Peak strode off toward the stables. “Not insubordinate. Honest. A man needs honest help, especially when he’s not about.”
Trent let him go, too angry and overwrought to do otherwise.
The intensity of the emotions was unfamiliar and inconvenient, though not entirely unwelcome. Because he’d given his word to Ellie, Trent did go to the house, dash off a note to the magistrate, then clean and load his favorite pistols. The decanter beckoned, but he hardly wanted the king’s man to find him drinking his temper into submission, so he started on notes to Darius and Nick as well.
Chapter Nine
At Lord Heathgate’s instruction, Trent and Cato took seats on the bench beside Ellie’s old straw hat. In the pretty sunshine, the hat was disquietingly innocent, given what might have happened.
“Gentlemen,” Heathgate called from the undergrowth several moments later, “you may join me, but please remain on my left as you approach.”
The marquess was a tall, broad-shouldered man, his age somewhere north of thirty, his hair sable, his eyes a gimlet blue that likely scared confessions out of felons and small children alike. Trent didn’t know him well, though Heathgate was reportedly besotted with his marchioness and a genial host when she inspired him to it.
“Tracks,” Heathgate said, hunkering in the undergrowth and pointing off to the right, “which, of course, come up from the stream, where we’ll no doubt lose them. A medium-sized fellow, or perhaps a smallish man with largish feet, but he chose this spot and knelt here,”—he sighted down the stock of his riding crop—“and aimed carefully. You must have tarried on that bench.”
“We did, maybe fifteen minutes.”
Heathgate rose and turned his scrutiny on Trent. “My guess is that you, Amherst, were the target, but as close as you were sitting to the lady, that is only a guess.”
“Poachers?” Cato asked.
Heathgate swung his riding crop at some honeysuckle, sending leaves, blossoms, and fragrance cartwheeling through the summer air.
“Poaching isn’t likely. For one thing, nobody needs to poach hereabouts, because none of the landowners are stingy with their game, and second, if you’re intent on poaching, you don’t do it within sight of a working stable where people are always on hand.”
“So we’re back to motive,” Trent said.
Cato bit off oaths in Gaelic. “Did you tell him about the stirrups? The ones that were cut, on both sides of your personal saddle?”
“Come along.” Heathgate waved them away from the bench. “There’s apparently more to the tale than Amherst has had time to relate, and this heat makes a man thirsty.”
When they reached the house, Trent canvassed his companions, and the choice of drink was lemonade, which came as a peculiar relief. In the course of the last few hours, Trent’s previous determination to drain the brandy decanter had become…distasteful, unseemly even.
Had he been half-drunk when that gun had gone off, could he have shepherded Ellie to safety? Would his children have become orphans on this pretty, sunny day because their papa had stumbled in the grass?
When Trent, Cato and the marquess were seated on the back terrace around a tray of sandwiches and a tall pitcher of cold lemonade, Heathgate picked up a sandwich and aimed his gaze at Trent. If the man thought it odd that Cato joined them, he had the good manners to say nothing to his host.
“Tell me about the stirrups.”
Heathgate listened, blue eyes narrowing as his lordship put away food and downed lemonade at a great rate.
“Our man Peak seems to be quite the busy fellow,” Heathgate said. “He was first to reach you and Lady Rammel today, and he noticed the stirrups.”
“He’s the one who sent for me,” Trent said, the realization dawning only as he spoke. “Indirectly.”
“I wrote the letter,” Cato said. “Peak merely grumbled about the food until I was more annoyed with his complaining than I was with Cook’s fare.”
“That isn’t how you described it to me earlier, Catullus,” Trent said softly.
Cato leaned back, as if entreating the oak limbs above them for patience with his betters.
“You can’t suspect Peak of shooting at you when he was in the stables with me. He’s your best lad, and if he wanted to end your life—for motives we have not yet concocted—he could have put out your lights this morning when you both rode in on thoroughly lathered mounts.”
