by Ella Edon
She went out again, following the smell of the food.
The stairs were narrow and uncarpeted, and in the soft morning light, they looked even more dilapidated than they had the previous evening. She walked up the steps, wincing as the stairs creaked a little under her weight. Clearly, the house had been in need of care for years.
She arrived on the upper floor, hearing a woman moving about in a room. The breakfast room was decorated in yellow, the window open, a bowl of flowers on the table. She stayed where she was, waiting for the maid to leave. She stepped into the room next door as the woman walked out, then went into the breakfast room.
The fire was burning in the grate, the air cleaner for it. This room didn’t smell too badly of dust. She tiptoed to the window and looked out.
That was odd, she thought. There was a horse in the grounds under the window. Tall and dark-furred, the horse was strong; well-bred. Clearly a gentleman had visited. But, then, where was he?
Determined to find clues, Raymonde tiptoed down the hallway and back down the stairs to the small study. She peered out of the window.
There, in the garden, she caught sight of a gentleman. He was tall, dressed in a black suit, a top-hat on his hair. He turned around as she watched him, removing the top-hat. She stared.
It didn’t seem possible. It couldn’t be. But it was.
“The man,” she whispered.
She had no idea who he was, or what he might be doing here. But it was definitely him: she would have recognized the gray hair, the piercing eyes, the thin cheeks. He was looking directly at the window, and she shrank back, frightened he could see her.
Her heart was thudding and she leaned back on the wall. She felt sick. He was here.
“Now I can’t believe it isn’t his work.”
The shot, which had almost hit her. The bullet that wounded the Lieutenant. The firing on their coach. He must have done it. Who else could it be?
“He’s the only one who has been in both places.”
Raymonde shut her eyes a moment, trying to gather her thoughts. What could she do? She felt sick.
Taking a few steps forward, she sank down onto the padded seat. She knew she should shut the door. If that man came into the house, if he was calling…
She stood and walked over to the door. As she did so, she heard one of the servants, walking up the hallway. She drew back into the shelter of the doorway.
“And I told you, there was nothing there,” the maid who’d dressed her hair said firmly.
“But, ma’am! I saw it,” a younger voice protested. “A horse. Tethered to the gatepost. It was there, not five minutes ago.”
“But it’s not there now,” the older voice said gently. “So, you see, lass; you dreamed it.”
“It was there,” the younger voice continued.
The two people passed by. Raymonde stayed where she was, hands clasped into fists. He was there, she thought grimly. The lass was right.
There had been a horse, tethered to the gatepost. Did that mean he’d left?
Swallowing the tightness that blocked her throat, Raymonde walked to the window and made herself check.
The horse had gone.
The horror that had held her in the room dissipated suddenly, and she found her legs. Running, she headed up the hallway and up the stairs. She almost fell as she ran headlong into the Lieutenant.
“Whoa, there,” he said gently. “What happened?”
“It’s him.” Raymonde looked up at him, regaining her balance, leaning back against the wall. Her heat beat and her mind strove to make sense of what had happened.
“Who, though?” he asked gently. “Tell me. What scared you so?”
“I was in the study, downstairs,” Raymonde said, trying to put her horror into words. “I was looking out of the window, when I saw a man, tethering his horse. He turned around and…” She swallowed.
“What happened?”
“It was him. The man with the gray eyes.”
The Lieutenant stared at her. She saw shock drain the blood from him and he stepped into the breakfast room. He pulled out a chair, then sat down, motioning for her to take the other.
“When was this?” he asked softly.
She shook her head, too shocked to speak. “It was just now,” she managed to say. He went to the table and she heard a clink, the sound of liquid pouring. When he came back, he handed her tea.
“Can you tell me about it? Where was he?” he asked gently. He came and sat beside her and Raymonde could have wept, seeing the tenderness in his eyes. Nobody had ever treated her with such simple kindness before.
“He was in the garden,” she said softly. “I saw him ride to the fence and stop there. He dismounted, and then, in a few moments, he was off again.”
“You saw him leave?” Cutler asked gently.
“No,” she answered quietly. The scent of tea calmed her, and she felt stronger. “He was looking at the window, so I stepped back from it. I heard a maid saying she’d seen the horse, but it had gone.”
“Oh.” He nodded, and she could see he was thinking. “So, it’s unlikely he’s here.”
“I think so,” she replied. “It wouldn’t have given him enough time to conceal the horse.”
“What did the horse look like?” he asked.
“Black. Tall.”
“Well, I’ll send the gardener out to have a look. If he’s hiding here, he can’t have gone far.”
Raymonde swallowed hard. Things were moving so fast and she had no real understanding of them. “You think he might?” she asked softly. The thought hadn’t occurred to her. She felt her heart beat faster.
