by C. S. Harris
Yet there was a marked undercurrent of darkness to this homage to the power of the sun. For on Midsummer’s Eve, the boundaries between this world and the next were said to be thin and weak, and fairies roamed the land. Even as one celebrated the warmth and light of the sun, there was an acknowledgment that on this day, the sun reached its zenith. In the days to come, the hours of light would shorten as the year cycled inexorably toward autumn and the cold, dark death of winter.
“When did you last see her?” Hero asked quietly.
Anne Moss lifted her gaze to the window. “She must have slipped away sometime after the bonfires were lit. I didn’t even realize she’d gone until the fires had all died and she still hadn’t come home. And even then, I only thought she was . . .” Sybil’s mother brought up a hand to press her fingertips to her lips, the sinews in her throat corded with an old, festering guilt that was never going to go away. “God help me, I was so angry with her. I went to bed and lay there thinking about how I was going to give her what for when she got home.”
“But she never came home?”
Anne Moss shook her head. “I knew the next morning something was wrong—knew she wouldn’t worry me like that. My John and some of the other cottagers went looking for her. One of his lordship’s shepherds said he’d seen her over by the gorge, so they . . .” Anne had to pause and swallow before she could go on. “They found her lying on the rocks beside the river. Her neck was broke.”
“Where in the gorge, exactly? Do you know?”
Hero was afraid the woman might find the question strange, but she answered readily enough. “She was lying at the base of a rocky outcropping called Monk’s Head. They say that years ago, one of the young monks from the priory fell in love with a village girl. He tried to get out of his vows, but they wouldn’t let him. So the two of them—the monk and the girl—jumped to their deaths there. Don’t know if it’s true, but it’s a popular trysting spot for the young.”
“Could she simply have fallen?”
“I suppose it’s possible. But I doubt it. What was she doin’ there all by her lonesome, anyway?” Sybil’s mother turned her head to stare defiantly at Hero. “I think she was pushed. I think she went there to meet whoever planted that babe in her belly, and he pushed her.”
“Did you tell that to the coroner?”
“I tried. He didn’t want to hear it. Of course he didn’t want to hear it.” She fell silent, her thoughts lost in the past.
In the sudden hush, Hero became aware of the sounds of a child’s laughter and the barking of a dog. Then Sybil’s mother drew a deep, shaky breath and said, “The vicar was kind. He convinced the jury she was so overset by findin’ herself in the family way that she wasn’t in her right mind when she killed herself. Gave her a good Christian burial, he did, although we had to do it after dark, and she’s lyin’ on the very edge of the churchyard. Don’t get me wrong; I appreciate what he done for us—truly, I do. But it weren’t true, what he said. She wasn’t out of her mind, and she didn’t jump off the cliffs of the gorge. I’ll believe that till the day I die myself.”
Hero found she had no difficulty imagining a scenario in which a pretty, naive young girl, oh so proud of the gentleman’s babe in her belly, might suddenly find her joy turned to despair when her wellborn seducer abruptly rejected her. But Hero wasn’t about to suggest that possibility to the grief-stricken mother before her.
She said instead, “Of all the men you named, who do you think killed your daughter?”
Anne Moss stared at her long and hard. “You truly want to know?”
“Yes.”
“I think it was Lord Seaton—his present lordship’s father.”
Hero was seated by the window and leafing thoughtfully through the portraits in Emma Chandler’s sketchbook when Archibald Rawlins knocked tentatively at the door of the private parlor.
“I got your message,” he said, standing awkwardly in the center of the room with his hat in his hands. “I asked both Nash and Dr. Higginbottom about the gloves. But neither could remember noticing if there was one or two.”
“So it was probably dropped somewhere along the way,” said Hero.
“I wouldn’t be surprised. I’m afraid Nash isn’t as careful as he should be.” He hesitated a moment, then said, “You haven’t heard from his lordship?”
“Not yet, no.”
