Chapter 4 #2
“I can’t see any scuffing on this step, but—”
“What comparison would even end with ‘as a spoon’?” he asked. “Is a spoon really the epitome of anything except spoonishness? There would be better comparisons for shiny, and round, and—”
“Really? This is the conversation we’re going to have?”
Nic shrugged. “You started it.”
“A man has been murdered here.”
“Yes, my man. It’s more awful than I can express, so I don’t really want to talk about it.”
She straightened, grimacing. “Were you two…?”
“What? No! Dear God, woman. He’s been with me since I was a child. He was my uncle’s valet first and was more like a father to me than my actual father.”
“I’m sorry! I just thought… after the previous conversation…”
“About homosexual cutlery.”
She opened her mouth, closed it again, and waved her hand like she was shooing an annoying fly. Or an annoying husband. It didn’t work, and ultimately, she settled for folding her arms and glaring. “Can we forget about that and start this conversation again?”
“But then I would miss out on having such an excellent thing to tease you about. Forever.” For the second time she rolled her eyes, and Nic found himself laughing despite everything. “Look on the bright side,” he said. “You could be marrying someone far less amusing.”
“Oh no, a serious young man? What a tragedy.” With another expressive roll of her eyes, Lady Leaf started down the stairs, looking at each step as she went. “There’s no sign of a struggle anywhere.”
“Sign of a struggle? Like what?”
“Torn-out hair, scratches, scuffs, blood drops, that sort of thing. Although I suspect the maids have already cleaned.” She looked up at him. “You don’t recall seeing anything out of the ordinary, I suppose?”
“Apart from Rowerre lying dead on a set of stairs he rarely uses?”
Step by step, Lady Leaf descended backward toward the lower landing, seeming to own no fear she would trip and become the stair’s next victim despite the swishing length of her gown. “That’s a good point. You have servants’ stairs?”
“Yes, but even so, this part of the house isn’t on his way to anywhere he would usually go. There’s no way belowstairs from here and the only nearby rooms are in the style wing.”
“And your rooms are in the east wing, with ours?”
“The hook wing, yes.”
For a moment she stared at him, head cocked. “Oh, right, you name your wings after echo anatomy. My father calls it pretentious, but I think it’s just confusing myself.”
“No more confusing than sailors using port and starboard.”
“I suppose not.” She stepped down a few more stairs, sighing at the nothing she found. “So you don’t think your man—what was his name again?”
“Rowerre.”
“So you don’t think Rowerre could have been heading to the west—sorry, the whatever-you-call-it wing on the west side of the house?”
“No, there’s nothing in the style wing. Or the lesser style.”
Lady Leaf lifted a curious brow. “Nothing?”
“Nothing worth the walk. It’s been unused for years and is currently locked for safety.”
“How many years? Five or five hundred?”
Nic shrugged. “I don’t know. Lots. It’s falling apart, not that I should tell you so.”
“Why?”
“Because it doesn’t exactly look good on our part to have a whole wing of the house we’ve never bothered to fix, but there are so few of us, what would we even do with a whole other wing?” Surprise flickered across her face and Nic folded his arms. “It’s not that weird.”
“No, of course not. Not weird at all.”
The lady kept edging down the stairs until she reached the bottom, where she crouched in a sweep of her gown to first examine the floor, then the walls.
“What are you looking for?”
“Blood.”
“What? That’s sick.”
She fixed him with that look again, the one that could have withered entire plants—no, whole forests. “Not because I like blood, rather because a splat would suggest a forceful impact. There’s no sign of anything, though, not even scuff marks, so perhaps he was in the air rather than rolling.”
“How do you know this stuff?”
For the first time her expression grew sheepish, and she glanced around to be sure they were alone. “Have you heard of Mary Mallowan?”
“No, ought I have?”
She shook her head, disappointed. “Probably not. She writes wonderful books where her heroes have to solve murders and some of them are very tricky. Sometimes the smallest clues are the most important, like a drop of blood in an unexpected place, or a door locked from the inside.” A wicked glint flickered in her eyes and she lowered her voice to a whisper.
“My maid smuggles them into the house in her drawers because Papa forbids books that aren’t serious and improving.
He thinks they are worse even than that ridiculous Mysteries of Udolpho. ”
When Nic didn’t immediately answer, Lady Leaf pointed an imperious finger at him. “And if you try to forbid me reading them once we’re married, I warn you I know plenty of ways to get away with murder.” She smiled a sunny smile. “But I’m starting to think maybe we’ll get along fine after all.”