The Lieutenant held her gaze. “I think that, no matter what, he won’t be able to harm you here,” he said gently. “I will not allow it.”
She smiled, his words touching her. When she looked into his eyes, though, she shivered. He clearly meant it. The usually clear green of his gaze was hard like stone. She shivered again.
“It’s not the harm he might do me, which scares me,” she whispered. “It’s the harm he might do you.”
His eyes held hers and she was surprised by how that shocked him. Had nobody ever shown him care?
“My Lady,” he murmured.
She pressed a kiss to his lips. When she moved back, he was staring at her in shock.
“Sir…” Her voice was full of tenderness, and confusion. She longed to kiss him, yet at the same time, the whole situation was so confusing, so utterly outside anything she knew, that she didn’t know what to do. She shouldn’t even be here, much less initiating a kiss.
As she gathered her wits, he stood up and took her hand.
“I am going out,” he said gently. “I will be back soon.”
She fought to hide her shock, and her longing to keep him in the house where she could be sure he was safe. “Yes, Lieutenant,” she said softly.
She watched the door as he left, and sat watching it for a long moment, wishing she could call him back.
Chapter Eighteen
A Heartfelt Exchange
Cutler walked swiftly down the hall. He tried not to show how distressed he was, but it was difficult to hide. He had the nerve to come here! He couldn’t believe that his uncle would have followed them to the North, to this place.
“He put me here, and now he thinks to come and corner me here.”
He shook his head. Was he right, to be so suspicious? Or was this all what the doctor had suggested to him when he’d seen him in a fit of grief: that this was all a product of his fevered imagination? A childish wish to blame the shocking deaths on someone?
He shut his eyes, pressing his hand to his forehead. He would never know. All he knew was that his uncle had sent him to die; his uncle had put him out of the big house and into the countryside and obscurity. And now he was here.
“Mr. Hanford?” he called into the parlor.
There was no reply. He looked down the hallway. There was nobody here, so he headed down to the kitchen,
heart beating fast.
“Mrs. Miller?” he greeted the cook. “I heard we had a visitor. Where did he go?”
“A visitor?” the woman frowned at him. Was it Cutler’s imagination, or did she have a look of secrecy, like she was hiding something? She gestured outside. “No, sir. There’s been no one. I did think…” She paused.
“Yes?” he asked swiftly. “What did you think?”
“Nothing, Mr. Wingate, sir,” she shook her head. “Nobody called yet.”
Cutler fixed her with a look, but, when no reaction was forthcoming, shrugged. “Thank you, Mrs. Miller.”
He turned and walked back up the stairs. What had Raymonde said? She had mentioned that a maid knew about the visit. Where was she? There were only four servants in the house – Mrs. Miller, the stable-hand, a gardener and a kitchen maid, who also cleaned the rooms. He tried to remember her name. Seaforth? Was that it?
“Miss Seaforth?” he called into the hallway. “Are you there?”
He shrugged when there was no answer, resolving to look in every room until he found someone who could answer some questions. If the horse had really been there – and he had no doubt of that – then somebody would be able to tell him.
“Miss Seaforth?”
He strode up to the attic, where the servants had their sleeping-quarters, but it was silent, the sun streaming in through a window in the hallway. He shouted again.
Nobody answered, so he went down the stairs, looking into every room on the upper story. Lady Raymonde, he noticed, hadn’t moved – she was still in the breakfast room, looking over the scenery. He tiptoed past, not wishing to frighten her.
He reached the lower floor, and checked the study, heart pounding. There was no horse tied to the fence, though he could see the fence, just as Raymonde described earlier. He didn’t doubt her saneness, even if he doubted his own. Still…
Maybe this is all nonsense.
His uncle might not be a villain. He had left him some sort of inheritance, after all. And arranged for him to have a home when he was a child. He’d done nothing bad to him. Not anything he could put a finger on, anyway. Besides the commission – but, then, that could have been well-intentioned after all.
“He’s probably just visiting the estate.”
That was unlikely, Cutler thought, as he strode down the hallway. At this time of year, he was usually either in Town, or on a round of visits with the local gentry. He would have no need to be up here.
“Miss Seaforth.”
He felt relieved as he heard sounds of human occupation coming from the last room. It was the small parlor, used usually only in winter. He saw somebody cleaning out the fire-grating. Miss Seaforth stood up when he came in, gathering her tools quite swiftly.
“Sir!” she exclaimed, going pink. “Sorry, sir. I’m going now.”
“No need,” he said, holding up a hand to stay her. “Please. I wasn’t intending to unsettle you. I just needed to ask you something. You saw a horse this morning, tethered to the gate.”
The woman’s eyes shifted left and right, and then she nodded. “Yes. Sir. But…” she paused, as Cutler lifted a hand, reassuringly.
“Nothing will happen if you tell me. Did you see the person who rode the horse?”
