Chapter Seventeen #2
In childhood, Rupert had developed an amiable, fatalistic approach to being discovered in mischief.
He normally owned up to his guilt, apologized, and accepted whatever punishment came his way.
Being observant, he had noted long since that those with power often found the attitude disarming, and even let him off occasionally.
He had carried this easygoing practice into adulthood, even ordained, clerical adulthood—although since Waterloo, he had tried quite hard not to misbehave.
This situation, however, was unknown territory. He was about to compromise his oldest friend through sheer carelessness, when she was not only innocent but doing her very best to do right. There could be no admission of guilt.
So what the devil could he say to explain their presence here?
He knew from the heavy footsteps that the man in the connecting room was Nye, not a servant. So whose bedchamber was this? And why did Nye, rather than the lady, have the key to the connecting door?
The footsteps had paused. A drawer opened, possibly the bedside cabinet.
Close beside Rupert, Kate rose on her tiptoes. “Lavender. It’s Miss Nye’s perfume,” she whispered, her breath curiously shocking in his ear.
But he had no time to dwell on his own wayward sensuality. The drawer closed in the next room, and he drew in his breath, locking his gaze to Kate’s, cudgeling his slow brain.
Miss Nye sent us to fetch her shawl and somehow the door has locked itself behind us… Of course we haven’t been in your room! We didn’t even know it was there… Ridiculously feeble.
But the feet moved again, surely walking away. Nye’s bedroom door opened and closed. They heard him walking along the passage toward the main staircase. Kate exhaled in a rush of relief.
It’s Miss Nye’s room.
“Miss Nye,” he repeated. “The connecting door is a convenience when he summons her for instruction or help, but he locks it to keep her out when he wants to. Why? Does she spy on him?”
“She’s very observant,” Kate said. “She knew exactly who had left the drawing room and when they returned. Including her brother. Although she might have been protecting him, because she had him returning to the drawing room rather earlier than Lewis said.”
Rupert opened his mouth and closed it again, wild ideas entering his head.
“We’re here,” he said. “We might as well look.”
“He could have hidden anything in his sister’s room,” Kate said, excitement building in her voice. “That would be just like him. He has the key, and even if she found something incriminating, she would probably never confront him. She certainly wouldn’t tell.”
And so they bustled about in yet another intrusive search. Rupert began with the desk this time. In one drawer, several parliamentary papers, together with a summary in the same hand as the gossipy letter she had been writing to a friend.
“He must just go to the library to sleep,” he observed. “Miss Nye appears to do most of his work.”
“Most members of Parliament need an assistant. They can’t all afford secretaries.” Kate sounded slightly defensive.
“Is this what you do for Ambrose?” he asked curiously, although it was none of his business.
“Sometimes.” Kate knelt and raked through the shoes in the wardrobe. “There’s nothing muddy here, and certainly nothing of her brother’s.”
Rupert knelt and peered under the bed. There had been an empty trunk under Nye’s, but his sister might well have brought her own personal baggage.
Ignoring the chamber pot—which he hoped was empty—he pulled out a large leather bag.
It had something in it. Hastily, he unfastened the strap and emptied it onto the floor.
“Kate.”
She came at once, her eyes widening at the little pile of flaked, dried mud on the floor. In amongst it was a pair of ladies’ indoor slippers, black with mud, a wedge of it caked between the heel and the sole of one.
“They’re ruined,” Kate said in a distracted kind of way. Her gaze was still on the bag in Rupert’s hands. She knelt and reached toward it, and he realized a little chain was dangling from it, trapped against the fastening strap.
Kate detached it, and the blood sang in his ears. A tiny silver dancer dangled before his eyes.
“It’s Dinah’s,” he blurted. “I gave it to her a year ago.”
He didn’t want to meet Kate’s gaze, but he did. Still, there was no judgment in her eyes, only a pity that closed up his throat with pain and rage. Poor bloody Dinah.
“Nye broke the chain when he killed her,” Kate said. “Miss Nye found it in the mud around the plain tree, probably, and hid it with her dirty shoes.”
