After the Scandal

by Elizabeth Essex

  He would have smiled at her cursing if he hadn’t been so instantly furious. At Rosing. And at himself. “Yes. Exactly.”

  Because the truth was that every man was a bounder—himself included. And refined, polite young women were easy targets. It was all the confining codes of ladylike behavior—of always having to be civil and passively polite that got immaculate, refined young women into such monstrous trouble.

  This was one of the twisted coils of his obsession with her—the innocence he adored in her was what had made her unsafe.

  Perhaps she was thinking the same, for she pleated her forehead into an angelic frown. “I should have paid attention to his hands. They were clenched into fists, I think, opening and closing in...anticipation before he took my arm. I thought perhaps he was nervous around me. Men often are.”

  That fucking, fucking bastard. Tanner should have killed him when he had the chance.

  Planning, all the time he had this exquisite young woman in his arms on the dance floor, to defile her. “Excellent observation.”

  “And now that I think on it, his breathing was strange. Exercised. I think I thought him out of breath from the dance. But I wasn’t out of breath—it was an easy country dance. And you’re not breathing hard, even though you are exercising. You’re breathing evenly, in and out, even as you do all the work to ply the oars.”

  Tanner tried to muffle the deep sound of satisfaction her observation startled out of him. She wasn’t meant to notice him—no one ever noticed him. He was the one who was meant to notice others. He was the one who was meant to pass unseen.

  She had certainly never seen him before. If her eyes had ever lit upon him, it was only in mistake, for she would look past him, or turn away, or step so that some piece of architecture, or the voluminous plumage of a matron’s turban blocked her vision.

  But now Lady Claire Jellicoe was noticing him, and it made him feel the need to draw air deep, deep into his lungs. It made the muscles of his arms sing with awareness, and made the skin of his palms itch against the smooth handles of the oars.

  Tanner took a hard stroke to exercise such demons, and turn the skiff. It was time he took them back. Past time.

  They had been away more than long enough to effectively compromise her. And long enough for her to start to trust him, so that when his offer was made, she would at least consider it in a favorable light.

  And he would also need to get back to deal with Rosing before anyone else found him.

  Lady Claire gripped the rail of the skiff as they turned. “Are we going back to— Oh!”

  They both had to grapple for balance as the skiff rammed into something—something large that floated out from a small side eddy of flotsam, mixed with toppled branches, and made a small dam of sorts.

  “What on earth was that?” Lady Claire’s breathless query sounded as if it were from far away.

  Because Tanner had turned on his thwart to peer hard over his shoulder, and identify the obstruction. And he saw the one thing he had not prepared himself for this evening.

  A sodden tangle of clothing.

  Floating facedown in the river.

  A body.

  Quite, quite dead.

  Chapter 3

  His Grace the Duke of Fenmore let out an oath so blue Claire felt the tips of her ears turn crimson.

  It brought the fear back, hollowing out her chest. “Your Grace! What is that?”

  He was turned away, leaning over the side. But his voice came back to her, low and clear. And as chilly and relentless as ever. “It’s a body.”

  Claire was sure she would have gasped if she had been able to draw breath. She couldn’t manage to make a sound over the fresh horror throttling down her throat, and cold slid under her skin leaving a trail of tingling gooseflesh.

  His Grace must have taken her silence for misunderstanding. He turned to look back at her and clarified, “A dead body. A woman’s.”

  “No. Yes.” Claire had to put her hand over her mouth to keep from spilling any more nonsensical idiocy in the face of such tragedy. Her hand shook against her mouth, trembling and cold. Cold like the water, and the night air, and every part of her.

  And then panic flared, hot and burning. “Oh, God. Did I shoot her?”

  “No. I am quite sure—” His Grace looked away, and then back at her again, those disconcertingly unreadable eyes of his glinting in the shaded moonlight. And his mouth was curving. “You did not.”

  “Are you— Are you smiling?” She could hear both horror and outrage in her voice.

