Chapter 17 #3
The length of the shelf stood between them, yet with Dashiell’s loving admissions still ringing in Nic’s mind, every moment seemed to shrink the space to nothing.
So easily could he reach out. A knowing smile.
A whispered nothing. A touch, light but familiar.
There were so many things Nic wanted to know, so many moments he wanted to experience, so much they could be if only they could breathe life into all that hung suspended between them.
Yet it was better not to breathe at all than to be left winded.
“In truth,” Dashiell said at last, “I don’t think Lady Theresa has any more reason to want this contract ruined than I do.”
“All right. You.”
For what seemed an age, Dashiell just stared at him. No annoyance, no humour, just an intensity that made something all too like trepidation trickle down Nic’s back.
“Oh, I have quite a lot of motives,” Dashiell said eventually, his tone light, almost flippant. “Dislike of Rufus Gillingham. A childhood fear of Master Everel. And as for ending the contract, my motive for that is standing right in front of me.”
Dashiell was playing along, but though the words were nonsense, his stare wasn’t. It stripped Nic bare and tore his breath away, leaving his heart thundering so hard he didn’t hear the approaching footsteps until Leaf appeared in the doorway.
“Nic? Oh, there you are, I thought I heard—oh, Master sa Vare, my apologies.”
“That is quite all right, my lady. I was about to take my leave.” Dashiell’s smile was taut. “I have taken up quite enough of Lord Monterris’s time. If you will excuse me.”
“Of course.”
A nod, a bow, and Dashiell strode out into the passage from whence Leaf had come, leaving Nic to the doubtful felicity of watching him go.
“Gosh, what was that about?”
“Nothing,” Nic said, determinedly pulling his gaze away. “We were just going over everyone’s motives.”
Her curious stare lingered on the now empty doorway. “Well, then he could have stayed.”
“I think he would feel like he’s imposing. You are a marquess’s daughter after all.”
“And you’re a duke’s son, but that didn’t stop him doing… you know… things with you.”
Please let me touch you.
“Well? Did you come up with anything?” she went on when Nic didn’t speak. “With the motives, I mean.”
“No. Or at least, only to decide that no one has one for wanting to break the contract. Perhaps this isn’t about the contract after all. Perhaps it’s about something else.”
“Like?”
Nic shook his head. “I don’t know, but there are enough old hatreds in this house right now that it could be anything.”
“You’re right. We have no definitive clues, no motives beyond Uncle Ricard wanting to invoke the Requisite Care Clause, and no witnesses.
There’s a missing page torn from something, a valet pushed down the stairs, an excommunicated vowsmith hung for dramatic effect, and a head negotiator with an arrow in his back.
And everyone seems determined to believe it all chance. ”
Determined was the right word, nothing rational about the way the duke had insisted they see the contract through.
“You know what?” Leaf folded her arms. “We should just confront them all. Tonight. At dinner so they cannot escape. Perhaps if we ask the right questions, we’ll finally get a good answer.”
The prospect of such an evening did not entice, yet neither did the prospect of finding another body. Or becoming one.
Nic went down to dinner with dread locked in his gut. They had spent the afternoon worrying over what questions might help—at least of those they might get away with—and now it was just a matter of asking them.
Despite Master Everel’s empty chair, the talk that evening was convivial.
At the foot of the table, the duchess listened while Lord Charborough and Millie reminisced about a runaway horse, and Lady Theresa had embarked on a homily about what conduct her father deemed proper for Sunday evenings.
Across the table, Lady Lisbeth’s dedication to Dashiell continued most of the evening, only to be broken when Lord Ricard leaned in during one of her rare pauses.
“Master sa Vare, I hear the chamber is to be rather empty tomorrow.”
The man hadn’t lifted his voice, yet the question seemed to cut across conversations, pulling attention his way.
“I believe so, my lord,” Dashiell replied, showing no sign he was aware that everyone stared. “Most of the common members of our team left after Gillingham died. Now it seems the same has happened on the Monterris side of the table.”
“Gosh, whatever for?” Lady Theresa laughed.
“If I had to guess, Lady Theresa, I should say because they are afraid for their lives.”
“But who would want to kill a mere scribe?”
Dashiell swallowed both sneer and reply, returning instead to his plate.
“How right you are, Lady Theresa,” Nic said, able to speak where Dashiell could not. “Master Everel, on the other hand, was quite an exceptional man and thus eminently worth murdering.”
Lady Theresa tittered. “How you do take my words quite out of context, Lord Monterris.”
