Chapter 13
It was still more than two hours until dinner, but weary beyond measure, I retreated to our bedchamber suite.
Most of the other guests had likewise sought rest and respite from the heat, so I brushed aside any feelings of guilt that I might be failing at my duties as hostess.
I heard voices coming from our sitting room and entered to find Bree and Anderley there conferring with Gage. They looked up as I entered.
I must have appeared as ragged as I felt, for Bree rose to her feet to pour me a cup of tea.
Sinking into the soft cushions of the settee, I bent over to unlace my kid leather boots, heedless of whether it was impolite to do so while my husband’s valet was present or not.
Once my stocking feet were free, I sat up with a sigh, catching the smirk on Anderley’s lips.
“Don’t tell me you don’t do something similar after a long day on your feet,” I scolded him mildly.
“Sometimes he does it under the dinner table,” Bree tattled on him, crinkling her freckled nose as she handed me my tea. “Dinna ken why he thinks he can get away wi’ it wi’oot our noticin’. His big feet stink somethin’ awful.”
“No worse than yours,” he teased back.
Bree planted her hands on her hips. “You’ve never seen my feet.”
He waggled his dark eyebrows. “That you know of.”
I smothered my laugh with my hand as Bree narrowed her eyes at Anderley, as if ready to do him some violence. But there was also a glint of playful mirth in their depths, which told me she hadn’t minded the jest.
“Enough, you two,” Gage admonished them with a smile. However things had ended in the study with his father, he was now either sufficiently distracted or doing a good job of pretending it hadn’t bothered him. “Tell Mrs. Gage what you just told me.”
Anderley gestured for Bree to go first.
“I spoke wi’ as many members o’ the staff as I could,” she said, sinking down on the settee a few feet away. “And as I anticipated, they all had nice, but fairly innocuous things to say about Miss Whitlock. Nothin’ o’ note.” Her gaze sharpened. “Except Ann McClintock.”
“Mrs. Birnam’s maid?” I clarified, recalling our conversation during the wee hours of the night.
“Aye. She told everyone, ‘The hussy got no more than she deserved.’ ”
I gasped aloud, a reaction which seemed to satisfy Gage and Anderley who had already heard this, for they nodded. “She actually said that?”
“Aye. Shocked everyone wi’ in hearin’. And when she walked away, then I got an earful aboot her.”
“McClintock?”
“Aye. Mrs. Taylor said she’s a demandin’ one.
Tries tae bully the other maids tae get first go at everythin’.
Tried tae elbow me aside the other day tae use the iron when I’d been waitin’ for it tae heat.
And she snatched Lady Brougham’s breakfast tray straight oot o’ her maid’s hands just this mornin’. ”
“Well, that’s no way to behave,” I retorted, affronted for the rest of the staff.
“But then Elsie…” one of the upstairs maids “…told me she’d heard Mrs. Birnam screechin’ at the woman fair loud enough tae wake the dead simply because she’d no’ arrived wi’ the hot water for her mornin’ ablutions fast enough.”
I paused to consider this. “Then maybe McClintock is acting as she is out of self-preservation.” If Mrs. Birnam was that demanding and impatient, the maid’s position could not be an easy one.
“Have you thought to empathize with her?” Perhaps the maid could use a little kindness.
Though I cringed at the knowledge I was asking Bree to do so in order to convince this McClintock to then confide in her.
Such was the moral dilemma of some investigative work.
Bree affirmed she had and then grimaced. “Though I’m no’ confident ’twill work. She’s a suspicious one. And she does genuinely seem no’ to have liked Miss Whitlock.” She tilted her head. “Though maybe she was merely takin’ her mistress’s part.”
That was possible. A willing ear and a bobbing head did often override any other faults for some people. It may be how McClintock stayed on Mrs. Birnam’s good side.
I turned to Anderley. “What about you? I’m curious if you learned anything about the guileful Mr. Paget.”
“Indeed,” he replied, relishing his turn to speak.
“It seems Paget does come from Birnam’s early days, before he’d made his fortune.