  “Apologies.” There was self-censure in his voice, but the grim little grin didn’t leave his face.

  “You are smiling.” Her voice was all accusation now. “Are you glad? Are you mad?”

  “No. I am outraged.” He said it simply, as if it were a cold, commonplace fact, and not heated ice in his voice. “Just like you.”

  “Then why are you smiling?” He was such a strange, faraway man. He made no sense whatsoever.

  “Because this—this dead girl—is something I know how do something about. Because there are no coincidences.” His voice held more than vehemence—it held conviction. “Now, I am afraid we can’t leave her in the water. I’m going to take her on board. Can you help to balance the boat while I do so?”

  “I— Yes.” Claire grasped the rails obediently. She would do anything he asked, so long as she didn’t have to touch, or even look at the body.

  At the woman. The poor dead woman.

  Unlike her, His Grace the Duke of Fenmore was calm and composed, and surprisingly competent at heaving a dead woman out of the water with a minimum amount of fuss—surprisingly because Claire would never have thought the man who propped up ballroom walls with such aloof disinterest could be so capable.

  But there was nothing aloof about him now as he worked the sodden, lifeless bundle into the bow of the skiff. His Grace was all lean shoulders, long arms, and efficient sinew beneath his shirtsleeves.

  He was a different-looking fellow out of his coat, and his now-wet shirtsleeves revealed arms more like a stableman’s than a duke’s—all flesh and blood and sinew.

  Competent flesh and blood—he arranged the drowned woman’s body with as much dignity as possible in the bow of the boat, and turned to impart another cold fact to Claire.

  “She was not shot. You may rest easy on that score.” His Grace regained his seat and took up the oars. “But we will have to head back immediately. It will be difficult with the added weight, with the tide already pulling the other way—”

  He looked grim and accountable, just as he had in the boathouse—the boathouse, where Lord Peter Rosing might still lie.

  “Yes, of course. But perhaps there is someplace for us to dock other than the boathouse?”

  He did not take her meaning. “I need to take the body where she can be properly examined, and I can learn more than is already evident.”

  Cold skittered down her arms. His Grace of Fenmore shocked her again, and again. “What do you mean ‘examined’? What is already evident?”

  He sent her another one of his inscrutable, obsidian looks before he explained. “She is a young woman, between the age of fifteen and perhaps twenty. Young, unlined face, despite the effects of the time spent in the water upon her skin. ”

  The effects of the time spent in the water upon her skin.

  The detailed observation was nearly too much for Claire. Cold heat raced up her throat. She swallowed hard against the rising bile, and tried to draw in some air.

  But the duke seemed impervious. He went on methodically. “Her hands are rough with work, but from the little I could see in this light, her nails were trimmed—although the nails on her right hand are broken at the tips. The skin on her hands and forearms, as well as her face, is pale, although that could be the water. Or alternately indicating that she wasn’t out of doors much. Her clothing is plain, also suggesting a working life, but she is well nourished, indicating she probably worked as a household se
rvant somewhere where regular meals were part of her compensation. This conjecture is bolstered by her clothes—clean, with no trace of food stains—and her shoes: half boots, well kept, but with well-worn soles. Someone on her feet most of the day, but inside. Ergo an upper servant in one of the houses along the river.”

  “All that, in less than a minute? In the dark?” How on earth could he guess so much?

  “It isn’t hard, even in the relative dark, if one knows what to look for.”

  His words were sinking in. “A servant girl? Like the maids at Riverchon Park?”

  She herself had been assigned a lovely young girl to work as her maid for the duration of her stay in the manor house. A lovely, chatty girl who had worked wonders on Claire’s hair, making it shine to perfection.

  Claire would never forget what the girl had said to her. Oh miss, you look ready to break hearts.

  It seemed strangely prophetic now. Except it had been Claire’s heart and soul, as well as her face, that was broken.

