Claire avoided his hand—for the moment—and leaned her back into the door to shut it.
“What are you looking for?” She looked around, half-remembering herself here before.
Before her life had changed irrevocably.
“You’ve changed your perfume.”
The nonsensical observation brought her gaze back to her Tanner. “I did.” And it was gratifying that he had noticed.
“I liked the other. Orange blossom.”
“I threw it out. It reminded me of before. It reminded me of…Rosing.”
His brows rose fractionally, as if he had not thought of such a possibility—of either her reaction, nor subsequent action. As if he had only considered it from his own point of view.
Which was why she was still aggravated with him. She had an entirely different point of view, which he needed to take into account. “Where have you been?”
“Here.”
“Why did you abandon me, just when I needed you most?”
“I didn’t abandon you. You needed private time with your parents. And I knew you could handle the reunion far better without me there to arse it all up sniping with your father.”
Claire crossed her arms over her chest. “I am still put out with you. Especially for being so rational. This is the moment when I wish I could make a witty cutting remark to tell you what I think of your rationality.”
His Grace looked at her directly for the first time since she had come into the room. “I’ll consider myself cut then, shall I?”
She tried hard to be arch. “Yes, do.”
But neither of them could contain their smiles. Claire tried pursing her lips, and then biting them, but she gave up the moment the corner of his mouth twitched upward. And then they were both grinning at each other for no other reason than it felt good to be together and sparring.
Lord, she had missed him—and it had only been an hour.
But she had questions that needed answering, and news of her own to report. “My dear Grace of Tanner,” she began.
His low rumble of a laugh faded, but his smile did not. It broadened. “Dear?”
“You heard me, Your Grace.” She tried to disarm him with a smile of her own, the one she had often heard described as winsome—she hoped he wouldn’t be able to resist winsome.
He couldn’t. He rose to his feet, and captured her hand. “My dear Lady Claire, don’t you think we’ve come to far for the formality of ‘Your Grace?’”
“My dear duke, haven’t we come too far for the formality of ‘Lady Claire?’”
“Yes. Far too far. But I have to admit, I rather like ‘my dear duke.’”
“I’d rather call you Your Grace. But for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with formality or title.”
“Are—” He frowned over the top of his smile, as if he were suddenly not quite sure of himself. “Are you flirting with me?”
She looked at him from under her lashes. “Is it working?”
“God, yes.” His voice was nothing but an urgent, elegant growl, as he pulled her toward him.
She went willingly, moving close, and then closer. His lips parted, ever so slightly so, as if he could think of nothing but her kiss.
She made him think a little while longer.
She leaned against the lean comfort of his chest, and put her lips along the taut cord at the side of his neck to whisper into his ear. “We’re a terrible scandal, you know.”
“Yes.” His agreement was tempered by the unevenness of his breathing. “But it’s what you do after the scandal that counts.”
“Does this count?” She wrapped her arms about his waist, and turned her face up to his.
“God, yes.”
Oh, excellent. His admission brought a sigh or pure relief to her lips. He was so ready, so poised on the very edge, all he needed really, a proper push in the right direction to fall rather hopelessly in love.
Poor lamb, with all his cleverness, he had no idea that he was done for.
But she could read the signs just as clearly as if he had written them out on a piece of parchment and handed it to her. “This is the part where it would be nice if you said you loved me.”
“Why would I say that?”
“Because that’s how you feel.”
“Do I? How do you know?”
“Ah. I’m so glad you asked—I’ve been dying to take a crack at it, because I owe my budding powers of observation all to you.”
She rested her chin on his chest, right in the snowy folds of his cravat.
“I’ve learned my lessons, Your Grace, and I’ve learned them very well. And so.” She stroked the back of her finger along the line of his jaw. “Your skin, Your Grace, is flushed. Just a tiny bit, here along the sides of your neck. And you breathed out when I came in, a lovely little silent gasp of greeting. And then, there were your eyes. They went obsidian dark. And then they narrowed, and then opened. Interest, I should think that showed. Passion, maybe even, in those dark, shuttered depths. And you went absolutely still.”