“Oh, Aunt, you remind me.” Leaf set down her fork. “Lord Monterris and I had a disagreement this afternoon and I think perhaps you can help us sort it out. At which archery target did you last see Master Everel alive?”
“Oh. Uh.” The lady’s gaze darted from her niece to Nic and back. “Well, if I can assist…”
“An odd disagreement to have,” the duke murmured.
“I think we must have been at the ninth target when he last brought us arrows. Quite near the pavilion. Perhaps you recall more precisely, Your Grace?”
Appealed to, the duke gave a curt nod. “I believe you are correct, Lady Theresa.”
Leaf turned her attention along the table to her father. “And you, Papa?”
“Leaf, this is hardly a proper conversation to have over dinner,” the man said with a warning stare.
“I am merely trying to resolve an argument by discussing our archery afternoon.”
“What exactly is the nature of this argument, Nicholas?” the duke asked.
They had discussed the importance of working out where Master Everel had last been seen alive and by whom, but as Leaf had wholly manufactured the disagreement on the spot, Nic was left to stammer, “Oh, um.”
“It was whether or not we completed the fifth target and thus which of us won, Your Grace,” Leaf said. “Lord Monterris is quite sure he did and I am equally convinced that he did not.”
Chuckles eased some of the tension, but when Leaf shot her questioning look back to her father, Lord Charborough shook his head in warning.
“We saw him at the eighth target,” the duchess said, her voice ringing clear. “Just after Lord Charborough saw that ghost in the pavilion.”
Lord Charborough coughed, gaze skittering as he became the centre of attention. “Well, no, in hindsight I’m quite sure it wasn’t a ghost, just some odd trick of the light that gave me a shock. Everel certainly thought nothing of it when I mentioned it.”
“Well, we saw him at the seventh,” Millie chimed in. “It wasn’t until we reached the sixth that we had to stop and wait, but by then, of course, the clouds were coming over.”
Lady Lisbeth took the opportunity to lightly touch Dashiell’s arm. “We saw him at the fourth, I believe, Master sa Vare? You suggested that he rest.”
It was more information than they had dared hope for, the collective testimony suggesting the old vowsmith had disappeared somewhere between the fifth and seventh targets.
“Well, thank you, everyone, I think that means I won,” Leaf said, smiling upon the company. “Perhaps you all also recall where you were between the end of the negotiation session and dinner on the night Gillingham died.”
“Leaf!” Lord Charborough’s hand balled into a fist on the table. “I told you there was to be no more of this. We have already played your game. Now I want to hear no more about it.”
A tense silence bloomed, but before it could take root, Dashiell cleared his throat. “If it satisfies your concerns, Lady Leaf, I am happy to share that I took a walk while there was still light, before retiring to my room to make preparations for the following day.”
“Yes, and I was reading in the parlour until it was time to dress for dinner,” Lady Lisbeth said.
Lady Theresa sniffed. “Well, I hardly recall. It is so boring here that the days run together.”
“Oh yes, dining rooms catching fire and dead bodies turning up all over the place are ever so dull,” Millie retorted.
“That is quite enough,” Lady Theresa said. “Not all of us have rotted our minds with gothic novels until such things are entertaining. Bodies behind curtains and… and mad nuns and such.”
At the head of the table, the duke laid down his cutlery. “This conversation is unseemly for the dinner table. Let us not scare off our appetites with such nonsense.”
“Hear, hear,” Lord Charborough agreed, lifting his wineglass.
Leaf once more fixed her father with a questioning look. “You did not say where you were that evening, Papa.”
“Leaf!”
“Leaf, dear.” Lady Theresa pressed a hand to her temple. “Do listen to your father. You are making a scene. Poor Gillingham took his own life, and dreadful as it was, there is nothing more to be said about it. Whatever will His Grace think of you?”
“And if he did not take his own life?” Nic asked.
“Nicholas.”
“The man killed himself,” Lord Charborough interjected over the duke’s scowl. “Nothing more to be said, is that not so, Doctor?”
Having been appealed to, Dr. Fanshaw cleared his throat with something of an apologetic inflection. “While it is impossible to be sure, my lord, a later examination of the body provided sufficient reason to doubt that conclusion.”
“What? He was hanging from the damn chandelier!”
“And may already have been dead before he got up there.”
A beat of silence held while the gathered company grappled with the horrible implications of such words. The duke broke it first, throwing a contemptuous glance at the doctor. “Once again I must object that this is hardly an appropriate conversation for the dinner table.”