Chapter 28 #2
His lordship turned to Nell. A smile spread over his face.
“And this vision must be your much-praised friend, Mrs. Quincey.” He flourished another bow.
“Your servant, ma’am.” On straightening, he at last addressed Miles.
“Mr. Quincey? A privilege. I hope you’re fond of shooting.
We’re a bloodthirsty lot here at Northwick. ”
“I can hold my own,” Miles said.
“Sir Walter sends his regrets, my lord,” Lady Belwood said. “He has bid me do my utmost to enliven your party.”
“Your gracious presence is my recompense, my lady. And the presence of this lovely creature.” Lord Amstead’s speculative gaze lingered on Nell.
He smiled again with quicksilver rapidity.
“But I get ahead of myself. You must be tired from your journey. I shall let you refresh yourselves. When you’re ready, you may join me and my other guests in the drawing room for cake and sherry. ”
“Are we the last to arrive?” Miles asked.
“There are one or two more stragglers,” Lord Amstead said. “But we won’t let their tardiness affect our pleasure.” He motioned to the butler. “Innes? Do show my guests to their rooms.”
Nell’s breath stopped. It was all she could do not to stare at the butler. She’d noticed him when he’d appeared outside, of course, but she hadn’t really looked at him. Not until this moment.
Yet, he was Innes!
She flashed a glance at Miles. He returned her gaze, his expression inscrutable.
“This way, if you please,” Innes said in a colorless voice.
The entry hall opened into a circular stair hall where winding, cantilevered steps rose to the floors above in a dramatic display of architectural splendor. Nell had noted the feature when she’d studied the house plans. It was one of Sir Robert Taylor’s signature designs.
Innes preceded them up the stairs. Lady Belwood came after him, along with her lady’s maid—a superior sort of woman in a black stuff dress, who held her ladyship’s jewel case in her arms as protectively as a mother might hold a newborn child.
Nell and Miles followed. They’d gone no more than a few steps when Lord Amstead called out from behind them.
“What’s this, Mrs. Quincey?” he questioned in a tone of surprised concern. “You haven’t injured yourself during the journey?”
Nell stilled beside Miles. Much as she leaned on her husband, there was no disguising her limp. Not completely.
Exchanging another weighted glance with Miles, she pivoted on the steps to bestow his lordship with a rueful smile. “A trifling thing,” she said. “I’m afraid I twisted my ankle when I stepped onto the train at Euston.”
“Did you, indeed? Poor lamb.” Lord Amstead was all sympathy. “Shall I summon my physician?”
“That won’t be necessary,” Miles said. “I’ll see to my wife myself.”
Lord Amstead inclined his head. “As you wish.”
Nell’s fingers clenched tighter on Miles’s arm as they resumed their progress up the stairs.
Innes was far ahead, with Lady Belwood and her maid.
Reaching the third floor, they entered a long, carpeted hall.
All the while, Nell was running over the facts from Mr. Cowgill’s two notebooks in her mind.
The three dates from the first one, and the broken lines from the second.
19th March, 28th March, 3rd September.
Fawn-Purvis, Innes
From Hertfordshire to Brothel
Depot
Sleep/Tea
5000 pounds.
She had thought Innes might be another nobleman. Or possibly a villain in the fashion of Silas and Mrs. Pritchard. But he was neither. He was a servant. A butler. And not just any butler. He belonged to Lord Amstead.
After installing Lady Belwood and her maid in one of the rooms that lined the hall, Innes turned his attention to Nell and Miles. “Lord Amstead has put you in the gold room,” he said, opening a door several doors down from Lady Belwood’s. “It possesses a pleasant view of the duck pond.”
Nell entered ahead of Miles, doing her utmost to conceal her limp. It had already drawn far too much attention. She let her gaze drift over the bedchamber, hardly noticing the furnishings. All she wanted was a moment alone with her husband.
“A lovely room,” she said, though she’d taken in none of it. “We’re obliged to Lord Amstead for his consideration.”
Innes bowed. “A maid will return in half an hour’s time to escort you to the drawing room.”
Nell waited until the butler had withdrawn and his footsteps faded down the hall before turning to Miles. “The mysterious Innes!” she whispered.
Miles’s mouth was set in a grim line. “Amstead’s butler, of all people.”
“Is that why Mr. Cowgill grouped them in his notebook? Because they were working together to achieve some nefarious purpose?”
“It seems likely.”
“But what purpose?” she asked. “Something to do with young women and brothels, presumably.”
“And with something that happened on the twenty-eighth of March,” Miles said. “Nine days after the late baron’s death.”
Nell frowned in thought. “If this were a gothic novel, it would be connected to a murder and a forged will.”
Miles removed his hat, gloves, and overcoat.
He tossed them over the back of a chintz armchair near the bedroom’s small fireplace.
“But the late Lord Amstead wasn’t murdered.
