Chapter Sixteen
Part of Rupert wanted to break up the party by punching Otteridge to the ground and riding away with Kate across his saddlebow for her own safety.
For it seemed the vicar was correct: Jane Otteridge was no stranger to her husband’s “discipline.” Rupert hadn’t expected to get the truth out of her so quickly—such confidences were always hemmed in with loyalty and shame as well as fear.
Which was how Otteridge could play the genial man of morals in public and unleash his temper in private.
Of course he insulted his wife in other ways too, most notably while “admiring” other women, her euphemism for adultery.
She claimed she had never told anyone before, and Rupert suspected her confidences now were more the result of unbearable nerves than his own skill as an understanding clergyman. Almost as though she, too, suspected her husband of more than infidelity…
“Do you think he admired the pretty maid who was here the last time I dined at the court?” he asked quietly as they progressed into the dining room.
“Of course he did!” Jane scoffed. “And Lady Ambrose, too.” Color flooded her face. “I’m sure he never caused the girl’s collapse, however.”
“She is not here anymore,” Rupert pointed out.
“I noticed that. Either Lady Chadbon dismissed her or is hiding her away.”
Dwelling on her own considerable misfortunes, Jane appeared not to consider anyone else’s. And he thought her ignorance of Dinah’s death was genuine. “When did you retire last night, might I ask?”
“Early,” she said, looking bewildered. “I find cards as dull as endless politics, so I went to bed.”
“Your husband did not accompany you?”
“Oh, no, I didn’t see him after that until morning. Except at a distance.” Her lip quivered. “From the window. He was with Lady Ambrose.”
“Ah. You were disturbed by the broken glass?”
Her lips thinned. “She has no reason to look at him. What is he thinking of?”
Rupert doubted the man had ever looked at anyone or anything from any other point of view but his own. He found their seats and held Jane’s chair for her, waiting until she was settled before he murmured, “I don’t suppose you saw anyone else from your window at the same time?”
She flapped her napkin with unnecessary force. “Only Kemp. They all went inside, and I returned to bed. I so want to leave this place.”
Rupert almost encouraged her to leave her husband, live a discreetly independent life. But he had no idea of their financial situation, and it was hardly a move the church would endorse. Like the men who ran it, the Church of England was not without its faults.
“You don’t enjoy these political parties?” he said now, feeling his way.
She sighed. “I suppose I have become bored by politics. When I was young, I was at least useful decoration. Now I’m here merely as a potential excuse so that Marcus doesn’t need to talk to Nye!
” She flushed, casting a quick, hunted look up and down the table to be sure no one had overheard.
“Please forget I said that. It was quite uncalled for.”
He smiled. Across the table, Kate sat beside Nye, chatting and smiling in her usual style, though surely there was something just a little tense about her posture, the curve of her neck? “I always respect confidences, ma’am. Why doesn’t your husband like Sir Colin?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say he dislikes him,” Jane said quickly. “He merely considers him…bad luck.”
Rupert blinked. “Bad luck? Why?” Nye was a respected member of Parliament who periodically held junior posts in government. Winster had praised him in the past.
Jane waved a dismissive hand. “Oh, some female they both pursued in their youth. She died. So did Nye’s wife.
And then, later, his betrothed before she could become his second wife.
It is all superstition on Marcus’s part, though I suppose we have to allow that Sir Colin has endured more than his fair share of ill fortune. The condition is hardly catching.”
Excitement surged through Rupert. Nye? Was there something to investigate there?
Kate had mentioned the possibility of political sabotage, although killing someone for such reasons smacked of madness.
But Nye, the Tory, could be pretending friendliness and causing scandal to discredit Chadbon and the Whigs—who, perhaps, they feared increasingly, given the unrest in the country and the unpopularity of the regent and his Tory support…
Nye had been out of the drawing room around the time Dinah must have been murdered.
He had not been asleep in the library the whole evening when Kate had been shot, and one of his windows overlooked the side door.
Or he could easily have been outside. What a shame Kate couldn’t have inspected everyone’s shoes last night…
Shoes. Who cleans the shoes?
Rupert needed to speak to the boot boy.
*
For the first time since Waterloo, Sam Salter felt as if he had a purpose, a use that was almost familiar.
Patrolling the grounds immediately around Chadbon Court was a bit like picket duty.
