“Even if I intended to, I have a fondness for the wholeness of my person.”
“Are you still limping today?”
“I never limp.”
“You did last night.”
He held her gaze. “The clue?”
“After I spoke with the ladies, I asked Monsieur Brazil what the mayor thought of Mr. Walsh’s wound and clothing. He said Monsieur Sepic seemed uninterested in them. So I studied the clothing again.”
“Did you?”
“Don’t patronize me.”
“I am not patronizing you. I am pondering your keenly curious mind and the pleasure it affords me.” The crease had appeared in his cheek again. She ignored it. Still, it proved difficult not to look at his mouth, remarkably well shaped, firm, and nicely contoured, despite the wound. And it had kissed her, which made it unique among men’s mouths in that manner, of course.
“I found this caught in a coat button.” With cold fingers she withdrew from the paper packet a single strand of hair.
Lord Vitor studied it for a moment on her palm. “Martin Anders’s hair is similar.”
“Correct. That along with his bruised eye, which he has not apparently explained or justified to anyone, could make him our main suspect.”
“My lip and brow are bruised and I have not justified them to anyone. Might that indicate that I am also the killer?”
“You justified them to Ladies Penelope and Grace and Miss Feathers.”
“I did, didn’t I?”
“The field is narrowed to suspects with long hair.”
His gaze came up to her face, then to her hair where the hood of her cloak had fallen back. She had never cared about her hair before, no matter how Arabella and Eleanor tried to teach her how to tame it and no matter how Petti teased. Now she became acutely aware of its tangled mess, damp from her walk through the snow. For an instant she wished she knew how to smooth and bind it like a lady—like fiery Iona McCall or lovely Arielle Dijon or any of the other beautiful girls at the chateau whose shoes and hems were not now soaked with snow and who, she had no doubt, this nobleman had never mistaken for a servant.
But she did not care about her hair. Or her gown. Or her shoes. She never had.
“My mind is keen and curious,” she said, her jaw unaccountably tight.
“I have said I believe that to be so, haven’t I?”
“Yet you think me a fool because I came out here unprotected.”
“On the contrary. I know you are not a fool. I only suffered a moment of . . . concern over your safety. It rendered my reaction harsh. I beg your pardon. Again.” The corner of his mouth ticked up.
She frowned. “Why did the guards at the forecourt allow me to leave the chateau?”
“I told them to allow it.”
Ravenna feared she gaped now. He trusted her. He respected her mind. It even seemed that he liked her. She enjoyed the friendship of her elderly employers and of various farmers and grooms throughout the countryside around Shelton Grange. But she had never been friends with a young, handsome nobleman. The idea that she might become friends with such a man sent a twining tingle of pleasure from her throat right into her fingertips.
“You don’t know that I did not kill him,” she said. “Now you have proof that I might have.”
“Proof that you yourself have produced.”
“What if this is an attempt at diversion?”
He scanned her hair again, then her mouth for a lingering moment. His hand moved toward her face. Ravenna’s blood seemed to all rush to her heart. He meant to touch her now. The tingling pleasure in her veins transformed into a surge of swift, hot dread. She pulled back.
“Ow!” She slapped a palm to her smarting scalp.
He brandished the plucked hair. “Let us compare.”
“You did that on purpose.”
“Did what?” He draped the single black strand over his broad palm as though laying a string of pearls upon a satin pillow.
“You made me think—” Her tongue stumbled. “Oh, bother.” She lifted the hair she had found on Mr. Walsh’s coat and laid it on his palm. Hers was inky compared to the other, which was brunette with a hint of chestnut.
“My fears are put to rest,” he said, and returned both strands to her.
She studied his face. “You were not afraid.”
“Not about that.” He bent his head. “Guards or not, Miss Caulfield, do not leave the chateau unprotected.”
“Rather, I should remain locked inside with the murderer who is also locked in?”
“I have assigned a guard to remain near you in the chateau.”
She blinked. “You have? But not out here?”
“He should have followed you outside the walls. I will rectify that. Do you object?”
“My brother-in-law, Duke Lycombe, put a guard on my sister without telling her. She thought it was because he believed she was being unfaithful to him—”
“Which of course is not at issue here.”
“—but it was actually because he was concerned for her safety. Would Lord Case serve as protection, if I left the castle with him?” she asked. “Or the prince?”
His brow creased. “The prince, yes.”
“Not your brother?”
He looked over her shoulder toward the castle draped in winter’s embrace.
A chill shivered along her spine. “In the drawing room yesterday the two of you were like rams pawing the earth. Do you truly suspect him?”
“There was no love lost between my brother and Oliver Walsh.”
“What was their connection?”
“Walsh was my father’s secretary for several years. My brother at one time intended to marry his sister.”
His father’s secretary? “At one time?”
“She perished before they were wed.”
“Oh. That is tragic! From what did she perish?”
“A broken heart.”
Chapter 6
The Quickening
Her wide eyes reflected the winter sun. Her lips were arrested in mid-parting, dusky pink and expressive. She had come out with only a cloak as protection from the frost; framed by the wildly black cluster of silken locks, her skin shone rosy from brow to collar. He could place his mouth over her pulse there and feel the life bursting from her as he caressed her. She swelled with it—with pleasure and vitality and an urgent vibrancy that robbed him of sense and made him admit aloud that he wished to kiss her again, despite his promise to himself not to come close to her.
And yet behind her eyes was sorrow. It had glittered forth for an instant when she spoke of the beast, and now again swiftly before she banked it.
“I don’t believe in anyone dying of a broken heart.” Her words came crisply into the chill air. “What made her ill?”
“A fever.”
“Lord Case did not like Mr. Walsh?”
“No.”
“You must know your brother better than anybody, and yet I cannot imagine him murdering and castrating a man,” she said, a little crease between her brows. “He was kind and gently solicitous to Arielle Dijon about the abduction of her dog.”
Another mystery. The animal was gone. A prized breeder, one of only a handful of Barbichons Lyonnaise bitches on the Continent and America, the French girl’s pet was worth a fortune, the general had confirmed. It had been with Mademoiselle Dijon when they were all in the drawing room, but moments later it disappeared. The theft benefitted the search for Walsh’s murderer: convinced that the dog had merely escaped into a crevice of the vast chateau, the guests had turned all efforts to finding it. Vitor had gone to the village as much to escape the pandemonium of the search as to avoid the woman standing before him now.