He was verifiably ill. And his son is a hereditary peer.
No alteration to a will could have prevented him from inheriting the estate. ”
Nell attempted to take off her own hat, but with only her left hand to aid her, the knot in the ribbons eluded her. “It might have stopped him from inheriting any money that wasn’t entailed,” she said, struggling.
Coming forward, Miles gently brushed aside her hand and untied the ribbons himself. “His finances aren’t public knowledge. Nor was the will.”
Nell ignored the tremor of warmth that went through her as his bare fingers brushed her skin. “In a house of this size, with dozens of servants, and a small village nearby, everything is public knowledge.”
Miles removed her hat. Her gloves came next, one careful tug at a time. “Meaning?”
“There’s always gossip, isn’t there? We’ve only to listen for it, and we’re sure to learn something. Mr. Cowgill must have done the same at all those house parties he attended. Unless he was such a clever reporter as to employ a more effective method—one that even you don’t know about.”
“He wasn’t.” Miles placed Nell’s things in the chair along with his own. “If I had to guess, I’d say he was tactless. Possibly bumbling. It’s how he ended up in the Thames.”
Nell shivered at the reminder.
Miles didn’t fail to notice it. “It’s not too late to take our leave. If you’ve changed your mind—”
“I haven’t,” she said quickly. “And you needn’t worry. We’ll be much more careful than poor Mr. Cowgill was.”
Miles didn’t seem reassured. He went to the mahogany washstand in the corner.
It had been prepared with a ewer of water and a stack of fluffy white cloths.
“I don’t like it,” he replied as he filled the basin.
“The house is too remote. The weather pestilential. And if Amstead is in league with his butler—”
Nell came up behind him. “There are other guests here,” she reminded. “Lady Belwood, and heaven knows how many others. We’ll be safe enough.”
“Silas has already been arrested,” Miles said. “If Amstead is involved, he may well be frightened. Desperate. And desperation makes a man reckless.”
Nell didn’t know anything about desperate men.
Indeed, she knew little about men at all.
Everything she’d learned since coming to London had been in relation to Miles.
And he wasn’t like the men she’d heard about all her life at the Academy.
The ones who took advantage of women. Who condescended to them, exploited them, betrayed them.
No.
Miles Quincey was honorable, decent, and true.
And he wasn’t opposed to taking action when the occasion called for it—a fact she was reminded of whenever she caught a glimpse of the abrasions on his knuckles.
She looked at them now, remembering how he’d returned to the house after his altercation with Silas. The way he’d knelt before her and rested his head in her lap.
“Would you like to wash first?” he asked her.
Recollecting herself, Nell gave a dismissive wave of her hand. “Go ahead.”
Rail travel was a grimy business. It was impossible to have gone any distance by train without accumulating a layer of grit and soot. They would both need to wash their face and hands, and to brush off their clothes, before appearing in the drawing room.
But she wasn’t ready yet. She needed to stretch her legs to alleviate the ache in her hip. Folding her arms at her waist, she walked the length of the room. This time she looked at it. Really looked at it.
At St. James’s Square, she and Miles had connecting rooms. Most fashionable couples did, to her knowledge—Effie and Mr. Royce notwithstanding. But this wasn’t a master and mistress’s suite. It was a guest chamber, consisting of only one room.
Only one bed.
A flush of heat swept through Nell as she was struck by the logical ramifications of this fact.
Amid all their strategy sessions by candlelight, all their studying architectural plans and discussing the shooting party, she and Miles had never once addressed the possibility that they’d be sleeping together during their three days at Northwick Hall.
Pacing to the window, she twitched back the curtain with an agitated hand.
A great expanse of lawn stretched out below, leading to a serene, tree-shrouded pond.
It was a pretty enough prospect, yet all she noticed was the hazy reflection of the bed in the glass.
It was a smallish four-poster. Even smaller than the one she occupied alone in St. James’s Square.
“Is your leg paining you?” Miles asked.
Nell stifled a flinch. The last thing she wanted to be thinking about right now was her leg. “It’s no matter,” she said dismissively.
“And your shoulder—”
“It’s fine.” She let the curtain fall closed.
Miles straightened from the basin. He dried his damp face with a towel. “There’s time enough before we’re due downstairs. You might lie down on the bed—”
“No,” she said. She closed her eyes briefly, hearing the note of shrillness in her voice. Taking a steadying breath, she moderated her tone. “Thank you. I don’t need to rest. I need to move. I’ve been still far too long.”
Miles regarded her from across the room, a thoughtful frown at the back of his gaze.
Ignoring his scrutiny, Nell put action to word, walking from the window back to the fireplace, and then to the wardrobe. But wherever she went, the bed was still there in the corner of her eye, making her pulse skip with anxiety.
It was hours yet until it would be time to retire. She had the sinking feeling that she’d be counting every minute of them.