“Nor the desire, really,” she added.
“Yet I am glad of your presence here,” he said. “And since I am a despicably wealthy and vastly privileged man of enormous consequence, my pleasure should be the only consideration in the matter.” He stood and swiped a hand across his coat. “With that consequence in mind, I will go dress for dinner.”
All vexations were forgotten. The bloom of pleasure in her chest would not be bested by chill distress or sticky inadequacy.
“Wait,” she said. “I have news.”
Her words drew him back to the seat beside her, this time closer. “Speak, madam. I am rapt.”
This flirtation should not make warmth creep into her cheeks. Men like him flirted without thought. “From what Ann tells me, her encounter with Mr. Walsh may have occurred immediately before his death. She said he was staggering and seemed drunken.”
“What do you make of it?”
“That he was poisoned, perhaps with a mild poison that required time to take effect. You have had the same thought too.”
He nodded. “I have.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I assumed you had considered it as well.”
“Especially given our conclusions regarding his wound.”
“Do you suspect her?”
“No.” She hadn’t given it one serious thought.
“Why not?”
“She is too . . .”
“Timid?”
“Good. Not sweetly good or that sort of foolishness,” she tried to explain. “But I think she truly cares about other people. In her way she is solicitous to everybody, and while she most certainly wishes to wed the prince, I don’t think she is capable of murder. This said, the hair I found attached to the button is probably hers. She told me he grabbed her, possibly while he was struggling to right his senses. He wore most of the armor at the time, but she said that the breastplate gaped open.”
“It was fastened when you discovered him.”
“Someone must have buckled the breastplate entirely, then set him on his feet against that wall. Whatever the case, since the hair seems accounted for, our list of suspects has now expanded to include everybody.”
He stood up once more. “Then the writing samples may prove especially valuable.”
“I hope so.” She set the pup upon the floor at his feet. “Don’t forget your dog.”
He looked Very Dark for a moment. But he took the dog with him.
THE EVENING COMMENCED with dinner, followed by the oddest after-dinner entertainment Ravenna had ever witnessed: Monsieur Sepic required everyone to write on a single sheet of paper, Come to my chamber at ten o’clock. The activity commenced in prickly silence and the sheet circled the drawing room slowly. When it had gone halfway round, with a show of exasperation, the prince coaxed Arielle to the pianoforte. She played while the remaining guests signed.
“You will, I presume, require the cook, the two maids, and the footmen to perform this foolishness, as well,” Lady Whitebarrow said to the mayor.
“Naturellement, my lady. I am nothing if not thorough.” He folded the paper, tucked it into his waistcoat, and departed.
Prince Sebastiao announced that the remainder of the evening would be given to final costuming and practicing lines. Bits of costumes were distributed, and guests accepted them, some with enthusiasm, others with reserve. Amidst these distractions, conversation recommenced.
“If that wee silly man puts any blame on my daughter,” the duchess said with a glare at the door, the rubies about her throat sparkling in the candlelight, “I’ll murder the gadgie myself.”
“Mither,” Iona remonstrated. “Dinna say such a thing.”
“Monsieur Sepic will no doubt discover the identity of the criminal,” Lady Whitebarrow said, her thin brows lifting above a white half mask. “I see no reason to imagine he will not.” She turned her gaze upon the duchess. “Unless one is the murderer and, fearing detection, seeks to cast mistrust upon him. Monsieur Brazil, you know the mayor. Give us your opinion of him.”
The butler’s lips tightened. “I am sure it is not my place to say, madam.”
Lord Whitebarrow grunted. “Do you see, Olympia? He doesn’t trust the man’s intelligence any more than the duchess does.”
The duchess cast him an approving glance.
“If I valued the opinion of rebels and republicans,” Lady Whitebarrow said, “I am certain I should be impressed.”
That corner of the room went absolutely quiet.
Lady Margaret burst forth with a chuckle. “Dear me, how diverting fashionable people are. Sir Henry, we must take note. I’ve never heard such a thing, but I suppose when you are titled as well as rich you can say anything you wish. Rebels and republicans! How positively diverting. Ann dear, do attend to Lady Whitebarrow. She is jesting marvelously well tonight.”
Ann stared at her clasped hands.
“If I were a man,” the duchess said to Lady Whitebarrow, “I’d call ye out.”
“Then ’tis a verra good thing yer no a man, Mither.” Iona looked with desperation to Arielle. “Mademoiselle, would ye play for us?”
Arielle played. The prince beckoned the duchess to the overflowing trunks of costumes to dress her for the part of Lady Capulet. Monsieur Sepic returned, said nothing of the writing samples, and immediately fell into fawning over the nobles. A full day in advance of the play, everyone proved themselves marvelous actors, enacting the pretense that he was not investigating them for murder; their modest flatteries encouraged his spirits until he fairly glowed. When Lord Whitebarrow himself filled the mayor’s brandy glass a second time, the Frenchman nearly swooned.
Everyone donned bits of costumes: Lady Margaret her peacock wig, the duchess a cloak of royal purple, Cecilia Anders a ruffled cravat, Petti a striped tunic. Even Lord Prunesly set a plumed, broad-brimmed hat atop his sparse pate and pronounced that the Musketeers had been the finest fighting mechanism since the Greek phalanx.
“I have chosen my Juliet,” Prince Sebastiao exclaimed, and moved to the center of the room.
“ ’Tis high time,” Iona whispered to Ravenna. In a gown of gossamer white that fit her figure to perfection, she bedazzled. Ravenna could barely look away and wondered that any of the gentlemen could. Lord Vitor had reappeared in the drawing room before dinner, also gorgeously attired in dark coat and snowy cravat, and now sat with them, a glass of brandy suspended from his fingertips. But he seemed to take no special note of the Scotswoman’s beauty. Perhaps in company with ladies like Iona as a matter of course, he was simply inured. But the fact of it was that whenever Ravenna looked at him he was already looking at her. She thought. The mask of sapphire blue silk that he had accepted from the prince covered only the upper half of his face, leaving visible his mouth at which she had stared in the stable—now nearly healed of the damage she’d done to it—and the hard, smooth line of his jaw.
She was again having trouble not staring.
He’s only got eyes for ye.
Earlier, Ann had dressed her hair with modestly successful results, and together they had disconnected two flounces from the least overdone of Ann’s extra gowns. Ravenna had left her bedchamber with the heat of nervous anticipation in her cheeks and an ill stomach, only to stand at the drawing room door and curse the foolish waste of time she might have instead spent in the stables before dinner. Among glorious flowers of femininity like Iona, Arielle, Penelope, and Grace—even pretty Juliana and handsome Cecilia—she was a dark little acorn dressed in a borrowed gown. Even the elaborate gold chains Iona pulled from the costume box and draped over her shoulders like a queen’s mantle could not make a sow’s ear into a silk purse.