“What Cato says is true,” Trent said, with no small relief. “I like Peak. Moreover, the horses like Peak, and at the inquest regarding Rammel’s death, Heathgate, you yourself found the man’s testimony sufficiently credible that Cato was exonerated of any wrongdoing.”
Heathgate studied a sandwich of chicken with herbed butter and cheddar on white bread—Cook had apparently noted the rank of Trent’s guest.
“The only wrongdoing I found was by Rammel, who was too drunk, stupid and arrogant to pull his horse off a gate he never should have attempted. I asked Greymoor if he would have taken such a jump, and his response was not unless it was life or death, never when in his cups, and never on a borrowed mount, meaning no insult to your late horse, Spencer. My younger brother’s judgment in matters equestrian is nigh flawless.”
Cato rose without having touched the food. “A nasty damned pattern emerges here.”
Heathgate flicked a cool, appraising gaze over the stable master.
“You think somebody wants to make you look like a killer, Mr. Spencer? As you stated, the estimable Peak was in the stables with you, and both Amherst and Lady Rammel saw you and Peak approach the scene from the stables. Rather than circle uselessly around what little we know, I suggest somebody track down Delphey Soames. He considers himself the informal gamekeeper hereabouts and would know if we’ve had any strangers prowling our woods.”
“Good idea,” Trent said, wanting Heathgate gone, for Cato would not eat as long as the magistrate was about. “Cato has a point as well. His letter to my brother, Darius, was the reason I repaired here for the summer, and Cato could be perceived as luring me to my demise. Moreover, Cato has access to my saddlery and to firearms.”
Cato let loose with another Gaelic oath, or perhaps it was a prayer, him likely being Papist. “Are you accusing me, Amherst?”
Heathgate’s dark eyebrow swooped up at the familiarity, but he merely waited for Trent’s reply.
“I am not,” Trent said evenly. “Not in any regard, Cato. You have no motive for seeking my death, just as you would have had no motive for killing Rammel, but if we’re listing my enemies in a search for motive, we should be listing yours as well.”
“Good point,” Heathgate said. “Sit down, Spencer, and eat something lest I spoil my luncheon entirely and earn a scolding from my marchioness. I’ll need to know exactly who works in the stables, who has access to guns, and where those people were earlier today.”
While all Trent needed to know was that Ellie was safe and settled, and not suffering as a result of the day’s events. The worry—the anxiety—was roiling in his gut, a burden and a bother that would not go away.
“I wasn’t aware Lady Rammel was a gardener,” Heathgate said nearly an hour later as they walked toward the stables. “Has she taken your roses in hand yet?”
“You’d have to ask her.” She’d made short work of the daisies, though, of that Trent was certain.
Heathgate stopped near the pergola, halfway between the house and the stables. “I intend to question the lady, you know.”
“About?”
“This incident and whatever other factors I deem relevant.”
That Heathgate could be delicate was something of a surprise, though the man was rumored to dote on his marchioness and children.
“It isn’t my child,” Trent said, because a man who doted on his marchioness was probably in that lady’s confidence, too. “If that’s what you’re asking. I didn’t know Rammel had died until I removed here, and the vicar started yapping about neighborly obligation and condolence calls.�
�
“You made yours early.”
“A little. Yours is overdue.”
“Suppose it is.” Heathgate resumed walking. “I don’t deal well with all that funerary tripe. Never have. My marchioness is a blessing in this regard.”
“One hears you and she are devoted.”
“Go ahead and say it.” Heathgate’s smile was fleeting, self-deprecating, and charming. “Despite all reputation to the contrary, or my just deserts, my wife and I are smitten with each other.”
“I was thinking more that you might castigate me for making advances to a new widow,” Trent said slowly. Though in truth, the widow had made an advance or two toward Trent—a delightful realization.
Heathgate’s smile became mocking. “As if my own brother didn’t marry his countess when she was less than six months into mourning her first spouse?”
“I wasn’t aware of that.” Trent hadn’t been aware of any of the neighborhood gossip, though he’d no doubt Ellie could catch him up.
Fifty yards away at the stables, Cato stood at the end of the shed row, his hand on Peak’s shoulder, his attitude toward the smaller man suggesting fraternal concern.
