Taking in the sight of her clad in cloak and bonnet, her cheeks pink from windburn, I gasped. “Oh, no! Tell me you didn’t!”
She wrapped her arms around herself and bit her lip.
“Good heavens, you did!” My voice echoed in the enclosed space. “You promised me you would let us finish our investigation.”
She lifted her trembling chin in defiance, her eyes shining with tears. “Someone had to alert the authorities. Lord Dalmay has to be punished.”
I rushed down the remaining stairs to stand over her. “But what if he didn’t kill her, you foolish girl! And now you’ve brought that power-hungry oaf of a constable down on our heads. Do you think he cares about being sure he’s found the real culprit? About getting justice for Miss Wallace?”
“But I thought . . .” Miss Remmington murmured, her rebelliousness crumbling before our eyes. “He has to have done it,” she said, sounding less certain. “Who else could it be?”
“There are a few other possibilities.” Gage descended the stairs to join us, some of the tension and anger he had restrained coming unleashed. “But now that you’ve alerted the constable we’ll be wasting our time dealing with him instead of interrogating them.”
Miss Remmington began to cry in earnest. “I didn’t know.”
“Because you didn’t listen. Next time you’re so bent on vengeance, be sure you have all the facts.”
She buried her head in her hands, but he was having none of it.
“Pull yourself together,” he snapped. “You’re going to help us. Now, what exactly did you tell Mr. Paxton?” He took hold of her upper arm and shook her. “What did you tell him?”
“J-j-just that I had intr-troduced Lord Dalmay to Miss Wallace.” She hiccuped. “And that he had spent time in a lunatic asylum.”
“That’s it?”
She nodded.
“Good. Now, you are going to tell Michael Dalmay what you’ve done.”
She gasped in dismay.
“You were the one who accused his brother of murder before a foolhardy constable, so you can be the one to tell him so. And you need to do so now. Mr. Paxton will have gathered his associates and be making his way here. We need to be ready for him when he arrives.”
She blinked up at him with weepy feminine delicateness, but it did nothing but anger him further.
“Do you want to help fix what you’ve done or not?” he snarled.
She startled. “Yes.”
“All right, then. Michael is in his brother’s room. Go straight up. The door at the top of the stairs is unlocked. Go!”
She scrambled past us up the stairs, her feet rapping against the wood, in as much of a hurry to get away from Gage’s fury as she was to help, I thought.
“What are we going to do?” I asked, panicked now that some of my anger had faded.
“Defy him,” Gage replied with a stubborn tilt to his chin. “I’m not about to hand William Dalmay into Constable Paxton’s custody, whether he’s guilty of murder or not.”
I was relieved to hear it, but uncertain just how he was going to manage that. But I knew better than to question him when he had that determined look in his eye.
Rather than continuing down the next flight of steps to the kitchens and servants’ quarters, he hauled open the door to the ground floor. The sound of another door closing below made me turn back as Gage hurried into the entrance hall corridor, but I could hear no footsteps approaching from below. I considered investigating the noise, but Gage was already so far ahead of me down the passage that I chose to ignore it.
*
When Constable Paxton and his two associates rode up to Dalmay House less than an hour later, he was greeted by a phalanx of angry men. Gage and Michael, wearing their most forbidding expressions, stood side by side on the drive before the front door, blocking his entrance, while Lord Keswick and Lord Damien took up positions behind them, looking none too welcoming themselves.
I had been surprised by Damien’s willingness to step into the fray, considering the doubts we all still held about William’s innocence. I could only assume that his loyalty to his family had weighed heavily in the decision. After all, he couldn’t wish for his sister’s fiancé’s brother to be taken up in shackles. Imagine the resulting scandal. And Lady Hollingsworth’s shrieking fit when she found out. She was already going to be angry that word of William’s stay in an asylum had gotten out, but if he were arrested, Caroline would never be allowed to marry Michael.