Chapter Nineteen
“You startled me, Mr. Grande!”
Rupert had no doubt that Miss Nye’s startlement was genuine when she found him and not Kate facing her. Just for an instant, the twittery appearance of a confused bird vanished, but if he’d blinked, he would have missed the change. The bird was back almost immediately.
“I think I must have stumbled into the wrong room,” she confided. “Although…we all thought you had gone home, Mr. Grande.”
“No, I’m still here. Lady Ambrose thought I could help with your trouble. Being a clergyman.”
Miss Nye blinked rapidly behind her spectacles. “Am I in trouble?” she asked tentatively.
“Oh yes,” Rupert said. “You really shouldn’t have killed Dinah, you know. If you hadn’t done that, you wouldn’t have needed to shoot at Lady Ambrose.”
Her skirts twitched on the left-hand side, where her hand was hidden. But she held her character. “My dear young man, are you quite well? I don’t even know a Dinah, and as for Lady Ambrose—”
“We can help you,” Rupert said earnestly, “if you just tell us the truth. I want to help you.” Oddly enough, it was true. He wanted to help all the world’s damaged creatures. He didn’t begin to know what the damage was with Miss Nye, but he was certain it existed.
“Sir, I think it is you who needs help,” she said timidly. “You should talk to the vicar. Mr. Bancroft is a fine and gentle man.”
“He is,” Rupert agreed.
“If only he hadn’t married that fright of a woman…”
Of course, the Nyes had grown up near here and must have known Bancroft since he was young. But whatever Miss Nye’s marital hopes had once been, he couldn’t let her distract him.
“Was Lady Nye, your sister-in-law, a fright of a woman, too?”
Slowly, her eyes changed again, the birdlike expression fading and vanishing as she realized what he suspected.
“Silly and clinging, and quite in my brother’s way.
” She smiled, still kind, still amiable.
“I wasn’t sorry when she died—of a fever, you know.
You would be foolish to accuse me of such a thing. ”
“I certainly have no proof,” Rupert allowed. “But Dinah is another matter.”
“A dead maid. It happens all the time. No one cares.” It was offhand, supremely callous.
“I care,” Rupert said. “How do you know she is dead?”
Her slip didn’t upset her. “It was obvious. But how could I have the strength or even the inclination to kill such a poor, wicked creature?”
“Miss Nye. You have her necklace. And your slippers are covered in mud from the night you shot at Lady Ambrose. Let me help you.”
She stared at him then, without artifice of any kind. A faint frown tugged at her brow. “How?” she asked curiously. “Why would you even want to? For God?”
“Not exactly.” He held her gaze. “I would not have anyone hang, if they could be saved. Help me to understand, and I will help you.”
“Save me from the hangman?” she said, jeering now.
“Yes, if it can be done. You would have to leave the world behind, but there are good places where you can get well if—”
She laughed, an odd, harsh sound, almost like a crow.
“I got well a long time ago, Mr. Grande, thanks to a different clergyman! He deserves his frightful wife. While I have learned to look after myself and my brother, and I do so very well. While you merely pry and prattle like that silly Ambrose girl.”
Her gown twitched again, and Rupert tensed, in case Salter shot her.
He raised one hand slightly, hoping it was enough to calm the rifleman. “Did you see Sir Colin attack Dinah in his room the day you arrived?”
“I saw a housemaid threaten him with a dagger! I followed her when I could, heard her whisper to you when you arrived about your assignation in the orangery. Not quite the pure curate, are you, Mr. Grande?”
“Not remotely,” Rupert agreed. “But you didn’t go to the orangery, did you?”
“No, because you were there already. I know this house very well, you understand. Colin and I were here often as children. I guessed the way the maid would come from the laundry room.”
“So you went to the walled garden and lay in wait for her.”
Miss Nye smiled. “No one missed me in the drawing room, did they? But I took the girl by surprise. She might even have thought I was you at first. She was with child, you know. I suspected when she was struggling with Colin in the bedroom, but I discovered for certain when I took the dagger from her apron. I felt her shape, you see. I thought the child might have been Colin’s. ”
“So that is why you killed her?”
“Only partly.” With her right hand, she reached down to the nearest chair, idly picking up a cushion, as though she would hug it to her for comfort. “She was in the way. Like Lady Ambrose. Like you.”
She jerked up her left arm, revealing a double-barreled pistol leveled straight at him. Then she placed the cushion against the barrel.
To muffle the noise of the shot. Dear God, I’m dead.
And all hell broke loose.
*
Trying to balance speed with silence, Kate had raced down the east staircase and stood at the foot, catching her breath so that she didn’t pant like a gale through the parlor keyhole.
