Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
“I have many questions.” He poured a measure of wine into each glass. “And I fear only you have the answers. I should very much like to have a conversation without your brother around glaring daggers at me.”
Though he didn’t smile, the humor in his voice instinctively warmed her, and that sensation instantly tickled her suspicions. Wheedling men had plagued her for too many years.
“Surely the steward, Mr. Stockwell, can tell you everything you wish to know. You’re planning to meet with him, are you not?”
“I am. However, neither Stockwell nor the other man I plan to see was married to my cousin Archie.”
She swirled the wine in the glass he’d handed her, trying to read the future in the sparks from the candlelight. “Who is the other man you’re visiting?”
“As to that, perhaps you can shed some light. Lord Diddenton thought it a good idea for me to visit with Mr. Jarrow.”
Her cheeks heated before succumbing to a cold chill. She took a sip of the warming drink and reached for composure, training her features to indifference, hiding the fear and alarm that stiffened her.
“The magistrate.” She cleared her throat. “I see. I wondered about the sudden need to visit Risley Manor.”
Her hand trembled as she raised the glass again. She set it down without drinking and looked up at him. He was watching, waiting, trying to discompose her. He must not see that he was succeeding.
“Mr. Herbert Jarrow had an apoplexy a few months ago,” she said. “He is bedridden. His son, Mr. Edward Jarrow, has returned home and was appointed as his replacement.”
Apparently, Graeme had not thought to look into the full name of the local magistrate, though he’d surely know the name of the Lord Lieutenant for Hampshire, Lord Wellington.
“Lord Diddenton didn’t tell me that. Do you know why he thought I should speak with him?”
She pressed her lips together against a rising panic and fought for self-control.
Graeme frowned, looking not angry but concerned. Unwelcome tears pricked the back of her eyes and she blinked them away. This would not do. She was stronger than this.
Graeme leaned in. “Diddenton told me he had Jarrow search Risley Manor for a copy of the missing will.”
“The will he believes is missing.”
“Yes. Could there be any other reason for a search?”
As Blythe’s heart quickened, a loud clacking began in her head.
When Archie died, there had been whispers about poison.
Mr. Herbert Jarrow, who was both magistrate and coroner, had raised his eyebrows at Blythe.
The doctor’s eyes had widened and then narrowed speculatively, before he’d shaken his head and ruled that death had been due to a lung fever of several weeks’ duration.
Mr. Jarrow had decided that no inquest was needed. A toady of the worst sort, he claimed he didn’t wish to bring disrepute to the Chilcombe name.
But she’d seen the doubt in his eyes.
Murder was one crime she hadn’t committed, would never have committed. She wouldn’t raise the topic—she couldn’t bear to see suspicion stir in Graeme.
Holding her glass with two hands to control her trembling, she placed it carefully on the table and stood. “You will have to ask Jarrow or your friend, Lord Diddenton, if there was another reason for a search.”
Graeme shot to his feet and snatched her hand. “No, you don’t, my lady. Don’t run away before we speak.”
The chilly hand he held trembled. He’d seen the play of emotions, the shining eyes, the desire to dodge questions, the indignation.
The fear.
“You don’t need to be wary of me, Blythe. I won’t hurt you.”
She huffed out a breath and tried to tug her hand away.
He clamped his other hand over hers. “You’re chilled.”
It being only April and a damned wet and cold one at that, the fire screen had not gone up and a few coals burned in the grate. “Come, let us move closer to the fire.”
She shook her head. “No, I’ll be warm enough when I draw my shawl closer. After you release my hand.”
The shawl had slipped over one shoulder and dangled below the puffed-out mutton sleeve of one arm.
“Allow me.” Graeme released her and draped the covering, resisting the temptation to stroke the white column of skin above the modest neckline of her carriage gown. He turned her chair to face his before seating her and then taking his own seat.
“Shall I pour you more wine?” he asked.
“I have plenty still.”
He refilled his own glass. “You told me the Risley steward is competent and a man of good character. I hope that’s true.
I know so little about farming I’ll need to rely on him.
I don’t know what this business with Jarrow is, and perhaps Jarrow the younger doesn’t know either.
What I want you to tell me… I want to know what, aside from this business of the will, was going on at Risley Manor. What was my cousin doing?”
Awkwardly stated but open-ended enough as an opening salvo.
