreadful news.”
“I’d like to meet the man who shot him,” Colonel Fawkes continued, in a tone that now conveyed admiration.
He spoke as though he had not listened at all to Sarah’s response, perhaps he hadn’t, given that in his army-career he was not often forced to listen to the voices of women.
“Dr Bates reckons he was struck twice from quite a fair distance. Clean entry wounds, no scorching. That takes nerve—and excellent marksmanship.”
“Perhaps you have some competition for this year’s shooting competition, colonel?” Sarah suggested lightly, as she tried to decipher if his little speech was sincere, or an attempt to distract.
“I’d like to see anyone try out-score me,” he guffawed in response, completely self assured about his own talents.
They had now reached the dinning table where Sarah saw that each seat had been assigned with a place-name. Her eyes scanned the table until she sighted her own name, reading with relief, that she was not to be seated beside the colonel.
“This is me,” she inclined her head graciously for his escort.
Colonel Fawkes gave a distracted nod in response, his eyes already roaming the room for someone else to talk to—preferably male, she guessed. Sarah felt a little jolt of pity for Mrs Fawkes; though she didn’t condone adultery, she could see why a woman might feel lonely married to a man like that.
Sarah slipped into her chair and was joined a moment later by Eudora, Lady Delaney. The youngest of the Mifford girls, Eudora had recently married a baron who though seated primarily in Oxfordshire, had a small estate near Plumpton.
“Marriage suits you, Eudora,” Sarah commented, as the baroness smoothed the skirts of her dress.
Eudora’s brow furrowed as she cast her brown eyes down the table to glare at her mother.
“If you would please remind my mother that I am now married, I would be eternally grateful,” Eudora heaved a sigh.
“I thought that now I’m no longer under her roof, she’d start treating me as an adult—but the bar for her respect keeps shifting!
It seems one isn’t properly grown-up until one has children, in her eyes at least.”
“You’ll have a child of your own soon,” Sarah assured her, as a strange pang of longing pierced her. What would it feel like to cradle her own babe? She banished the image in her mind as swiftly as it came—though not before noticing that the babe had a shock of dark hair, just like...
She needed wine, she decided, reaching out for the glass before her.
“Oh, yes,” Eudora continued on earnestly, “We soon will—Lord Delaney is very committed to the process.”
Sarah choked a little on her wine. To her left she heard a faint huff of laughter. She turned to find that Lord Deverell had taken up residence in the seat beside her. As Eudora moved to greet the dowager duchess, who had just sat down, Sarah gave the earl a quelling glare.
“That’s not what she meant,” Sarah whispered, feeling compelled to defend the baroness who, in her eagerness to appear grown up, had made a terrible faux-pas.
“I definitely won’t feel any qualms about addressing you by your given name, now that I know what you discuss at the dinner table, Sarah,” he replied with a raised brow.
Sarah eyed her wine glass and wondered how much of a scandal it would cause if she were to pour the lot over Lord Deverell’s head. Deciding it would be deeply satisfying—but an unforgivable waste of good claret—Sarah settled for taking another, rather pointed sip instead.
“Has anyone ever told you you’re insufferable, my lord?” Sarah queried dryly, the wine making her bold.
“Has anyone ever told you how beautiful you are?” the earl replied, without missing a beat.
Sarah’s cheeks flared with warmth. She took another deep sip from her claret to calm herself but that served only to increase the heat in her blood.
“An English rose is easily read,” Lord Deverell observed, as he lifted his glass in toast to her blushes.
To Sarah’s relief, she was relieved of having to respond by a stream of servants arriving to serve the first course. Amongst the line of footmen and maids, she spotted a familiar face—Flora Bridges, Mrs Bridges’ granddaughter.
Like her grandmother, Flora was said to hold the secrets of the still-room. Unlike her grandmother, she had shown no particular inclination to spend her days grinding salves and boiling tonics for every chilblain, carbuncle, and mortifying rash to plague the village.
“That’s Mrs Bridges’ granddaughter,” Sarah whispered to Lord Deverell, nodding discreetly toward the bird-like girl.
“Do you think she might know what Hardwick did to upset her grandmother so?” he wondered aloud.
“I will endeavour to find out,” Sarah replied. Though perhaps, while she was at it, she might ask if Flora had a remedy for foolish hearts—for hers, it seemed, was already halfway lost to an earl with no intention of staying in Plumpton.