“What do we know of your Mr. Spencer, Amherst?” Heathgate asked softly.
“Not enough. The horses like him, too, and I haven’t had any complaints. If anything, he’s shown unusual loyalty.”
“You pay fair wages, and Crossbridge is comfortable. In what regard has he shown this loyalty?”
Trent gave up trying to elude Heathgate’s inquisition. “After my wife died, I was occupied with ensuring Wilton didn’t get his hands on her settlement trusts and in seeing to my sister’s welfare as best I could. My brother was also in some difficulties, so he became a frequent guest under my roof. I was kept busy with those concerns, until Bellefonte began courting Leah.”
As fictions went, Trent’s recitation was masterly.
Heathgate’s expression suggested he knew it. “And now?”
“It’s no secret I was going to pieces,” Trent said, his gaze on the shady green canopy of the overgrown home wood. “I sent my children to my sister and Bellefonte, essentially for safekeeping, and let most of my staff in Town go.”
And yet, Trent hadn’t been grieving, precisely. Not for Paula, at any rate.
“If my marchioness were taken from me, I’m not sure how I’d go on.”
“But you would,” Trent assured him. “For your children, your wife’s memory, your brother, king and country, you’d find some damned reason to soldier on.”
For an interminable silent moment, Heathgate considered the pink roses climbing up the side of the pergola. “You haven’t found those reasons to soldier on?”
The question of the year. “I’ll see my children raised. I owe them and my brother that much.”
“Assuming your very own stable master isn’t plotting your demise.”
Trent sent the marquess a look intended to inspire overly inquisitive magistrates onto their horses and back to their besotted wives post-haste.
Heathgate merely resumed admiring the roses.
“Cato Spencer wouldn’t let Crossbridge, my only holding, go to ruin in my absence. He wrote to me, not once, but several times, when my housekeeper and steward ran off with the household money. When that didn’t get my attention, he tracked Darius down by letter and put the unvarnished truth before the one person able to command my notice.”
Heathgate touched a delicate pink petal. “Why would a mere stable master go to such heroic lengths?”
Damnably valid question. “I want to think for all Cato’s womanizing and jolly-good-fellow-at-the-meet, he’s a decent man and capable of compassion.”
“He’s also,”—Heathgate pitched his voice to not carry—“quite possibly in line for an earldom.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“An Irish earldom,” Heathgate clarified, bending to sniff at a thorny little rose. Heathgate bred roses. Where had Trent heard that?
The marquess snapped off a bloom and affixed it to his lapel. “My brother trades horses all over creation, and the Irish do love their ponies. Greymoor has heard rumors that the Earl of Glasclare’s son trifled with one too many decent women, and one of them claimed to be carrying his babe. The young man denied the accusation and took off rather than wed himself to a scheming female. He’s gone to ground in Surrey and vowed he won’t go home until the woman in question recants.”
“Good God. I thought my life was complicated.”
“Challenging, certainly.” Heathgate’s understatement conveyed compassion rather than judgment.
Which was interesting—also fortifying.
“If Cato is Glasclare’s heir,” Trent said, “then he’d have sympathy for another earl’s son who was in difficulties. He did claim Peak was the one to inspire him to put pen to paper.” Were he an earl’s son, Cato would also have had a proper education, access to good horseflesh, and enough coin to bolt for England when Ireland’s charms paled.
Heathgate pulled his riding gloves from a pocket, an encouraging sign of impending departure. “How bad off were you?”
A falsely encouraging sign. Trent said nothing while he considered his plans upon arising that very morning.
“I see.” Heathgate courteously kept his gaze on the stables, where Cato had patted Peak’s arm then moved off in the direction of Heathgate’s horse.
“You’ll stop to see Lady Rammel next?” Trent asked.
“I will not,” Heathgate replied, resuming their progress toward the stables. “I’m off in search of Mr. Soames, who can likely be found at our local watering hole, and then I’m for home. You may tell the lady to expect me in the morning, if it suits her.”
