Chapter Five #2
“Have you visited the vicarage that will be your new home?” April asked. “Will you want to make changes there?”
For the next ten minutes, they discussed the vicarage, comfort versus character and antiquity, colours for sunny rooms and for darker ones, and, in fact, were getting along very well when the gentlemen joined them, rather more punctually than they had the evening before.
April looked over at once, as she always did when expecting Piers. In fact, it was Dr. Hale who entered first, with Mr. Hubble vociferously defending some argument. Dr. Hale glanced up and grinned at April, so she smiled back.
Which was when Claudia jerked her head around and saw the smile still on her betrothed’s lips.
Claudia’s gaze came back to her, no longer friendly, but cold as flint. “What is the matter with you? Must you have both of them?”
“Both of them?” April repeated, confused.
Claudia lowered her voice, though it shook with intensity. “Piers is not enough, is he? You would take Joseph from me, too.”
Before April could even think what she meant, Claudia stood up and walked rapidly away.
By the time April understood, Dr. Hale had already taken his betrothed’s place beside her.
“What is it?” he asked, with unexpected perception.
“Oh, nothing. Except I appear to have offended Miss Algernon. Again.”
“You haven’t,” Hale said ruefully. “You must understand she is used to having all the younger fellows adore her.”
“Including Piers,” she said slowly, then blinked and wished she’d kept her mouth shut.
Hale said ruefully, “Didn’t he tell you? We were most favoured rivals for a time, but he was undoubtedly winning before all the tragedies began and he had to leave. Claudia thought he would marry her.”
But he married me, who could not speak the king’s English or write my own name...
***
LIKE PIERS, WHEN HE chose to, April knew how to blend into the background.
So she poured tea, smiled, spoke little, and applauded when Mrs. Hubble sang and Claudia played the piano.
She laughed when Keith and Fosterson played a comical duet and did not retire until the other ladies suggested it.
Like the night before, the men then piled into the library.
The ladies laughed at the familiar sounds as they climbed the stairs and said polite good nights outside April’s door.
The candlesticks were still missing from the alcove. But Mrs. Hubble had a different reticule almost tied to her wrist.
It was a blessed relief to be alone in her own room.
April turned up the lamp and set about preparing for bed.
There was a little knot of anxiety in her stomach that she could not account for.
If Piers had never mentioned Claudia, it was only because a gentleman would not distress his wife with tales of his past loves and conquests.
April had always known she was not the only woman to be attracted to him, but the others had not bothered her unduly.
This was different, because he regarded Claudia as his friend.
April had begun as his friend. She was still his friend.
I have the silly moods and fancies of an expectant mother, she told herself.
And indeed, this explanation seemed so likely compared to the thought of Piers deceiving innocent maidens, that by the time she lay down in bed with her book, she could laugh at herself.
Not least for actually thinking in the language of the nobs.
She read for a little, and was just beginning to nod off when Piers came in. He was still dressed and set down his candle before advancing across the room to gaze down at her.
She turned onto her back. “Are you giving up so early?”
“Apparently, we no longer have the stamina of youth. Alcoholically speaking. Besides, it’s good to be alone, too.” He lowered himself onto the edge of the bed, “Am I disturbing you?”
She reached up to touch his cheek. “Yes. Come to bed.”
So he did. And it was a lovely way to dispel the silly moods and fancies of an expectant mother.
***
SIR DOMINIC TEMPERLEY’S second footman, Edward, crept down the bare staircase, his candle’s glow showing up the many pits in the paintwork and various cobwebs on the ground floor ceiling as he went. Excitement thrummed through him, and not a little triumph.
Edward knew in his heart he was behaving badly, but resentments kept piling up alongside his entitlements.
Mostly, he resented not being taken to London with the rest of the servants.
He loved the sheer busy-ness of Town, the noise and the people and the opportunities.
But he, of all the household, had been left here to be run off his feet, with duties he neither expected nor wanted, and a collection of strangers lording it over him. Literally, in Petteril’s case.
He had begun by seeing what he could get away with, like bringing the baggage in the easiest way through the front door. That had worked several times before his lordship sent him around the back.
Bloody lordship. He wasn’t even Edward’s real master, and there he was lecturing him, not even on his duties, but on his life. Bastard.
Edward eased back the bolt on the door at the foot of the stairs, then reached up to take the large key from the lintel shelf. He unlocked the door and slipped outside, before locking the door behind him and dropping the key into his pocket.
He grinned to himself, rejoicing in his disobedience and the delicious anticipation.
From here, he did not even need his candle to find the path to the summer house, so he blew it out.
Though none of the guests would see him from this side of the house.
Mrs. Riley might, of course, but she should be snoring her head off by now.
Getting one over on his lordship, who looked vague but wasn’t, gave Edward a rather childish satisfaction. And very soon now, he would get his reward for his bad day and his exhaustion.
