As he watched the pond skaters and water boatmen scuttling through the shallows at his feet, Sebastian couldn’t get past Peg Fletcher’s suggestion that Emma Chance might not even be the dead woman’s real name. If so, was it a ruse intended simply to protect her reputation from those who might be outraged at the idea of a young woman traveling alone? Or was it something more serious, more . . . nefarious in purpose?
Turning his back on the river, he walked to the stand of alders at the edge of the meadow where they’d found Emma’s body. Why here? he asked himself again. She obviously hadn’t walked all the way down to the river, and they’d found no evidence to suggest that she’d been attacked on the path through the wood. So why bring her body here?
Why?
What they’d learned thus far of her movements the day of her death helped little in their efforts to understand what had happened to her. After sketching Ayleswick’s ancient Norman church in the morning, she’d walked out to the old priory and spent several hours drawing the ruins. Then, shortly after five, she’d climbed back over the stile and disappeared toward the village.
As far as they knew, that was the last time anyone had seen her alive.
Listening to the hum of the insects hidden in the drying grass, Sebastian knew a rising sense of frustration. They still had no idea where she had been killed, or why, or by whom. All they knew was that her death had been brutally slow, her killer physically strong and ferociously cold-blooded.
And educated, Sebastian reminded himself. Her killer was obviously well educated. Which eliminated not only Reuben Dickie and his brother, Jeb, but also a considerable portion of the village population.
A glint of sunlight on glass in the grass at Sebastian’s feet caught his attention. Reaching down, he picked up the small laudanum bottle from where it must have fallen when Constable Nash removed Emma’s body. The bottle was too common to tell them anything about the killer. But the fact that it had simply been abandoned here disturbed Sebastian enough that he spent the next half hour crisscrossing the meadow, looking for anything else that might have been missed.
He found nothing.
That evening, as the sun slipped toward the western hills and the sky faded from a hard blue to a pink-tinged aquamarine, Hero left Simon with Claire and climbed the lane that wound gently past the ancient Norman church, to the top of the low, round hill that overlooked the village of Ayleswick. The air smelled fresh and clean, a cool breeze rippled through the long grass, and a hawk circled effortlessly overhead.
At the crest of the hill she came upon the crumbling remains of what looked like a medieval watchtower, the upper reaches of its once-massive sandstone walls now broken and tumbled across the daisy-strewn grass. She sat on a large block still warm from the heat of the dying day and let her gaze rove over the surrounding countryside.
From here she could see the ruins of the Priory of St. Hilary nestled in a green dale threaded by a sparkling stream. Beyond that stretched the extensive, carefully cultivated park of the vast estate known as Northcott Abbey, its grand Tudor house built by whichever ambitious nobleman had managed to acquire the monastery after the Dissolution. The Grange, home of the young Squire, lay at the base of the hill to the east. Half-timbered except for a single stone tower and still partially encircled by a moat, the Grange was both several centuries older and considerably more modest than the Seatons’ vast estate.
She had thought those the only two grand houses in the area. Now, as she gazed toward the river, she spotted the brick chimneys of another large house soaring above a clump of trees near the crossroads and closer to the river. Then she realized the chimneys were blackened, the brick walls broken; the house was a ruin.
Once, the fields surrounding the village would have been owned and worked in common, with common meadows for hay and livestock, and wasteland used by the villagers for collecting everything from furze and turf to berries and nuts. But the enclosure movement that had been under way in fits and starts for centuries had vastly accelerated in the past thirty or forty years. Now she could see only ghosts of the old medieval ridges and furrows, lost mementos of a past long since vanished. And she felt a wave of nostalgia sweep over her, as useless as it was sad.
The rattle of a dislodged pebble brought Hero’s head around, and she found that she was no longer alone. A boy stood near the entrance to the old watchtower. He looked to be about ten years old, dark haired and handsome beneath the fine layer of fresh dust that coated his face. He wore a brimmed hat, sturdy trousers, and a short coat, all of which were obviously both new and expensive, although the collar of his white shirt was awry and grimy, his stockings were falling down, and a large rent showed in one knee of his trousers. And even if she had not seen Emma Chance’s sketch, Hero would have guessed who he was, for the resemblance to his famous, feared uncle was inescapable.
“Hullo,” she said with a smile.
He came forward, leaping gracefully from one fallen stone to the next until he came to a halt some ten feet away. “You’re the Viscountess, aren’t you? The one whose lord is looking into that gentlewoman’s murder?”