Blythe’s gaze skittered over the contents of the table and around the room, everywhere but at him. Whatever memories he’d stirred had not been peaceful ones.
He wouldn’t get the truth from her, at least not all of it. Not yet.
He was willing to wait.
Blythe sighed and looked up at him. “We were estranged. I lived at Bluebelle Lodge and visited the manor when… rarely. Archie employed women—nurses, he called them. He entertained gentlemen visitors quite frequently. He was an opium user, and that, eventually, became most important in his life.”
All of which accorded with what Morley had told him.
What had happened to the glowing young love he’d seen in Archie and Blythe at the wedding he’d reluctantly, resentfully attended? There were so many missing pieces to the puzzle.
“Mr. Stockwell held estate matters together. We did have one quite bad harvest when the crops were blighted. Archie bestirred himself to obtain a loan. We were able to refinance that loan last year with more favorable terms from Sawley’s Bank.”
We, she said. Not they, the steward and the solicitor.
“That would be the bank belonging to your friend, Lady Loughton?”
“I assure you it was business, not charity. We, er, Stockwell presented a sound plan for repayment. I’m sure he’ll be able to explain matters to your satisfaction.”
“I look forward to understanding the business of the estate. Tell me about Bluebelle Lodge.”
“Bluebelle Lodge,” she said, “is mine. Left by Mr. Davies, my guardian, and his wife, with the agreement that it would come to me upon Archie’s death.
If you remember, when my parents died, I went to live with Mr. Davies and his wife, my former governess.
You remember, don’t you, visiting me? And when Archie and I…
when the marriage contract was being rushed through because of our scandalous…
” she waved a hand, “interlude in the garden, the arrangement was made that Bluebelle Lodge would be mine. It was Mr. Davies’ idea.
I suppose he suspected the sort of husband Archie would turn out to be. ”
That little speech was a minefield of topics they would have to discuss sooner or later—the scandal he’d caused by seeing them and creating a stir; the rushed wedding; the suspicions about Archie which everyone except Blythe seemed to have seen before the nuptials.
“I was happy at Bluebelle Lodge. And I assure you, my lord, I won’t let you or anyone else surrender it to Diddenton without a fight.”
“I know,” he said nodding, but she was warmed up now and didn’t seem to hear him.
“I’m anxious to see the state of things. I haven’t been home in a while.”
She took a healthy swig of her wine while he pondered that. According to Morley, Blythe hadn’t been in London until the start of the Season. She herself said she hadn’t been residing at Risley Manor. What had Lord Vernon said? Something about her going to stay at some widowed lady’s home?
“You didn’t remain at Bluebelle Lodge during your mourning?”
“I went… I went to the home of a friend. Lest you accuse me of residing with a lover, there is a league of widowed ladies who keep a secluded home in the country for other widows who need… a place to stay. People like me.”
“Like you? But you had a home, three homes, plus a few outlying properties belonging to Chilcombe.”
Her mouth firmed. “Indeed. At the end, I didn’t love Archie, but I mourned the pathetic waste of a man’s life, the man he might have been, and I was furious, in a rage almost. There was…
is, a persistent suitor who torments me.
I found I needed to go somewhere and hide from him, and from my own desire to do him an injury. ”
“Lord Vernon.”
“I am not a murderer.”
She tugged her shawl tightly and stormed out before he even had a chance to push back his chair and stand.
She wasn’t a murderer.
Someone, somewhere, had accused her of murder. Archie’s?
Or perhaps the suspected murder victim was the other fellow on the road, the one who’d cracked his head on a boulder. The one carrying the will to London.
What she must have gone through in her marriage. He wouldn’t believe for a moment that she had done anything nefarious, certainly not murder. But he wasn’t certain he could blame her if she had.
Blythe pushed back the covers and padded to the window, grabbing a lap blanket against the chill.
It had rained all through the last day’s journey and the night. Though the day was gray, she guessed it was long past dawn.
Wrung out by traveling and nerves, she’d slept longer than she meant to.
In the breakfast room, a footman, one of the old retainers who’d held on through the madness, informed her that the earl had breakfasted quite early and gone to visit Mr. Stockwell. The sideboard had been cleared and he hurried to fetch her fresh toast and tea.
“Ah, good morning.” The cheerful greeting came from Hermione. “I broke my fast earlier but I’ll have another cup of tea. Did you hear that downpour last night?”
While Hermione waxed on about the weather and the roads, Blythe buttered her toast.