“You don’t do still, normally, unless you’re very, very interested. You try to be still, and invisible, standing along ballroom walls, being seen, but not seen. But you’re always moving even then. Drumming your fingers against your sleeve, or tapping your foot, or moving your head ever so slightly to the beat of the music, as if you really, really want to dance. But you never do. But you are not still.”
“So all those physical manifestations, as you called them, point me in the direction of a man who doesn’t know how to properly express the pleasure that he feels in his gut because his head, that lovely, magnificent, terrifyingly brilliant head of yours, tells him—”
“Do shut up, Claire.” He lowered his head to whisper against her lips. “When you talk like that, it makes it extraordinarily difficult to kiss you.”
“But you like it when things are extraordinarily difficult, don’t you? You like—”
“You.” And then his lips—his lovely seraphic lips, with their perfect vee and the full pouty bottom lip—covered hers.
And he was magnificent. He tasted like smoke and surprise and every taste and smell and feeling that she had missed in the past hour.
His hands came up to clasp her upper arms, and pull her tight against him. One lovely burst of possessiveness, before his fingers spread wide, and he released her. But he did not, she noted, stop touching her. Or stop kissing her.
He ran his open palms down the length of her bare arms to enmesh his fingers with hers as he kissed her.
As she kissed him.
On and on it went, giving and taking tasting and nipping and wanting. Wanting more.
What started as a little game, a punishment and exercise in her own powers, was so suddenly beyond her control.
Heat, real blistering heat raced under her skin, and a hunger she did not know either of them had began to assert its insistent self, until she could hear their kisses, hear the slide of tongues, and smack of lips, and breathy gasping for air.
“Tanner.”
And she could feel his big, agile hands cradling the back of her head as he held her still for his kiss, and she could feel the smooth rasp of his chin with her own palms, and feel the reverberating hum of excitement that awoke her skin.
And then there was a quick rap at the dressing room door , before it whooshed open on it’s silent, well-oiled hinge, and Tanner quite literally set her apart—he picked her up and set her away—just as the bristle of taffeta skirts filled her ears.
“Your Grace?”
It was not her mother, thank God, but Mrs. Dalgliesh, the housekeeper, who was the dowager duchess’s right hand woman.
“Ah, Mrs. Dalgliesh, thank you.” His Grace her Tanner did not miss a beat. “Tell me about the room. Who found it, and where did they enter?”
Mrs. Dalgliesh made no demur whatsoever to Tanner’s blunt question—he must have sent for her. “On the night of the ball, it was the Viscountess Jeffrey, Your Grace, who found
the room in disarray.”
“Disarray?” It was getting to be a strange habit, this parroting of questions that astonished her. “What do you mean?” Claire would never have let her room become so disordered as to be called a disarray.
“That your room was ransacked,” Tanner told her, in his blunt, factual way. “Go on.”
“The Viscountess Jeffrey, I understand, had come looking for Lady Claire. She entered through the door, I should think.” The housekeeper gestured over her shoulder to the door by which Claire had entered. “And when she saw that the room had been greatly disturbed, then she sent for the Countess Sanderson, who then sent for me.”
“Was there blood?”
“I beg your pardon, Your Grace?” The housekeeper shot a mystified and slightly horrified look at Claire, who did not understand.
She did not remember anything about blood—Maisy had not looked bloodied. But then again, the poor girl’s body had been in the water.
“No, not her blood.” Tanner had already interpreted Mrs. Dalgliesh’s look, and waved her away from Claire. “Think. Blood on the floor, or on the carpet, or staining anywhere.”
He opened the empty wardrobe where Claire’s gowns would have been stored. “Anywhere in the room, or the corridor. Or the servants’ corridor. Somewhere in this house. Large drops, I should think. A dark rusty brown. Maisy Carter’s nose was broken, and there would have been blood.”