  The boat moved out of the shadow, the moon moved out from behind some nebulous cloud, and for one stark moment the pale moonlight washed over the bow of the skiff, illuminating the dead woman’s face.

  And Claire saw her—the girl.

  “Oh, dear God.” A burst of pinpricks scattered under her skin and sharpened into a hundred points of horror. “That’s Carter. Maisy Carter.”

  And Claire was stumbling forward, reaching for the duke, unthinkingly grasping his shoulder to steady herself and look behind him, taking an awful, unbelieving look at the eerily pale body glistening in the moonlight.

  “Oh, my God. It is her. It’s the maid I was given, Maisy Carter. What an awful, horrible coincidence.”

  His Grace abandoned his oars, and steadied Claire with one hand to her elbow, and another to her hip, strong and sure.

  But he said, “I don’t believe in coincidence.”

  Despite his steadying hand, Claire felt her legs give way beneath her. Her knee cracked into the bench, and the pain in her leg bled upward into the aching pain in her chest. “What do you mean?”

  His Grace shook his head as if it pained him to have to enlighten her. But his voice was sure. And uncompromising. “I believe in patterns and habits and vices that led people astray. Very far astray. I wasn’t sure I recognized her in this light. Are you sure? How well did you know her?”

  The light touch of his hand atop hers where she still clutched his shirtsleeve was a kind rebuke—a reminder to let go. She pushed herself back into her seat in the stern.

  “I didn’t really. She was assigned to be my maid, at Riverchon Park. I didn’t bring my own with me from town. She had the toothache, Silvers—my own abigail, who sees to me always. So I left her behind, so she might see to the tooth while we were away. And Carter was assigned to me, when I arrived, yesterday.” The poor, poor girl. The cold horror was dissolving into hollow, aching sorrow. “She helped me get dressed, and put up my hair.”

  The duke squeezed her hand, this time a kind reassurance, as if he would give her some of his insistence and vehemence. “When did you last see her? Exactly?”

  “This evening, before dinner. Just before I—before we all—went down to the drawing room. You were there.” He had stood to one side of the room, haughty and inscrutable, ignoring her as she rushed in just as a tall case clock chimed the hour. “What time was that?”

  “The dinner was at eight.” He looked neither haughty nor inscrutable now. He looked alive and interested in a way she had never seen before while he loomed from ballroom walls. He looked like a Renaissance painting of a saint transfixed in the grip of some holy quest—seeking God’s justice.

  “Then just before eight. She had finished my hair earlier, but then came back to help me into my dress. Fresh pressed.” The fabric had still been warm from the iron. “She told me I looked—” Claire broke off, chagrined that His Grace, the perfect Duke of Fenmore might think her silly and vain and self-absorbed, when she was alive with only scratches on her face, and poor Maisy Carter was white and still and so very, very dead. “She made me a very pretty compliment. And I said the credit was all to her.”

  “It’s nearing one o’clock now. But I can’t really tell how long she’s been in the water.”

  “Oh, heavens. Has it gone so late as that?” She had not meant to stay away for so long, only to get away for a brief while, to recover. But she oughtn’t be thinking about herself at such a time, when poor Carter was drowned and dead in the bow of the boat.

  “Yes,” the duke answered in the same grave tone. “And it’s going to be much longer now, I’m afraid. I don’t think we ought to go back to Riverchon.”

  He worked one of the oars to reverse their direction, and send them gliding once again downstream. “We need to go to Chelsea.”

  “Chelsea?” Claire was beyond flabbergasted, even as she watched the dark ribbon of the river begin to spool by. “Why on earth can’t we take her back to Riverchon Park? The staff there, the housekeeper, will know who her people are and what’s to be done for her. Don’t you think?”

  “No. We’re not going back to Richmond.” He repeated the words between hard strokes at the oars, clearly putting his back into it, as if his simple obstinacy would convince her. “I can’t explain it.” And then he reversed himself. “Instinct. I need to keep you away from Riverchon. Safe. We’re going to Chelsea.”