Archie nodded. “I was thinking about driving over to Ludlow on Monday. Crispin says Miss Chandler dealt with a firm of solicitors there. He couldn’t remember their names, but if I can find them, they might be able to tell us more about her.”
“That’s an excellent idea,” said Hero, giving him an encouraging smile. “Tell me, how well do you remember Lord Seaton’s father, Leopold?”
“I don’t really. I was maybe six or seven when he died.”
Hero knew a quickening of interest. “He died around ’ninety-seven or ’ninety-eight?”
“Something like that, yes. Why?”
“Sybil Moss died in July of 1797.”
“Did she? I couldn’t have told you exactly. I barely remember it.”
“When did Hannah Grant die?”
“Around then sometime.”
“Her father is the village blacksmith?”
“He is, yes. I could talk to him—ask him about it, if you like.”
“Is Hannah’s mother still alive?”
“She is, yes.”
“Then I’ll talk to her instead.”
A vague shadow passed over the young Squire’s features. “If you’d prefer. Only, you might want to do it when the smith isn’t around. He has a tendency to get a bit agitated whenever anyone mentions his daughter.”
“Don’t worry,” said Hero. “I’ll be careful.”
Chapter 33
Later that afternoon, as a thick white band of clouds settled low over the village, Hero walked up the high street to the blacksmith’s shop and the slate-roofed, sandstone cottage that stood beside it. Remembering Archie Rawlins’s warning, she carried with her a large, unusually heavy reticule.
She could see Miles Grant still at his forge, the fire glowing red-hot as he worked the massive bellows, his sweat-gleamed face bent to his task. In the yard of the nearby cottage, his wife was taking down clothes from a line strung between a lean-to shed and a mulberry tree, her arms moving methodically as she unpinned and rolled her wash to stow it in the basket at her feet.
If Mary Grant had ever been as pretty as her long-dead daughter, Hannah, all traces of those days were gone. The passage of hard years had etched deep lines in her face, sagged her cheeks, and tugged down the corners of her mouth and eyes, so that she looked as if she were melting—as if life were dissolving her a little more every day.
“Good evening,” said Hero with a friendly smile.
The woman looked around and froze, and Hero saw the nasty bruise riding high on her left cheek, so purple it was almost black.
“God above,” whispered the blacksmith’s wife as she cast a wary glance toward her husband’s forge. “I know why you’re here, milady, but please—oh, please—just go away.”
Hero watched the nerves in the older woman’s face twitch with her distress. “I’m sorry, but I need to know about Hannah.”
Mary Grant’s pinched eyes widened with alarm at the sound of her daughter’s name. “Miles, he don’t like me talkin’ about her,” said the dead girl’s mother. “Won’t even let me mention her name in his hearing, he won’t. Says she shamed us.”
Hero was careful to keep her voice as bland as her expression. “You think she killed herself?”
Mary Grant jerked one of her husband’s shirts off the line, sending its pins flying. “It’s what they said at the inquest, ain’t it?”
“When exactly did she die?”
A painful spasm crumpled the mother’s face. “The twenty-fourth
of January, 1798.”
“Do you know if she was seeing anyone in particular at the time?”
The smith’s wife paused, the shirt clutched forgotten in her arms, a faint, faraway light kindling in her eyes. “She was so pretty, all the lads in the village were in love with her—and more’n a few who weren’t lads, if you take my meaning? Even his lordship’s father fancied her, he did. I know because I saw him smiling at her once or twice. He always had an eye for a pretty face, he did. I told her not to make too much of it, that his lordship never meant well by any girl he smiled at. I think she listened to me. She weren’t one for being foolish.”
Hero studied the older woman’s tightly held, intense face and suspected she spoke as much to convince herself as to persuade Hero.
“So who was she in love with?” asked Hero.
“I didn’t ever know. I mean—” She broke off, her head jerking toward the blacksmith’s shop as Hero became aware of a beefy man in a leather apron descending on them, his powerful arms crossed at his chest, his broad, heavily jowled face dripping sweat, the cords in his neck rigid with his fury.