“Oh. I see.” The housekeeper blanched a bit, and swallowed, but she rallied, and looked about the room as if she were trying to envision what it had looked like one night ago. “No sir, there was no blood.”
“Are you sure? Who cleaned the room? When did they clean it?”
His questions came out in rapid fire, one right after another, as if his mouth were merely trying to keep up with his clever brain.
“I did, sir,” the housekeep confirmed, as if it were a test of both her housekeeping skills and her loyalty to Riverchon. “I deemed it best to keep such a task private.”
“Absolutely. When?”
“When did I put it to rights? Almost immediately, Your Grace, though I did show the room to both Her Grace, your grandmother, and to the Earl as well as Countess Sanderson, who, as I said, had already seen it.”
But Tanner didn’t seem interested in either housekeeping or loyalty at the moment. “Tell me what you saw. Describe it. In detail.”
“Every piece of furniture was disturbed—the bergere armchair cushions were on the floor, and one was smudged with ashes where it landed in the fireplace. Thank goodness the fire was cold—it was, if you remember, a warm night—or we might have had an even greater crisis on our hands.”
“I recall, Mrs. Dalgliesh. The furniture?”
“The small chair was overturned as well.” She pointed to the floor beside the bed. “The bed curtains had been ripped off the frame, and the bed linens overturned, and strewn about.”
“And the bed linens?”
The housekeeper shot another glance sideways at Claire. A nervous, discommoded glance. “If it’s all the same to you, sir—”
“Were the linens soiled?” Tanner’s impatience for answers made his voice stronger than it needed to be.
The housekeeper’s discomfort tightened her face into a moue of distaste. “Yes.”
“On the top of the counterpane, or beneath, on the sheets? Top sheet or bottom?”
The poor housekeeper sent another desperate look at Claire, and swallowed nervously. “On the counterpane, sir.”
“And was there blood, as well as ejaculate, on the counterpane?”
“Oh, good Lord!” Claire backed away instinctively—she hadn’t understood what he was talking about. She only was thinking about poor, poor Maisy’s nose and—
Claire felt her face heat, and her chest tighten, and her stomach flip all at once. But she must have made a sound of distress, because Tanner’s incisive gaze shot to hers.
And then he stood, once again the cool aloof Duke of Fenmore. “Forgive me. Perhaps...” He held out his arm, gesturing toward the door, as if she might like to leave the room. “Perhaps you might like to retire before—”
“No. No,” Claire insisted, even as she wanted to do exactly as he suggested, and bolt from the room. Or at the very least throw open the windows.
Which he did. The cool evening breeze helped. A little.
“Thank you—the room did feel a little close. But I’m not going anywhere. I’m determined not to be missish. I understand now.”
Claire made herself say the words matter-of-factly, though her face was both hot and clammy with discomfort. “You said there were no coincidences, and I understand now. Go ahead and answer His Grace, Mrs Dalgliesh. Was there any blood?”
Mrs. Dalgliesh’s voice was the barest, choked whisper. “No. sir. Just the—”
In an instant, His Grace was back to the Tanner, like a dog with a bone. He all but growled, at the housekeeper. “Are you sure? You examined the linens yourself before they were laundered?”
“I’m sure. But I— I hope you will forgive me, Your Grace, but I did not have them laundered.”
He brightened. “Did you save them?”
“No, Your Grace. I burnt them myself, in the fire in my sitting room. I thought it best. To keep everything...” She settled upon the correct word. “Private”
Claire could see the disappointment slide across Tanner’s face like a cloud passing before the sun, and then he was past it, and on to the next thought, the next clever idea.
He turned a full circle in the room, his arms and hands outstretched from his side. “So where then? Where did he kill her, if not here?” He went for the door. “Did anyone hear anything? Any of the servants coming or going?”
Claire and Mrs. Dalgliesh followed him out.
“The ball was underway, Your Grace.” the housekeeper answered. “Most of the servants were attendant upon their duties and charges below.”
