Neither of us said much on the ride over. We didn’t need to. Both of us understood what the discovery of Miss Wallace’s body on Dalmay property meant. The likelihood of William Dalmay being involved had just increased from possible to plausible. I tried not to jump to conclusions, not before I’d had a chance to see the body, but I couldn’t ignore the simple fact that this was the stretch of land where Miss Wallace and Will had met.
Gage had set a guard over Miss Wallace’s body, and we found him standing several feet away from the corpse, trying not to look at it. The servant, a man who worked in the Dalmay stables, if I was not mistaken, looked up at us in relief as we rode out of the forest at a trot. We drew our horses to a halt and handed the man the reins.
“He was visiting his family in Cramond,” Gage told me as we approached the beach. “Found her on his return to Dalmay House this morning.”
I was listening to him, but all of my attention was focused on the figure lying in the sand at the edge of the water.
“Kiera.” He stopped and turned to face me, blocking the sight of the woman. “I had to send a footman to Cramond to fetch the constable, so we haven’t much time.” I looked up into his face, understanding now the extreme urgency. “The lad was instructed to dawdle a bit, but there’s only so much dallying a man can do.”
I nodded, and moved to step around him, but his hand came up to stop me. I looked up in surprise.
“You do not have to do this,” he told me. I could see the war raging behind his eyes, between his need for answers and his desire to shield me, shield any woman, from this. “I just . . . I need another’s opinion. And I don’t trust Mr. Paxton’s. And with your knowledge . . .” He hesitated, reluctant to speak of the years of unwilling instruction in anatomy I had received from my husband.
“It’s all right,” I assured him.
He searched my gaze, as if to be certain I wasn’t lying.
“Now, let’s not waste any more time.”
He dropped his hand from my arm and followed me across the path and onto the rough sand beach where the girl’s crumpled form lay.
“We’re certain this is Miss Wallace?”
“Yes. It looks like her portrait. And the man who found her . . .” he nodded back toward the stable hand minding our horses “. . . recognized her.”
I braced myself, trying to prepare for whatever I was about to see. This wasn’t the first corpse I’d seen, I reminded myself. Nor even the first murder victim. It couldn’t be any worse than the last, whose throat had been cut from ear to ear. Fortunately the morning air was crisp, and the brine of the sea had masked most of the stench of decomposition. I took even, shallow breaths and leaned forward to look into the girl’s face. It was flecked with sand and grit, like the rest of her.
“Did you turn her?”
“Yes.”
I allowed my gaze to travel carefully over her body, taking in the state of her hair and clothes, and the gray-white cast to her skin. Her caramel-brown hair was a tangle of snarls, and her clothes were dirty and unkempt. As to be expected, they showed signs of dampness, but she had been lying on the beach for enough hours that the wind had begun to dry them.
“Gage,” I murmured in distress, “this is all wrong.” I shook my head. “If Miss Wallace had been swept out to sea by the current and drowned like Mr. Paxton suggested, she would not have washed up onto the beach here.”
“So she was placed here, either on purpose or because she was killed nearby.”
“And look at her clothes. They’re old and shapeless, and made from very poor quality wool. Miss Wallace would never have worn this.”
“Or the coat,” Gage pointed out. “It’s a man’s.”
I stared at her face, at the rigidity of her expression. “Look at this bruising,” I said, kneeling next to the body. The cool, damp sand shifted under my weight. A large purple contusion had formed on her forehead, and another bruise had blossomed on her left cheekbone. “These were made before death.”
I lifted her hand, finding that the fingers moved far easier than I expected, while her arm was still stiff. “Her nails are broken, chipped, and dirty, her knuckles scraped.”
“So she must have struggled.” I could hear the supposition in his voice as he tried to piece together the facts, but my attention was already on my next discovery.
Pushing up the sleeve of the coat, I sucked in a harsh breath. The skin on her wrist was raw and tattered. Gage crossed to the other side of the body and lifted the other sleeve to reveal the same result.
“She was bound,” he said, stating the obvious. “What about her feet?”
They, too, were damaged from some kind of restraints, though not as severely. I became sickened further by the bruise I found on her calf as I slowly inched her skirt up, and the scrape on her knee, and by the huge purple welts on the insides of her thighs. Unwilling and deeming it unnecessary to see more, I lowered her dress and looked away, taking a moment to compose myself.