The door was closed, light shining beneath.
At first, she could hear nothing and wondered if Miss Nye had been too suspicious to come.
Or if she was lying in wait elsewhere to take Kate by surprise with one accurate shot…
But no, the clock had struck eleven before she had even heard from Grissy about Miss Nye in the gun room. And as her breathing calmed, she could just make out the faint hum of a human voice.
Kate crossed her fingers. Two voices? Don’t let her have shot him… Idiot, you’d have heard.
Moving slowly and carefully so that her gown did not rustle, she crouched and peered through the keyhole.
Rupert stood in front of the fireplace, his posture as easy and casual as always, although his face was unusually earnest. A few feet away, Miss Nye faced him, her back upright, her arms by her sides.
Where is the pistol?
Rupert was speaking. “Did you see Sir Colin attack Dinah in his room on the day you arrived?”
“I saw a housemaid threaten him with a dagger!” Miss Nye replied with a sort of outraged contempt. And then she confessed.
Kate’s blood ran cold. Trust Rupert to have coaxed the truth out of her, as he’d said he would. Only Kate knew instinctively she would never repeat it. Perhaps Miss Nye’s urge to explain herself to him was strong, but she would still never have done it had she meant him to live.
As Miss Nye went on, Kate eased to her feet, for from a crouching position, she could not move fast enough. In full flight, the murderess on the other side of the door surely would not notice the faint sound of the door handle turning…
Having created a crack between the door and the frame, Kate had a better view.
And she didn’t think either of the players inside had seen her.
On the other hand, Kate heard quick footsteps in the wide passage leading from the main entrance hall, and Chadbon’s low voice, speaking to someone—Nye?
Grissy? Whoever, they might just be in time.
“She was in the way,” Miss Nye said, chillingly reasonable. “Like Lady Ambrose. Like you.” She threw up her left hand, pointing her pistol quite steadily at Rupert’s chest.
Time had run out.
Kate hurled herself through the door and took a flying leap—something she recalled, quite inconveniently, doing onto Rupert’s back as a girl. But God knew this was no game. Someone was making a horrible noise, half war cry, half sob, as she landed on Miss Nye’s back.
At the same time, the loud crack of gunshot split the air.
Oh God, no, please, no… Both women landed hard on the floor, which at least stopped the horrible howling. With vague surprise, Kate realized it had been her. In fury, she tore the pistol from the older woman’s strong grip and sent it spinning across to the fireplace.
The fireplace where Rupert still stood, blinking.
“Quite the entrance, Katy,” he remarked.
Miss Nye, heaving beneath her, her face pressed into a cushion—where the devil had that come from?—had missed. Sprawled on top of her, Kate found herself grinning like a moonling.
Until a most-unlooked-for voice thundered, “What on earth are you doing?” And she was hauled off Miss Nye like a sack of coal.
Kate gazed up at her husband in bemusement.
His expression was furious, mixed with not a little shock. Miss Nye struggled to rise, and Gilbert dropped Kate to aid the older woman.
“Madam, I so very sorry,” he said earnestly. “I can only beg your forgiveness for this inexplicable assault upon your person.”
Rupert picked up the pistol from the floor.
“Quite explicable, really,” he murmured.
“Who the devil are you?” Gilbert demanded.
“I’m the curate,” Rupert replied, offering his free hand. “How do you do?”
Before Gilbert could answer—if he had anything to say—the sash window lifted, letting in the scents of the night, and Sam Salter stuck his head in. “I didn’t hit Lady Kate, did I? Nearly had a fit when she ran into my shot.”
That was when Kate realized there was a hole in the glass, oddly neat and even.
She stared indignantly at Rupert. “Why didn’t you tell me you’d got Salter to shoot her?”
“I must have forgotten,” Rupert said, and to Salter, “You seem to have missed them both, though Lord Chadbon has a bit of a hole in his wall as well as his window. Sorry, my lord.”
“But—but Miss Nye,” Chadbon said, goggling at the lady who now shrank from Rupert and Kate like a child afraid of a beating.
“You really are an excellent actress, aren’t you?” Kate said admiringly.
“Oh, Sophie,” Sir Colin said, stepping out from behind Chadbon, so that Kate noticed him for the first time. He looked suddenly old and helpless and not threatening at all as he walked up to his sister. “What have you done?”
As though reminded, Gilbert glared at Kate again. “I would ask you the same question, my lady!”
“She’s caught the murderer of Lord Chadbon’s housemaid,” Rupert said. “And her own attempted murderer.”
“And yours, rev,” Salter put in.
“Who the deuce are you?” Chadbon demanded of the old soldier.