“So the hallway is empty. Does Maisy come up?” Is was as if he were seeing it unfold before him. “What would bring her back to this room?”
“My shawl.” The realization sent an ache like a screw, tightening Claire’s throat. “I was nearly late for the dinner, and she had followed me as I hurried down, handing me my gloves so I could pull them on as we went. And she gave me my fan, as well. But I said I didn’t need my shawl—it was too warm. So she would have brought it back up, and probably set about putting everything to rights as we left in a rush—gathering up the loose pins and powder on the dressing table, and putting out the candles there.”
“Mrs. Dalgliesh.” His Grace of Tanner’s voice whipped back to the housekeeper. “The candles on the dressing table—you’ve replaced them. How long were the candle stubs you replaced?”
Mrs. Dalgliesh frowned, and closed her eyes to concentrate. And then she shook her head. “No stubs, sir. I sent the tweeny up this morning to dig out the wax. They were guttered.”
“So she didn’t put the candles out. Just so.”
Tanner nodded, and turned round once again in the hall, as he had done in the room, and Claire could see now that he was imagining it, standing there with his eyes wide open, seeing the scene as Maisy Carter herself would have seen it.
“So she had followed you down the main stairwell? So she would have come directly back up instead of taking the long way back through the house to the servants’ stair? Either way, she comes to the door, here.”
He stood on the threshold, and pushed the door open as if he could see what might have happened. “But she does not go in to put out the candles, which continue to burn until they gutter.”
He went utterly, completely still. “Ah. He’s here already, looking for Claire. But it’s Maisy he finds instead.”
The cool, damp air from the window chilled Claire’s skin, prickling it into icy gooseflesh.
Tanner went on inexorably. “So she sees him, presumably on the bed, presumably boxing the Jesuit. And what does our Maisy Carter do?”
“Boxing the—” Claire hadn’t the faintest idea what he was talking about. “Is that a nautical term? Like boxing the compass?”
He was too intent to do more than fix her with a solemn, pitiless look. “He was ejaculating. Onto the counterpane. Working himself up for—”
Claire would have gasped if she had had any breath left in her body. She was nothing but empty aching space—pity had hollowed her out.
Tanner was still intent and unmoved, turning in the other direction, toward the far end of the hall where three narrow doors faced out into the corridor. “Maisy is no fool—she would have immediately gone for the servant’s stair.”
Tanner strode down the hall, and tore open the central door that led onto the steep, narrow service stairs. “Have these been cleaned?”
“Of course, Your Grace.” Mrs. Dalgliesh tone was more than defensive—it was nearly pert, and definitely proprietary.
But Tanner was like a hound on the scent, and would not be turned. “But the blood, Mrs. Dalgliesh. We’re looking for the blood. Maisy Carter’s lifeblood, seeping out somewhere in this house, or on these grounds. It’s important, don’t you see?”
“Yes, sir. I suppose I can ask the tweeny who cleans and mops the stair, sir. But—”
“But what?” He nearly growled his question. The poor man was barely holding his irritation in check.
Mrs. Dalgliesh stiffened her spine. “But she’s a child, Your Grace. Just as I’ve known you since you were a child. You came here about the same age as the tweeny—twelve years old. So if you could, please, not upset her. These poor girls are frightened enough, thinking someone is out to murder them, without you adding to it with your talk of blood and ejaculate.”
If she pursed her lips any harder, Mrs. Dalgliesh was going to turn into a woody lemon tree.
Tanner straightened. “Ah. I see. Forgive me, Mrs. Dalgliesh.”
Once again, Claire could see the straight, chilly mantle of the Duke of Fenmore descend upon him like a cloak. “If you would please, ask the child yourself. So we can be sure that I won’t upset her.”
“Yes, then. Thank you, sir.” The older woman inclined her head, and bobbed a shallow curtsey. “If you’ll just let me pass by, I’ll see to it immediately, Your Grace.”
After the Scandal Page 28