” He flashed a grin. “Lachlan—the stable lad the Birnams brought with them—was full of information. Claims Paget often disappears at night or even for days at a time. And that he’s a dab hand with a knife. ”
“Now that doesn’t sound like a very reliable valet,” I quipped dryly. “Who’s to help Mr. Birnam dress and undress?”
“Certainly not a traditional one,” Gage drawled in agreement. “It’s almost as if his primary duties are something else entirely.”
“So if Birnam is responsible for his secretary’s murder, then there’s a good chance Paget may have done the dirty work.” I frowned, recalling what Anderley had said about Paget having known his employer before he’d made his fortune. “I wonder if he also knew the Whitlocks.”
The others looked to me in question, and I quickly explained what I’d learned from Birnam.
“Then Paget took the papers from Miss Whitlock’s desk,” Gage surmised, coming to the same conclusion I had.
“It seems all but certain,” I said, emptying my cup.
He shook his head angrily. “Does Birnam think no rules apply to him?”
It was a justified query. And one that made the tea in my stomach turn sour. For a man who believed the rules didn’t apply to him might do just about anything with little or no remorse.
Trevor and I had once discussed the impact that one’s in-laws might have on one’s marriage.
He had asked for my opinion because at the outset of Gage’s and my marriage, his father and I were practically at daggers drawn.
I had conceded that it had not always been easy—it still wasn’t—but that if I had to choose all over again, I would still have married Sebastian.
But Lord Gage was a different man than Mr. Birnam, and there was Mrs. Birnam to be gotten along with as well.
For all my difficulties with my father-in-law, at least he followed a code of honor.
If Birnam followed no set of rules, then what would that mean for Trevor?
What would that mean for his marriage if Birnam ever tried to pit his daughter against him?
Would he ever resort to blackmail against those Trevor loved to get what he wanted?
These questions troubled me.
And they continued to do so, percolating at the back of my thoughts even as I bathed and dressed for dinner, and later made my way down to the mauve drawing room where the guests would gather.
Called thus because of the shade of paint on the walls, it boasted tall western-facing windows that spilled ample light across the Aubusson rug.
Pride of place had been given to a Broadwood grand pianoforte while various seating arrangements were sprinkled around the large room.
When necessary, the doors to the red saloon next door could be propped open, or even to the green drawing room on the opposite side of that.
Earlier, I ordered that the windows on opposite ends of the house be opened, and the inner doors left ajar to promote a cross-breeze, and I was relieved to feel that the space was now blessedly cooler.
Of course, everything on this level would have to be closed up tight overnight.
Birnam’s earlier implications that an intruder must have attacked Miss Whitlock would make this obligatory.
Promoting an atmosphere of safety and security would be prioritized over comfort.
Being the first to arrive, I was able to steal a few moments to myself before the hubbub of the evening began.
I considered returning to the nursery to see Emma, but I knew I had five minutes at most before the guests began to appear.
I would have to wait to slip away to see my daughter once the gentlemen rejoined us following their port.
I perched on the edge of one of the rosewood sofas, wishing I could sink into its depths.
I allowed my shoulders to slump and my posture to sag, only to be caught out by Lorna as she hurried into the room wearing an ethereal coral pink gown.
However, she seemed to have little care for my breech of decorum, intent on something else.
“Kiera,” she exclaimed. “Thank goodness I’ve caught you alone.” She glanced about the room as if to verify this, before plopping down beside me. “I’ve thought of something.”
I turned toward her, intrigued.
“Remember how Miss Whitlock was indisposed upon their arrival?”
“Yes. She claimed that long journeys don’t agree…with her.” My words slowed as I realized the query Lorna was about to make.
Her green eyes gleamed with awareness. “Could she have been with child?”
Yesterday I’d asked myself the same thing. Asked it and discarded it. But now, the answer was far more critical, far more pertinent. For if she was…if she was, that might provide us with a motive.
“And if so,” Lorna continued on a whisper, sneaking a look toward the door, “who was the father?”
I began to question my decision not to perform an autopsy. Had I been too hasty in thinking I’d learned all I needed to know without making a single cut? A postmortem internal examination was never my first choice, but in some instances, it was not only useful but necessary.