“I’m sorry,” said the smith’s wife in a rush, bundling up the shirt in her hands and thrusting it into her basket. “I can’t talk no more. Truly I can’t.” She seized the basket and disappeared into the cottage, leaving half the clothes still hanging on the line.
“What ye doin’, comin’ round here?” shouted Miles Grant, his voice booming out as his long stride closed the distance between then. “Comin’ round here, makin’ trouble? I’ll teach ye to go pokin’ yer fancy nose where it don’t belong.” He uncurled his arms, his knotted fists coming up as he descended upon her. “I’ll show you.”
Hero calmly withdrew the small, brass-mounted flintlock pistol from her reticule and thumbed back the hammer. “Come any closer and I will kill you. Without hesitation or compunction.”
He drew up abruptly, eyes widening with surprise as much as anything else. She knew from the twitching of his heavy straight brows that the definition of the word “compunction” eluded him. But he understood the meaning of a loaded flintlock leveled unflinchingly at his chest.
“Ye wouldn’t shoot me,” he said, although his voice lacked conviction.
“Believe me, I would more than welcome an excuse to put an abrupt end to your miserable, brutish existence.”
He obviously believed her because he took a wary step back, his hands dangling loosely at his sides, his face dark and swollen with the impotence of his fury.
She wiggled the muzzle of her pistol. “Now turn around and go back to whatever you were doing.”
“Ye can’t order about a man in his own house!”
Rather than keep the pistol leveled on his chest, Hero readjusted her aim so that the muzzle now pointed at his crotch. “Let me assure you that I am an excellent shot. Now, turn around and go away. You are boring me.”
He didn’t turn around. But he did back away from her, one step at a time, his dark, angry gaze fixed on her face. She waited until he’d backed all the way to his forge before she calmly walked away, the pistol still in her hand.
She doubted he would actually have been so foolish as to harm her, although she had no intention of taking any chances. More likely he had intended to use his size and his aggressive maleness to intimidate and frighten her. But she also had no doubt that he was dangerous, and this day’s events had both humiliated and enraged him. She had challenged his comfortable belief that as a man he was superior to any female, no matter how wellborn.
And if he came at her again, it wouldn’t be directly or out in the open where anyone could see.
Chapter 34
Sunday, 8 August
Pleasant Park, the ancestral home of the powerful Turnstall family, lay to the southwest of Tenbury, in the rolling, verdant country of Herefordshire.
Nursing his chestnuts in easy stages, Sebastian arrived there in the afternoon. The sky was still overcast, with thickening gray clouds that robbed the day of light and warmth and cheer. Stately and pretentious, the house rose at the end of a sweeping, oak-lined carriageway. Its walls were built of massive, carefully hewn sandstone blocks, the roofline bristling with tall chimneys that thrust up pale against the dark foliage of the wooded hillside behind it. The gardens were as stiff and formal as the house, with close-cropped lawns, trim yew hedges, and old-fashioned box-edged parterres.
“Gor,” breathed Tom as Sebastian reined in before the house’s grand, Palladian-influenced portico. “’Er family owns this?”
“This, and another half dozen estates, besides,” said Sebastian, hopping down to the gravel sweep.
To arrive unexpected at such a grand country estate was considered bad form, so Sebastian wasn’t surprised when he was shown to a small waiting room by a stately butler and left to cool his heels for a number of minutes. He’d about decided the current Earl must not be receiving when the butler returned with a bow to say, “This way, if you please, my lord?”
He led Sebastian to a cavernous salon with figured pink silk–covered walls, richly colored marble pilasters, ormolu-mounted marquetry bureaus, and clusters of stately, throne-like chairs and settees gathered around each of the room’s three marble-decked fireplaces.
Albert Felton Turnstall, Third Earl of Heyworth, stood beside the room’s central hearth, one arm laid along the mantelpiece in what was meant to be a relaxed pose but instead came off as studied. He was of average height but slight of frame, with reddish blond hair and swooping curly side-whiskers. Sebastian knew him slightly, for the Turnstalls spent some months of every year in London. He was somewhere in his early to mid-thirties, which meant that Emma Chandler was most likely the natural daughter of this man’s father, the Second Earl.