Rupert shook his head slowly and gestured at the shoes. “No. There’s too much mud. It’s too new and still wet. It has to be from last night. Miss Nye shot at you from outside. By then, nearly everywhere was muddy.”
“To save her brother from being found out?” Kate said dubiously.
“He wasn’t found out, was he? On the night Dinah died, Vic found mud only on Lord Chadbon’s shoes, yours, and Kemp’s.
Miss Nye didn’t send hers to be cleaned—they probably weren’t bad then and she could deal with them herself—until she made them worse because she was out last night when the ground was considerably wetter. ”
“Yes, but…Miss Nye, Rupe? Seriously?”
“Oh yes. I’ve met women like her before. Spinsters usually, or neglected wives, determined to be useful because their sense of self-worth is all tied up with that aim. Girls are brought up with it from birth—usually centered on a husband. You know that. It was certainly dinned into my sisters.”
For an instant, Kate looked stricken, and he wished he’d worded it differently. He wanted so much more for her. She dropped her gaze to the little broken necklace now untangled and resting in her palm.
“It’s economic, too,” he said, grasping his previous train of thought.
“She is dependent on her brother for everything. She runs his home and his life, as his trusted secretary and general drudge. He is the source, no doubt, of all her social invitations and friendships. When he was married, she wouldn’t have accompanied him to parties like this one. His wife would have come instead.”
Kate’s eyes flickered back up to his, wide with the beginnings of understanding. “Possibly even when he was betrothed for the second time, he would have taken Lady Lilias, his wife in training, not his spinster sister. Do you mean…? Oh Rupert, surely she didn’t kill them? How?”
“I have no idea, but no foul play was ever alleged.”
“A riding accident did in Lady Lilias. I suppose that could have been arranged.”
“And no one would suspect his dotty old sister. The same with his wife’s death. We don’t know that there was anything suspicious about their deaths, and we’ll certainly never prove now that Miss Nye was involved with either.”
“No… But she had no such reason to kill Dinah, did she?” Kate argued. “A mere maid was no threat to her. Neither was the actress or whoever she was, the scandalous female pursued by Otteridge as well as Nye when they were young—do you think Miss Nye killed her too?”
“I don’t even know who she was or how she died,” Rupert admitted.
“But according to Lewis—and even Vic the boot boy—Dinah was afraid of someone by Tuesday that she hadn’t been afraid of the last time I spoke to her.
What if she knew Nye of old and accepted the dagger from Lewis to protect herself from his advances?
Nye could have accosted her while she unpacked his things—perhaps Dinah even threatened him then with the dagger.
If she saw that, Miss Nye would have protected him rather than Dinah. ”
“But Dinah hadn’t hurt him. She wasn’t a threat.”
“She could have been if Nye had made a fool of himself over her. I doubt either his wife or his betrothed truly threatened Miss Nye either, except in her own mind, in her own vision of herself.”
“But that’s…” Kate trailed off, her frown slowly fading.
“Mad?” Rupert suggested. “It’s come up before. She is, in my opinion, at least a little. I would have called her eccentric, but…” He gestured to the shoes, the mud, and the locket in her hand. “It’s evidence, Kate. The only evidence we have.”
“There’s no gun,” Kate pointed out.
He shrugged. “Chadbon’s gun room isn’t locked. Women can shoot too.”
“I know,” she said impatiently. “Amelia’s husband showed me how.” She scowled. “But Miss Nye likes you, Rupert. And you could have hanged for Dinah’s murder.”
“I doubt she likes me enough to care. In any case, she wouldn’t have known I’d been arrested. No one did, except the Chadbons and Remington and you.”
He could see her mulling it over, reluctant and horrified—and gradually, he was stupidly touched to see, outraged.
She drew in her breath. “Very well, let’s say you’re right. What should we do now? I doubt Chadbon will believe us.”
“Catch her in the act,” Rupert said, taking out his flask. Actually, it wasn’t his; it was the one she’d given him in gaol. He unstopped it and took a thoughtful drink before wiping the lip on his shirt sleeve and passing the flask to Kate. “She still wants you out of the way.”
Her lips twisted into a smile, half sardonic and half nostalgic. “Am I bait again?”