Chapter Eight #3
“Can you tell me why you went upstairs during the evening?”
His eyes glinted. “My dear Lady Ambrose, one does not ask a gentleman such questions. I might be forced to ask you why you went downstairs?”
Had he seen her, or was he bluffing in instinctive retaliation for her question? “One does like fresh air,” she said vaguely, inhaling the sweet after-rain scents from the gardens and leaving him to guess whether it was an idle remark or the answer to his question.
She paused beside a damaged rose head and removed her hand from his arm in order to pluck it completely from its stem. “Perhaps you would oblige me by telling me if you came across anyone else during your perambulations?”
“Like the maid?” he said incredulously. “Lady Ambrose, what is this about? Is she the maid who collapsed and caused all the bother that evening?”
His directness stood in his favor, she thought, but again she could tell little from his expression. “Or anyone at all,” she said mildly, by way of answering his first question.
Impatiently, he ran one hand through his short, fair locks. Then his hand stilled for an instant before he let it drop. “Actually, when I went to my chamber, I did hear someone moving around the passage up there. I didn’t see anyone, though.”
“Whereabout in the passage?” she asked quickly.
“Just around the corner from my bedchamber.”
“Toward the main staircase? Or away from it?”
“Away from it,” he said, looking amused at her attention to detail. “But when I rounded the corner, whoever it was had gone. I assumed it was one of the servants and thought no more about it.”
She nodded thoughtfully, suspecting she could ask no more about Dinah without arousing the kind of suspicion and talk she had promised the Chadbons she would avoid. She had already stretched the point.
“Thank you,” she said. “I’m sure His Lordship will be grateful.”
His eyes kindled with laughter. “For what?”
She smiled mysteriously, because she didn’t know what else to do. “I believe I shall go in at the side door here. The grass ahead will soak through my poor shoes.”
She made her escape, hoping he would not feel obliged to follow. As she glanced up at the house, a movement at one of the upper windows caught her attention. She only had a brief glimpse of someone, but it was a woman, and it looked very like Mrs. Newman.
Jealousy was a powerful motive, Kate reflected, and Mrs. Newman’s husband was, at the very least, a flirt.
On the other hand, she was fairly sure the woman had not left the drawing room that evening after the gentlemen joined them, and she was unlikely to have been in Lord Chadbon’s study to steal the dagger.
Newman, on the other hand, had certainly been in there when Kate had arrived at the house, and possibly also at some point between tea and dinner. Along with most of the other gentlemen.
Otteridge should be her next quarry, she decided. The library seemed a good place to start. However, before she got there, Lady Chadbon beckoned her through the open door of the morning room.
“Close the door, if you please,” Her Ladyship said.
Kate, feeling rather like a schoolroom miss about to be scolded by the governess, obeyed.
“Kate, I am worried,” Lady Chadbon confided. “I know you are seeking the truth with the best of intentions, but I truly cannot think it wise.”
In fact, it was extremely unwise for Chadbon to have supported the arrest of Lord Winster’s son, and Kate had to bite her lip to prevent herself from saying so.
Instead, she said, “I cannot think Mr. Grande guilty of such a crime.”
“What, a na?ve young man of the church caught in the snares of a pretty, manipulative servant? In a moment of weakness, he probably felt it was the only way out for him.”
“I don’t believe he is such a na?ve young man,” she said carefully.
“And although it is bound to come out in the end, I have told no one that Dinah is dead. Instead, I have let it be understood that she suffered some kind of insult that caused the collapse they all heard about. Only the servants seem to know she is dead. For now. So my questions are both understandable and discreet.”
“I hope so, Kate, for all our sakes. No position within the party is unshakeable, you know. Not my husband’s and certainly not yours.”
Was that a threat? Lady Chadbon’s expression was concerned but not unkind. Though her eyes were oddly…implacable.
“I thought I would pursue other inquiries today, to do with the dagger that killed Dinah. I wanted to call on a couple of your neighbors who visited His Lordship before we all arrived.”
Lady Chadbon blanched. “What, and ask them if they stole his antique dagger and killed our maid with it?”
“Nothing so direct,” Kate said, smiling and crossing her fingers behind her back. “Perhaps you could give me directions to the squire’s house? I can make up an excuse to disturb them if I have to.”
“You would need to go in the carriage in this weather, and the lanes will be impossibly muddy.”
“I thought I might ride—gently, of course—if a mount could be spared?”