The Earl’s mother, the Dowager Countess of Heyworth, sat nearby on a tapestry-covered chair, her stout body rigid with anger, her color high, and her head thrown back. Sebastian had the distinct impression that mother and son had argued over whether to receive him and that both knew the reason for his visit.
“Lord Devlin,” said Heyworth with a smile that did not reach his eyes. “What an unexpected pleasure.” The emphasis on the word “unexpected” was subtle, but there.
The formalities were punctiliously observed, polite utterances mouthed, and Sebastian invited to sit. Yet all the while, the room vibrated with an undeniable tension.
Sebastian smiled at his host and said bluntly, “I gather you know why I’m here.”
Heyworth expelled his breath in a startled, nervous laugh. “Why, no. Are you by chance in the neighborhood?”
“Not far. At Ayleswick, in Shropshire. I assume you’ve heard of the recent murders there?”
Heyworth and the Dowager Countess exchanged guarded glances. Sebastian thought for a moment the Earl meant to deny all knowledge of the subject. But then he obviously realized the folly of trying to claim ignorance of something that had set the entire West Midlands to talking.
“Yes. Shocking, to be sure. I understand you’ve involved yourself in the investigations?”
“I have, yes. And I’m afraid we’ve recently discovered that the dead woman’s name was not Chance as previously believed, but Chandler.” He hesitated. “Emma Chandler.”
The Dowager Countess remained rigidly silent. But Heyworth, who had resumed his stance beside the fireplace, lifted one eyebrow in a show of polite interest. “Oh?”
“The name means nothing to you?”
“No. Should it?”
Sebastian glanced, again, at the Dowager Countess. She was perhaps sixty years of age, deep of bosom and round of face, with dark blond hair fading rapidly to gray. Once, she might have been pretty. But sixty years of haughtiness, conceit, contempt, and petulant self-indulgence had etched themselves into her face in ways that were not attractive. Sebastian had the impression that if it had been up to the Dowager, she would have denied him,
that it was Heyworth who had insisted they brazen out the interview.
Sebastian said, “I should think it would, given that your family paid her fees at a Tenbury academy for something like fourteen years.”
Heyworth gave another of his breathy, unconvincing laughs. “I’m sorry, but whoever told you such a thing was mistaken.”
“Indeed?” Sebastian looked from the Third Earl to his silent, angry mother. “Well then, my apologies for disturbing you.”
“Not at all,” said Heyworth. “Shall I ring for a footman to show you out? I do hope you have more success elsewhere.”
“Perhaps I shall.” Sebastian rose to his feet. “Emma will be buried in the churchyard at Ayleswick, should you wish at any point in the future to pay your respects to your sister.”
“She was not my sister,” hissed Heyworth.
Sebastian smiled and started to turn toward the door. Then he paused, his attention arrested by the large painting that hung on the far wall.
A massive canvas, it was a life-sized portrait of an eighteenth-century family grouping set against a leafy background. Dressed in the splendid silks, velvets, lace, and opulent jewelry of a gentleman of the late 1780s or early 1790s, the Second Earl of Heyworth stood with one hand propped on his waist, his gaze off to one side as if he were surveying his estate with pride. He had his son’s sharp features but a much stronger chin, his long wig powdered and crimped in the style of the day, his half smile one of calm self-satisfaction and pride.
His Countess reposed beside him on a stone bench. The Dowager had indeed been quite lovely when young, her figure slender and well formed, her eyes a deep, almost violet blue, her hair fashionably powdered. Two children relaxed in the grass at her feet. The future Third Earl, Albert Felton Turnstall, looked to be perhaps twelve or thirteen years of age, his bored conceit captured by the artist with startling clarity. But it was the young girl beside him who drew and held Sebastian’s attention.
