“Chastisement?”
“For rescuing you again. You appreciated the champagne incident with such grace, after all.”
“Your wit truly slays me. If you don’t like me thanking you, don’t rescue me.”
“Let us hope I find no occasion to do so again.” He stood close but not, in the end, touching her. “The guard assigned to you should ensure that.”
“Why did you?”
“For your safety. I told you—”
“Not the guard. Why did you risk your life to retrieve me from the river?”
“I need your help to learn the murderer’s identity, of course.” Again his smile barely showed.
“I will prove that you need me.” Her heart did a peculiar jerk. “That you need me to help you in this,” she added swiftly.
He seemed to study her face. “I need you not to be the murderer’s second victim due to my carelessness.”
“You were not careless. I was.”
He turned to depart. “I have instructed Monsieur Brazil to send dinner up to you.”
“You knew I would acquiesce.”
“Yes. In this.”
“And if I had not?”
He gestured. “I would have tied you to that bed.”
Nerves spiked in her belly. “Did the pitchfork incident teach you nothing?”
He gave her another half smile, then bowed. “Until tomorrow, Miss Caulfield.”
She watched him go. Then she closed her door, tucked the blanket more snugly around her shoulders, and returned to her cold, empty bed.
Chapter 8
The Confusion of Flirtations
Lord Vitor did not return that day or bring news. Petti and the pugs called on her after dinner.
“M’dear, your eyelids are drooping even as I rhapsodize about the bisque. How can that be?”
“I’m sorry, Petti. I am wretchedly weary.”
“A dip in a freezing river will do that, I suppose. Not sleeping for two months will too, of course.”
She struggled to hold her eyelids open. “What?”
“Beverley and I were on the journey here as well. And at the Grange before that.”
“You knew I wasn’t sleeping?”
“My dear girl, we are not your nurses or nannies or whatever it is you delight in calling us. Your business is your own,” he said with a fond smile. “But we don’t like to see you so unhappy.”
“I am not unhappy. I miss Beast.” Horribly.
He patted her hand. “Of course you do.”
The following morning Ann visited to warn her that the prince had announced that if anyone were to see her face before dinnertime, she must be sent straight back to her sickbed. Ravenna spent the afternoon pacing her bedchamber.
When the dinner gong finally rang, she burst from her cell only to discover the peculiar affair that dinner at Chevriot had become during her imprisonment. Prince Sebastiao presided with regal effervescence at the table’s head, relating tales of outrageously opulent parties he’d thrown at the castle since the war. With these stories he drew shy smiles from Ann Feathers at his left and throaty chuckles from Duchess McCall at his right, and subsequently to those two ladies he gave all his attention. The rest of the guests responded to his high spirits in varying degrees of deference while grumbling to their tablemates.
“This incarceration is idiocy and insult,” the Earl of Whitebarrow muttered to Sir Henry. “I tell you, an intruder from outside killed the man.”
“Who was Walsh, anyway?” Sir Henry replied, his cheek full of fricasseed calf’s liver.
“Upstart gentry, I daresay,” Lady Whitebarrow said coolly.
“In the absence of my man, I was obliged to carry a pot of hot water from the kitchen to my chamber this morning,” Lord Prunesly said with an abstracted blink.
“Good heavens, my lord,” Lady Margaret exclaimed. “How horrid!”
“In fact I found it fascinating, madam. As I ascended, water sloshed from the pot in direct proportion to the unevenness of my steps upon the risers.”
“I suppose you collected the water from the floor and measured it carefully, Father?” Martin Anders said with a surly brow. “Scientific experimentation above all else, isn’t that right?”
“The girl did not arrive in my chamber to make up the fire until nine o’clock,” Lady Margaret said to Lord Prunesly with a sympathetic air. “I shivered beneath the covers, entirely unable to rise until ten.” Her jewels jingled upon her broad bosom as she demonstrated a shiver.
Ravenna leaned toward Petti and whispered, “Were they like this last night too?”
“And all day today.” He bit into goose tart.
“It was an intruder, I tell you,” Lord Whitebarrow insisted, lifting his patrician nose and glancing in either direction down the long table. His attention came to rest upon Lady Iona, whose full-throated laughter tripped along the silver and porcelain as though it were a remove to be enjoyed with the wine. Her locks shimmered with candlelight, swept into a scarlet bandeau that matched the web of embroidery across the bodice of her gown. The stark, swirling patterns drew attention to her bosom even more effectively than Lady Margaret’s jewels did to hers.
Meeting Lord Whitebarrow’s stare, Iona slipped a forkful of brandied cherries into her mouth and allowed the tines to slide out through her lips slowly. Then the pink tip of her tongue stole out to lick a droplet of cherry juice from her lower lip.
Martin Anders gaped and entirely missed his mouth with his spoon.
Watching him, his sister Cecilia’s brow pleated with worry. Ravenna couldn’t wonder at it. If she had a brother as foolish as Martin Anders, she would probably worry about him as well. Taliesin, the Gypsy boy who had taken lessons from her father, had always been like a brother to her, but he worried about her. Eleanor and Arabella too. And Papa—poor, studious Papa who’d been entirely nonplussed not only by the giant black dog he’d brought to his home but also by the black dog’s girl.
But in Ravenna’s experience churchmen often didn’t know how to cope with the world. The prelate now in their midst, Bishop Abraccia, still robed in black and purple clerical garb, couldn’t even manage to eat his dinner without his niece’s assistance. As she cut his meat, Juliana Abraccia cast Martin Anders swift, coy glances along the table. Mr. Anders’s attention, however, remained rapt on the Highland beauty.
Ravenna peered about the room. The prince’s guests were not only grumbling to each other. They were looking at each other. All of them. Not simply politely as they conversed. But looking. Candlelight illumined faces in amber and shadow, and everyone seemed to be looking at someone else.
Of course they were. One of them had killed Mr. Walsh and might kill again.
But no one was looking at her, and not all stares were wary or suspicious. Perhaps all this looking wasn’t actually about the murder.
The Countess of Whitebarrow stared coolly at her husband. Lord Whitebarrow continued to watch Lady Iona. General Dijon was watching his daughter, just as the Earl of Case was doing. Arielle returned neither of their stares, instead pushed her food around the plate pretending to eat, which Ravenna understood well enough; she had lost her beloved little Marie only two days earlier. But she wasn’t the only lady with a case of the sullens. Lady Grace’s dull gaze rested upon her mother.
“In the name of Zeus, is the dog truly gone?” Sir Henry said to the table at large. “That poor girl’s face tells me no one’s unearthed it yet.”