“When may I tell her this?”
“You’re on your way over there, to return the lady’s hat to her, of course, for ladies do become attached to their bonnets and such. You will also make a visit to see for yourself that she’s in good health. You, moreover, are better suited than any other to assure she will continue in that condition, at least as long as you draw breath.”
“I am merely her closest neighbor and a cordial friend.”
“Right,” Heathgate tossed over his shoulder. “How long were you sitting in close proximity to your neighbor on that bench?”
Cordial neighbor. “Minutes. Well, a quarter hour, perhaps.”
“Though a lady’s reputation will always be safe with me, Amherst, I have to ask myself why she was sitting practically in your lap and why, if she’s mindful of her complexion, her hat was off on a bright summer morning for the duration of that quarter hour?”
Trent opened his mouth, then closed it. Heathgate was besotted with his marchioness; he was not stupid.
***
“Her ladyship will see you in the family parlor.”
Ellie’s housekeeper beamed at Trent genially and took his gloves and hat. He ran his hand through the hat creases in his hair and followed the woman up to the first floor.
“Viscount Amherst come to call.”
“Amherst.” Ellie was ensconced on a pale green sofa awash in cabbage rose pillows, her smile as welcoming as if she hadn’t seen Trent for a week. “May I have the kitchen bring us something?”
“Cider, lemonade, or meadow tea would do.”
“Mrs. Wright, you’ll see to it?” Ellie’s smile shifted to include the housekeeper. “And maybe some sustenance. Have Annie bring it to the balcony of my sitting room.”
“Very good, my lady.” Mrs. Wright, a portly old dear with a lined face, was gone on a swish of gray skirts.
Ellie looked fine, but then, she was probably adept at looking fine. “How are you, my lady?”
“Getting a stiff neck.” Ellie came to her feet. “Let me show you to my sitting room, where we’ll be able to talk undisturbed.”
Trent offered his arm, mostly to quell a compulsion to touch her, to touch her anywhere at all.
“Is that why I’m to have the privilege of your sanctum sancto
rum?”
“My holy of holies,” Ellie said dryly, “has a breeze and a pleasant view, a shaded balcony, and privacy. Did the magistrate make an appearance?”
Heaven help him, he needed to kiss her. “We’ll get to that.”
Trent let her usher him upstairs to a pretty, comfortable room with its own fireplace and an embarrassment of cut flowers. As soon as she’d closed the door behind them, he enveloped her in a fierce embrace and a fiercer kiss.
She kissed him back, but gently, running her hand over his hair in slow, soothing motions, then brushing her fingers over his cheeks and jaw and ears.
“If I ever,” he breathed against her neck, “ever find out who fired that gun, he will pay, dearly, at length, and painfully.”
“It might have been an accident. Mr. Soames is not known for his sobriety, or so I’m told. You can’t torture the man for an accident.”
“Accident,” Trent said, lifting his head. “I can think of no more vile word for a life lost due to negligence or careless malice. Somebody knelt in the underbrush, Ellie, and took aim at us. Heathgate is satisfied this was intentional mischief.”
“You still don’t know the intention was murder.” Ellie slipped her arm through his. “Somebody might have wanted to frighten us, or warn, or who knows.”
“You are good.” Trent hauled her into another hug. “Innocent, sweet, dear, and utterly wrong. Somebody meant one or both of us harm, Ellie. Promise me you won’t be alone in those woods again.”
“I promise.”
She replied easily, sincerely, didn’t haggle, didn’t make him beg, didn’t argue or subject the entire household to hysterics. He loved her a little for that and felt a measure of calm at her assurances.
“If you prefer, I also won’t go anywhere without a groom or a footman, even on my own land.”
“I prefer,” Trent said, his breath coming more easily. “I’d prefer even more if you’d stay shut up in your house, or better still, in mine, where I can post sentries at every window, bar the castle door, flood the moat, drop the portcullis, and plant archers on the rooftop.”
Ellie tugged him out to the balcony. “Feeling medieval?”
Trenton: Lord Of Loss Page 13
