“The moment I have cause for concern over your safety, I will remove you to the village.”
“You will do no such thing. You haven’t the right. I may not actually be a lady, but I am a guest of the prince—”
“Who will do as I advise.” He seemed entirely confident of this.
Suspicion prickled at Ravenna. “Who is to say you are not the murderer, and now that you know I have useful information you won’t dispatch me too?”
“None but me.”
She glanced into the darkness where the butler had disappeared, then back at the tall, dark man who had subdued her quite effectively in a stable the previous night. “This is the part where you pull out the bloodstained dagger, isn’t it?”
“Why wouldn’t I have done it earlier, before Monsieur Brazil knew of your involvement?”
“No doubt you only thought of it at this moment.”
“It seems I am carelessly shortsighted.”
“It does.”
“Miss Caulfield?”
“You are not the murderer?”
“Go to bed.” He grasped her fingers and tucked them around the lamp handle. For a moment he lingered, his large, strong hand encompassing hers, and she thought that no man who murdered another could possibly have such a marvelously warm, gentle touch. Then he released her. “The prince will call the party together after breakfast. If you truly intend to assist in this—”
“I do.”
“You must have your wits about you.”
“I always have my wits about me.”
“I think I am coming to see that.”
“You haven’t dispatched me because you know you need my help.”
“Do I?” He took a half step closer. “Or perhaps I have not yet dispatched you because, as depraved as I am, when I look at your lips I can feel your body beneath mine in the straw. If I were to do away with you now, that scenario could never be repeated.”
Her breaths were no longer deep but tight and quick. “Dream well tonight, sir. It is all you are going to get from me again.”
He smiled.
She ducked around him and escaped.
Chapter 5
The Suspects
Snow fell again, casting the drawing room in a pale white light broken by spots of gold from lamps and the hearths on either side of the chamber. Prince Sebastiao’s guests sat in anxious little clusters about gilded tables. Above them, paintings of long-dead kings and queens wearing enormous ruffed collars and wigs glittered in gold frames. The prince stood at the doorway surveying his guests, Lord Vitor at his side.
“Why do ye think he’s called us all together like this?” Lady Iona leaned into Ravenna’s shoulder. “Do ye suppose he’s already chosen a bride?”
“I don’t think he could have chosen her so soon.” This awkward gathering had nothing to do with brides.
“I wish he’d choose brides for his friends. Better yet, why dinna we? I’ll let ye choose whichever ye wish—Lord Case or Lord Vitor—an’ I’ll have the thither. Is it a deal?”
Lord Whitebarrow and his pinch-nosed wife entered the drawing room. Lady Iona hummed low in her throat. “Nou, there’s a laird I wouldna mind tossin’ dice for,” she whispered. “For all that he’s five-an’-forty, he’s a fine man. I do like guinea hair. ’Tis a shame the Ice Shrew’s already got him. She probably won him over wi’ that pretty face afore she revealed her heart o’ stone.”
Ladies Penelope and Grace, both cut in Lady Whitebarrow’s cool image, followed their parents into the drawing room. Penelope paused beside Lord Vitor and the prince to modestly bat her golden lashes.
“I’d like to pinch that one,” Lady Iona whispered. “The one wi’ the simper she leart from her mither.”
Ravenna laughed. Lord Vitor’s attention turned to her and something hot and unwelcome wiggled through her belly.
The footmen closed the doors.
“I am devastated to dampen spirits so early in the festivities,” Prince Sebastiao said upon a slur that might have been affected lisp or overindulgence. At eleven o’clock in the morning, Ravenna hoped it was affectation. But he had the most wonderful accent when he spoke in English, soft over some words and uncomfortably broken over others. “Yet I fear I must announce a terrible tragedy: a death in the house.”
The room fell quiet. A few murmurs of displeasure sounded and guests cast covert glances around the place.
“Who was it, your highness?” Mr. Martin Anders finally asked, a dramatic gleam in his single visible eye; a curtain of dark hair entirely concealed the other.
“An Englishman by the name of Oliver Walsh. The trouble is,” the prince continued with a flip of a hand cuffed in military gold cording, “it seems he’s been murdered.”
Lady Margaret gasped and the jewels hanging from her ears, wrists, and neck jangled. Mademoiselle Arielle Dijon’s slender hands covered her mouth. Dressed all in purple gown and cape, an ancient Italian bishop who had arrived just before the snow the previous day, crossed himself with weary holiness. His taking little niece, Miss Juliana Abraccia, followed suit, bowing her dark head piously and folding her gloved hands. Miss Ann Feathers’s round cheeks paled to Shetland white. Lady Iona’s bright eyes stared at the prince rather blankly.
“Given the snow that has entrapped us, and the fellow not a full day cold,” the prince said with remarkably theatrical panache, “we have concluded that the murderer must be one of us.”
“Good God!”
“Mater Dei.”
“Your highness!”
“There’s nothing to be done for it, I’m afraid,” the prince said with a sorry shake of his head. “The local police will arrive shortly to interrogate each of you.”
“Your highness.” The Earl of Whitebarrow stepped forward, thrusting out his square jaw. “This is an insult.”
“To us all,” Lord Case agreed, a gleam lighting his eyes as he looked at his brother.
“I assume you will not question the noble families present,” Lord Whitebarrow said.
“A servant must have done it, of course,” Lady Whitebarrow said, turning up her nose pointedly toward Lady Margaret and Sir Henry with their mousy daughter. “The servile class is never to be entirely trusted.”
“My Merton would not have done it,” Lord Prunesly commented abstractly, squinting through his spectacles. “Been with me for years.”
“Most of your servants were together in the servants’ hall when the murder occurred,” Lord Vitor said. “As such they are largely accounted for and are now en route to the village. They will lodge there until the identity of the murderer is discovered.”
“Our servants have gone?” Lady Penelope’s golden lashes popped wide. “Mama, you cannot allow this.”
“Such a pity,” Duchess McCall said, “for a lass to be beholden to servants for her beauty.” She cast a proud glance at her daughter. “If ye like, child, Iona can try to help ye.”
“Will she iron my gowns and clean my shoes as well?” the crystal-eyed blonde shot smoothly back.
“Penelope, hush,” Lady Whitebarrow hissed. She turned to the duchess. “Duchess, living in London as she always has, my daughter is unaccustomed to the common ways I am sure your household practices so far in the north. We shall make do nonetheless. Thank you.”