“I did, sir.” The woman looked at her feet. “He was a tall gentleman… Dressed fancy, like. When he saw me looking, he looked terribly angry, sir. It’s why I hadn’t meant to say anything. I thought if he knew I’d seen…” her voice trailed off.
“I understand,” Cutler said. He knew his uncle well, and he was more than capable of leveling a look that spoke louder than words. “This fellow,” he paused, “have you seen him before?”
“Never before, sir,” the woman replied. Cutler waited. He suspected there was more to hear, and his suspicion was confirmed when, a moment later, she looked up.
“I reckon I might have seen him once before, sir. He came here, looking for Mr. Hanford. He was out, and I asked him if he’d like to wait inside. He said no.” She looked away, nervously.
Cutler nodded. His heart beat faster. So, his uncle had been visiting his steward. What had he hoped to discuss? And why had he left? What had he come here for, this morning?
“When was this?”
She looked out of the window, thoughtfully. “It was a few months ago, sir. It must have been in Spring. I recall it was a chilly morning. The fellow had a heavy coat on.”
“Thank you, Miss Seaforth,” he nodded. Dismissed, the woman curtseyed and went hastily out.
Cutler bit his lip.
“What is he up to?” he asked himself. An unpleasant thought occurred to him – his uncle and his steward were in league. They were making some sort of plot, some design that involved his demise. It seemed absurd. It seemed more than absurd, in fact, and he dismissed it instantly. Why would his uncle, who had everything, wish to harm him?
He shook himself and, recalling that Lady Raymonde was waiting for him, headed back upstairs. When he reached the breakfast room, he saw that she was still there. Her back was to the door and he took a moment to study her, enjoying being able to observe her clandestinely. She sat so still.
He let his eyes feast on the smooth planes of her profile, her soft skin, so pale and silken. Her dark red hair touched the nape of her neck and he wished he could run his hand through the tresses, touching the skin beneath.
She turned and looked at him and he cleared his throat, not wanting her to think he was staring at her – which, of course, he had been. “My Lady,” he said swiftly.
“Have you any news?” she asked at once.
“Yes. He has gone. Our maid saw him. You were quite right.”
“It was definitely him?” Raymonde asked, frowning up at him.
“Yes.” He looked away. “I don’t understand this.”
Raymonde nodded. “I don’t either.”
“I need to go. I should get to the bottom of this,” he said. Worries about the tenants and the land suddenly returned to plague him. He should be facing that, not worrying about phantoms of his uncle!
To his surprise, Raymonde looked up at him, brown eyes sad. “Please, don’t,” she said softly.
“It’s safe here,” he said automatically. She would be alright here for a day or two. His uncle didn’t even know she was here!
“It isn’t safe where you are going.” she said solemnly. “I am worried about you.”
Cutler stared at her.
It seemed as if she spoke a foreign language. Care, and concern for his safety! These were things as rare as jewels, as unexpected as sunshine in November. He didn’t know what to say. To his astonishment, he found himself blinking back tears.
“Sorry,” he said, clearing his throat swiftly. “I… It’s usual, for me, to be cared about.” He looked up at her, feeling shy.
Raymonde just looked at him with those big brown eyes. She nodded slowly. “I know.”
“Sorry,” he said again. “My father… I… Never mind.” He looked away.
He had never told the story – not to anyone. His grief had been a distasteful thing to Hanford, and he’d hidden it. Boys were not meant to cry.
Raymonde didn’t say anything.
She was sitting still, so still that it seemed as if she would wait forever to hear what he had to say. After a moment, he cleared his throat. If she knew the story, maybe she could help him solve the mystery.
“When I was eight, my father died,” Cutler said. “It was a failure of his heart, they said. I remember his body, in his chair at the desk.”
“That’s terrible,” Raymonde answered.
He shrugged. “It wasn’t too bad. I was eight. Death was a stranger; something I didn’t understand. When I found Lady Edmore, though…” He looked at his hands. He had gone seeking Lady Edmore for care – she was a figure he trusted to help an eight-year-old boy make sense of mysteries like death. His throat tightened at the memory of her body, lying on the chaise. “She was different. There was something… S
omething odd about the way she died.”
Lady Raymonde said nothing, simply watched him with those brown eyes that could hold all the grief in the world and make it smaller.
He cleared his throat. He had never felt like this before, as if saying his story felt good. It had grown so huge in the silence, so frightening. “Lady Edmore was like an aunt, or a grandmother. She was a friend of my father’s… Older than him, and caring. She had been part of my life as long as I could remember. My father’s health, I could believe was poor. He drank and lived a reckless life – riding, staying out for long hours at balls and with the other men at cards. But hers?” He smiled, recalling that regal older woman, dressed in brocade, her white hair styled in a chignon. “I thought it would be a hundred years before she passed away.”