“Are you?” Nic asked, bemused.
Quick steps came along the passage, heralding the arrival of Lady Leaf’s companions in a swirl of charmspun lace and curls.
The pair were opposites in every way, Lady Lisbeth Pomerin fair and buxom with wide eyes and a soft voice, while Lady Radlay was dark, her beauty in her expressions and her intelligent stare.
“Oh, Lord Monterris.” Lady Lisbeth dropped into a quick, breathless curtsy. “We were just looking for—”
“Cousin! There you are.” Lady Radlay joined Leaf at the bottom of the stairs with an indulgent little huff. “I should have known we would find you here. Uncle Charborough would be furious to know you’re poking around.”
Leaf waved this off. “Then it’s just as well Papa is busy with his books, as always. Is something amiss? Or were you looking for me out of boredom?”
“Not so much boredom as because Lady Theresa found us stitching in one of the sitting rooms, and no sooner had she joined us than she ripped up all unpleasant saying—”
Lady Lisbeth cleared her throat. “Perhaps not in front of Lord Monterris, Millie?”
Millie Radlay rolled her eyes, looking like an older version of Leaf as she did so.
“It’s not like I’ll manage more than a few days cooped up with her before we get into an argument, Lizzy, so he’ll find out sooner or later.
” Catching Nic’s confused expression, she leaned forward conspiratorially.
“I don’t get along with Lady Theresa. She’s been my father’s wife for twenty years now, yet somehow things still manage to get more acrimonious between us every year. ”
“Really, Millie, you shouldn’t say such things to him.”
“Oh, he’s all right,” Leaf said, dismissing Lady Lisbeth’s concern. “He hasn’t heard of Mary Mallowan, but he has no tail, is not hideous, doesn’t seem to be mad, and is also not a complete dunce like I feared.”
“Leaf!” her companions both cried in unison, causing a glimmer of amusement to brighten Lady Leaf’s eyes.
It still irked him to have been the subject of town gossip, yet Nic was determined to prove them wrong all the same. And so, with a fine court bow, he murmured, “I am most humbled to be deemed not a dunce.”
“Not a complete dunce,” Leaf said. “But likely still a dunce.”
“Leaf!” Lady Lisbeth cried again, while Millie just shook her head, laughing. “You really ought not say such things to the man you are to marry. Only think what your father would say.”
“I would rather not.”
Nic found himself so much in agreement with this sentiment that he played into her joke by kneeling at her feet. “I pledge to you, my lady, that I will do all I can to improve upon my dunce status. Ask of me what you will.”
Enjoying the amused stares of her companions, Nic waited while Lady Leaf considered this, tapping her chin with one finger. “Take me to see the… whatever it was called. The wing that’s all locked up.”
“The style wing. Why?”
“Because you are trying to lessen your dunce status. Besides, what else is there to do? We may even find some answers, if for some reason your man was heading that direction.”
“Why would he…?” Nic trailed off, remembering the torn page in Rowerre’s hand and the strange, automaton-like figure he had followed into the garden.
He looked up at Lady Leaf, this bright young woman he ought to be impressing with the greatness of House Monterris, not taking adventuring into the abandoned style wing.
His father would hate it. Forbid it. Kill him if he found out.
Yet as that knowledge hit Nic’s defiant core, it became reason enough for going.
And if Rowerre had been heading there, Nic owed it to him to find out why.
“All right.” He rose to his feet. “But no one else can know or I’ll never hear the end of it.”
Leaf’s eyes sparkled and she glanced at her companions. “Make sure no one comes looking for me, won’t you.”
Millie Radlay sighed the sigh of the long-suffering, but Lady Lisbeth twisted her hands together. “You shouldn’t be going off alone with Lord Monterris, Leaf.”
“Why not? I’m already stuck marrying him. And you promise not to start kissing me, don’t you?”
This she threw at Nic, who stepped back, holding up his hands in defence. “Gay as a spoon, remember?”
Lady Leaf grinned. “Let’s go then.”
“The door on the second floor is less exposed than this one. Along the upper gallery and turn right. I’ll meet you there in ten minutes.”
“Why, where are you going?”
“To steal a lantern and some of the housekeeper’s keys, of course.”