  This time Claire did not even try to stop the sound of distress and shock that flew out of her throat. “But that’s miles and miles downriver—that’s practically to London,” she sputtered.

  She’d had no idea of staying away so long. She’d no idea of anything at the time they came away. She’d only wanted some escape. “Do you mean to row all that way? On our own?”

  She realized the moment she said the words how ridiculous she must sound—like the petted, pampered, buffered daughter of privilege she had only just an hour ago lamented herself.

  But though His Grace of Fenmore looked at her steadily with those obsidian eyes of his, he said noting in condemnation, only, “An hour or two, no more. It will be safer. And easier than going back to Richmond on this tide.”

  As if it were just a decision about the tide, and not about her life. She could hear from the conviction in his voice that he meant well, but Richmond was where her family was. Richmond was where she needed to return.

  “But— Why?”

  “The average speed of the tidal flow in the Thames—”

  “No!” For the first time she cut His Grace off—obsidian gazes and aloof, haughty looks be damned. “Why Chelsea, of all places?”

  She’d never been there in her life. Never been anywhere without either her parents or brothers or abigail for accompaniment. Never been alone with a gentleman for more than a few moments when already she and His Grace had clearly been away for over an hour. The consequences—

  The consequences were too much to even contemplate.

  It was all too much—Lord Peter and the brick wall. His Grace and the dead body. The night had gone from horrible to horrific.

  But His Grace didn’t seem to think so. “Lady Claire, you’ll be safe in Chelsea. There is a house there, where we can go, to examine at the body properly. To see what we can determine about how she died.”

  “How she died?” The cold, creeping horror slid back under Claire’s skin. “But she drowned, didn’t she? We found her floating in the river.”

  He shook his head, calm and implacable. “The river is where we found her body. But it tells us nothing of how she died, nor how her body came to be in the water. We have as yet no evidence to support the supposition that she died by drowning. For all we know, she could have been dead before someone dumped her in the river. Indeed, from what little I can ascertain at the moment, her lungs don’t appear—”

  Evidence? Supposition? Dumped?

  Claire felt bombarded by shock after cold shock. She ached from the effort of holding herself together.

  “Do you me
an on purpose? Someone disposed of her? Like so much rubbish?”

  His Grace did not try to soften the weight of the blow. “Yes. Just like.”

  “My God.” This time the tight heat in her throat was both horror and outrage—and anger at everything that seemed to be happening on this too-eventful evening. At everything that she could not control.

  The world had gone mad around her. “Who would do such a thing to a poor lady’s maid?” Who would do such a thing to anyone?

  “I do not know. But I will find out.” He shook his head and rowed on, casting his gaze out over the dark gunmetal gleam of the river, as sure and implacable as death itself.

  “How?” It was impossible. There was no way to tell what might have happened to poor Carter. Not unless someone had seen something. And they could not tell that without going back, and calling the magistrate.

  What on earth did His Grace think he could do alone? And in Chelsea?

  His Grace was unperturbed by the prospect. Though his eyes were as dark as the night, they burned with conviction. “I have my ways.”

  She believed him. Even though she was not sure she wanted to. “How?” she asked again.

  “With science. And questions. For example, do you think she cast herself into the water? That she was a suicide?”

  Claire would have gasped again if she had any breath left to be surprised. But surprise seemed to be the order of the hour with His Grace of Fenmore. She was nearly reeling from the force of each of his increasingly blunt pronouncements. But this bluntness was just his way.

  “No.” Claire tried to pull her thoughts together in some semblance of order. “She was, from what I could tell—I had her to help me only yesterday and today, from our arrival to the hour before dinner, just before the ball—a brisk, skilled, intelligent girl. Unassuming. A true Christian—she had a small cross—a gift she said, from her former mistress before she came to Riverchon—on a necklace around her—” Claire made a gesture to her own throat before she forced herself to go on. “Around her neck. And she was kind. Sweet. Very kind.”