He still saw well in the dark, his ears were sharp as ever, and he was glad to be helping Mr. Grande, who had been so damned kind to him when he had lost nearly all of his friends in the battle, and the pain of his lost arm was almost as excruciating.
Someone had tried to shoot the young lady, which Salter particularly did not hold with.
He refused to speculate on just what she was to Mr. Grande.
He just knew he had to play his part in keeping her alive because she was important.
So he walked constantly around the perimeter of the house, keeping to the shadows, to trees and undergrowth.
He saw no one, heard no one—except once, in the square, walled garden where he had once peered longingly over the wall at the glass orangery.
Now he heard clattering through the door that led through one wall to the drying yard and into the house.
He dived behind the garden door. But it was just servants chattering while they shoved an old tub or something similar out of the house.
No one came through the door into the garden.
Instead, the chatter faded and he heard the distant door to the house shut.
He let his breath out slowly and moved away from the garden door, along the wall toward the bushes and the trees that lined that corner.
The scent of late roses lingered in his nostrils.
A cloud drifted, releasing a sliver of silver moonlight that shone directly on the plain tree just in front of him.
His breath caught. He stopped in his tracks, gazing from the place where he had once loomed over the wall, hand and arm in agony, to the plain tree. He remembered the lurking shadow. He remembered everything. Even which side of the wall he had fallen on.
*
Thoroughly relieved to be away from Otteridge, Kate walked among the ladies to the drawing room. A couple of them peeled off to the retiring room.
“I’ll go to the ground floor,” Kate murmured to a distracted Lady Chadbon, and ran lightly downstairs.
At this stage of the evening, there were no servants in the entrance hall, all being needed for clearing up and serving wine or other demands to the gentlemen in the dining room. So Kate could slip unseen into the orangery.
It was darker than on the night of Dinah’s murder. She didn’t want to light a candle, or blunder about crashing into things, so she waited impatiently near the inside doors, where the light from the hall dimly penetrated the small panes of glass.
Would Rupert know to come and meet her here? He had on the night Dinah died, but then, he’d been expecting Dinah, not her.
The door opened and an instantly recognizable tall, lean figure moved inside, closing the door behind him.
“Rupert.”
“Kate. Go nowhere alone with Otteridge, whatever his excuse. He beats his wife and I wouldn’t be surprised if he killed Dinah just because she rejected him.”
Dear God… “Did Jane Otteridge accuse him?”
“She doesn’t know Dinah’s dead. She didn’t see her husband at all last night after she retired, until after the shot when she saw him with you.”
Kate nodded, frowning. “You think it was Otteridge? Not Newman?”
“Newman’s a philanderer, but I don’t think he’s stupid enough or violent enough to kill Dinah—or you.”
“You think Otteridge is stupid?”
“No, but he noticed her. He lashes out from temper, and I suspect someone like Dinah is nothing to him. And if he thought you were onto him—”
“That’s just it,” Kate interrupted. “I don’t think he cares enough to have bothered killing Dinah. If she eluded him, or refused him, he might be irritated but he would just move on—like dropping a sweetmeat on the floor and having to select a new one.”
Rupert blinked in the gloom.
“Miss Nye told me that she couldn’t imagine Otteridge noticing a maid servant,” Kate continued, “while Newman would only notice her femininity. But actually, it’s much the same thing.
With Otteridge, it’s just more about him.
His wife is there to take his temper out on.
There would be no gratification at all in hurting a mere maid.
” She gazed up at Rupert with a hint of anxiety. “You don’t agree?”
He stirred, his sleeve brushing against her bare arm.
“I’m merely…adjusting. My other thought was Nye.
Jane says women in his life keep dying. That’s why Otteridge is so against him—he thinks Nye is unlucky—but what if the man simply kills to get his own way?
Whether that is discrediting Chadbon or being rid of an insolent maid? We need more information there.”
“I’ll ask Lady Chadbon—she knows everyone’s business, though she is normally so discreet. It’s time to inject a little urgency into our discussion.”
He nodded, reaching for the door behind him. “Good luck, but seriously, Kate, no more wandering about your own. Stick with Lady Chadbon.”
“Where are you going?”
“To the kitchen to speak to the boot boy. If someone shot at you from outside, they’ll have had muddy footwear.”