It was the obvious conclusion. And yet . . .
Archie let his gaze drift around the clearing. The meadow was eerily hushed and still, as if the mist drifting up from the river had deadened all sound. The young lad who had stumbled upon the dead woman’s body at dawn and led them here was now gone; the creatures of forest and field had all fled or hidden themselves. Even the unseen birds in the tree canopy above seemed loath to break the silence with their usual chorus of cheerful morning song. Archie felt a chill dance up his spine, as if he could somehow sense a lingering malevolence in this place, an evil, a disturbance in the way things ought to be that was no less real for being inexplicable.
But he had no intention of uttering such fanciful sentiments to the gruff, no-nonsense constable beside him. So he simply said, “I think you should put the bottle back where it was, Nash.”
“What?” The constable’s jaw sagged, his full, ruddy cheeks darkening.
Archie tried hard to infuse his voice with a note of authority. “Put it back exactly as you found it, Constable. Until we know for certain otherwise, I think we should consider this a murder.”
Constable Nash’s face crimped. His small, dark eyes had a way of disappearing into the flesh of his face when he was amused or angry, and they disappeared now. But he didn’t say anything.
“There’s a viscount staying in the village,” said Archie. “Arrived just yesterday evening. I’ve heard of him; his name is Devlin, and he works with Bow Street sometimes, solving murders. I’m going to ask for his advice in this.”
“Ain’t no need to go troublin’ no grand London lord. I tell ye, she killed herself.”
“Perhaps. But I’d like to be certain.”
Archie readjusted the tilt of his hat and smoothed the front of his simple brown corduroy coat. Standing up to the village’s loud, bullying constable was one thing; Archie had only to call upon some six hundred years of Rawlins tradition and heritage.
But approaching the son and heir of the mighty Earl of Hendon and asking him to help a simple village squire investigate the death of a stranger was considerably more daunting.
Chapter 2
Apicturesque cluster of half-timbered and stone cottages huddled in the shadow of a squat, timeworn Norman church, the Shropshire village of Ayleswick lay just to the southwest of Ludlow, near the banks of the River Teme. Once, it had been the site of the Benedictine priory of St. Hilary, famous along the Welsh Marches as a pilgrimage destination thanks to its possession of an ancient wooden statue of the Virgin, said to work miracles.
But the priory was long gone, its famous statue consigned to the flames and many of the stones from its sprawling monastic complex sold or hauled up the hill to build a grand Tudor estate known as Northcott Abbey. The once-bustling village had sunk into obscurity and now boasted only one decent inn, the Blue Boar, a rambling, half-timbered relic that fronted both the village green and the narrow, winding high street.
Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, stood at the window of his chamber at the inn, his view of the misty green below rippled by the casement’s ancient leaded glass. The impression was one of bucolic peace, of innocence and harmony and timeless grace. But Sebastian knew that all is often not as it seems, just as he knew that those who probe the secrets of the past risk hearing truths they might wish they’d never learned.
He dropped his gaze to the mechanical nightingale he held in his hands. It had been purchased for an old woman Sebastian had never met, by a man who was now dead. And so Sebastian had come here, to the old woman’s village, to deliver her dead grandson’s gift.
He heard the soft whisper of fine muslin skirts as Hero came to slide her arms around his waist and rest her dark head against his. Tall, statuesque, and striking, she’d been his wife for a year now. Their infant son slept peacefully in his nearby cradle, and Sebastian loved both mother and child with a passionate tenderness that awed, humbled, and terrified him.
She shifted to take the nightingale from his hands, wound the key cleverly concealed in its tail feathers, and set the bird on the deep windowsill before them. The nightingale’s gilded wings beat slowly up and down, the jewels in its collar sparkling in the early-morning sunlight as a cascade of melodious notes filled the air.
She said, “Shall I come with you?”