An owl hooted, almost overhead. Leaves rustled in the wind... Which was odd, now that he thought of it, because there was no wind. The night was still and dark, clouds obscuring most of the light from the moon and stars.
No, the rustling could not be the wind. A fox, perhaps, straying too close, or some other night creature scuttling away from human approach. Quite a large creature by the sound of it. It even breathed heavily.
And then it loomed out of the darkness, scaring him witless for the briefest instant before he began to laugh. And then his head exploded in blinding, dazzling pain. He seemed to be falling, falling, and then the world went dark and there was nothing more.
***
APRIL’S SLEEP WAS DEEP and contented. She didn’t know what had wakened her, and didn’t much care, since her husband’s arms were around her and his warm body close and comforting and necessary.
She snuggled into him to go back to sleep.
A sudden clatter forced her eyes open.
“What was that?” Piers asked beside her. He reared up, reaching for the tinder box.
She didn’t blame him. It almost sounded like something falling in this room. Almost, but not quite. Surely the bump had the same muffled, distorted quality as the sounds she had heard last night?
Light flared from the lamp and Piers turned it up, peering around the room. No one was there, though another, indescribably eerie sound rose up, chilling her blood, echoing and fading again.
Piers set down the lamp and slid out of bed. “Is that what you heard last night?”
“Not quite,” April said, distracted in spite of herself by the sight of her husband’s naked body, golden and sculpted in the glow of the lamp. “Last night it was more like moaning and crying. This sounds...angry.”
She rose too, padding after him towards the chimney from where the sounds had seemed to be coming last night.
“Surely everyone is asleep?” Piers murmured.
“We’re not.” All the same, he had a point. The over-worked servants should be too tired to be running around the house shouting and throwing things. Or whatever was going on.
Piers brushed past her to the door, opened it quietly and glanced up the passage. “No lights,” he reported.
April shivered. “Maybe it is ghosts. This house is definitely strange. It’s as if it makes you think things...”
“No, it doesn’t,” Piers said. “Your imagination does that. But the chimney could be picking up sounds from outside. I stayed in a house like that once. Pigeons yelling out of fireplaces. Music from the nearby tavern sounding as if it was in the parlour. I think I’ll just have a quick look around outside. ..”
“Like that?” she said, as he reached for the door handle again.
He looked slightly sheepish and set down the lamp on the dressing table. “Perhaps not quite like that.” He reached for his boots and sat down on the bed to pull them on.
April threw him his dressing gown and struggled into her own.
“Hush,” she told the baby as her insides seemed to dive a little.
Piers glanced back at her. “Perhaps you should wait here.”
“Perhaps I should.” But since she was pushing her bare feet into her own boots, neither of them paid the suggestion any further attention.
Piers lit a couple of candles from the lamp and passed one to April. Then he turned down the lamp, and they left the bedchamber together. As one, they turned not toward the main staircase, but toward the attic staircase, where April had encountered Edward last night.
But when she eased the door open, they heard nothing more sinister than Mrs. Riley’s gentle snoring. She closed the door again and they crept down the servants’ stairs to leave the house by the kitchen door, which was locked and bolted as it should be.
Piers found a lantern there and lit it from his candle which he then blew out. April pinched hers and abandoned it too.
The hinges of the door creaked enough to set April’s teeth on edge, and then they were outside in the night chill.
There was no tavern or even a cottage close to the house, so if the strange noises were permeating the chimneys from outside, it could surely only be passing people, birds, or animals.
Poachers, perhaps? Or amorous villagers?
Or servants like Edward.
Piers took her hand, and they walked together in a circuit around the house. The lantern showed them nothing but two rabbits sprinting for cover. Until they came to the locked side door. Piers paused as the lantern showed what looked like fresh footprints.
There was no gravel here, just an old mud track leading to the gravel drive on one side, and off into the distance on the other. April wished she’d had time to explore further.
Piers’s lips touched her ear. “The track leads to a summer house. We noticed it yesterday during our ride.” He adjusted the lantern’s direction, showing further footprints.
On impulse, since someone seemed to have come out of the house this way, April tried the door. It was still locked.
Silently, she and Piers followed the footprints along the track and up the gentle rise until a small, wooden structure could be seen silhouetted in the lantern light. There were no more obvious footprints on the path.
Piers paused and swung the lantern in an arc around him.
“Piers,” April said hoarsely.
But he had already seen it. A heap of clothes in the grass, a few feet to the right of the track. They moved toward it, April with a deep sense of foreboding. Piers released her hand, and she used it to cover her stinging stomach.
Hush, we are fine, you and I...
But the heap on the grass was not fine. It was a man in a corduroy coat, lying on his front, unmoving. The back of his head looked wet. Piers bent and touched his shoulder, and then, when the figure still didn’t stir, he gripped his shoulder and turned him.
Edward lay staring up at the sky.