There was string tied around the newel post at ankle height. It was discreetly done, so discreetly done that she almost didn’t see it.
Primrose crouched, and examined it: the decorative groove, the inconspicuous piece of string looped around it. The knot was a sturdy one. There’d be no getting it off without scissors.
The rest of the string was neatly coiled up and tucked behind the post. Invisible, unless one knew to look for it. Primrose didn’t need to pull it out and measure its length; she knew it must be long enough to reach the alcove.
A shiver ran along her spine, and following the shiver was a rush of anger. She clenched her jaw. Miss Middleton-Murray was not going to get away with this again.
She changed hastily, choosing a gown with a pocket at the waist, slipping Oliver’s watch into it, then she quietly let herself out of her room and tiptoed down the corridor. The string was still tucked behind the newel post.
Primrose checked the alcove anyway. It was empty.
She hurried downstairs, in the grip of a martial emotion. This must be how soldiers felt before going into combat: hearts beating fast, resolute, focused, determined to win.
She paused outside the blue salon and took a moment to compose herself, then opened the door.
Almost the entire party was there: Lady Cheevers, Mrs. Middleton-Murray, Miss Cheevers, Ninian Dasenby, Oliver and Rhodes, and Miss Middleton-Murray.
Oliver, Rhodes, and Miss Middleton-Murray looked up at her entrance; the others didn’t. Dasenby and Miss Cheevers were engrossed in conversation, Mrs. Middleton-Murray was intent on her needlework, and Lady Cheevers was absorbed in the Ladies’ Monthly Museum.
Primrose gave Rhodes and Oliver a discreet thumbs up and crossed the room with calm, unhurried steps. The place alongside Miss Middleton-Murray on the sofa was empty. Primrose took it, and bestowed a friendly smile upon her.
Miss Middleton-Murray smiled back, and asked how Primrose had enjoyed her ride.
The conversation lasted five minutes, and in those five minutes Miss Middleton-Murray managed to compliment Primrose on her horsemanship, her intelligence, her Christian name, her middle name, the color of her hair, her taste in clothing, her bloodline, and her scholarship. The urge to play up to it was almost overwhelming. No wonder Oliver preened and strutted as much as he did.
“I would very much like to read that book of yours,” Miss Middleton-Murray said, eagerly. “Autellus, was it not?”
“Aurelius,” Primrose said. “I can fetch it for you, if you would like?”
“I would be so grateful, Lady Primrose. If it’s not too much trouble . . .”
“No trouble at all.”
She rose and crossed to the door, opened it, and glanced back. Miss Middleton-Murray was smiling brightly at her. Primrose looked past her, to Oliver and Rhodes. She met their eyes, first one, then the other, and closed the door.
In the corridor she took out Oliver’s watch and memorized the time, burning it into her memory. Ten minutes.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Rhodes took his watch out and casually glanced at it, tilted the face so that Oliver could read it, too, then tucked it back into his pocket.
Oliver began counting seconds in his head. When he’d reached thirty-five, Miss Middleton-Murray rose to her feet. “How about a game of chess, old fellow?” Oliver said loudly, not watching as she slipped from the room.
“Splendid idea,” Rhodes replied, equally loudly.
The door closed noiselessly. Oliver looked around. Lady Cheevers was still reading the Ladies’ Monthly Museum. Mrs. Middleton-Murray was still plying her needle. Ninian and Miss Cheevers were still deep in discussion. It appeared that no one had noticed Miss Middleton-Murray’s departure.
He met Rhodes’s eyes.
Rhodes gave a nod.
Together, they stood and crossed to where Lady Cheevers sat. “Ma’am,” Oliver said, very quietly. “May we please have a word with you?” He inclined his head towards the corridor.
Lady Cheevers lowered the magazine and looked up at them, a movement that set the feathers in her turban swaying. Alarm flickered across her face. “What is it about?”
Oliver laid his finger briefly across his lips and tilted his head towards the door again.
Lady Cheevers looked even more alarmed. She put the magazine aside and stood. She cast a glance at her daughter, ensconced on the window seat with Ninian, and then crossed to the door. Rhodes opened it. They stepped into the corridor one by one.
Rhodes closed the door.
Lady Cheevers turned to Oliver. “What is it, Your Grace?”
“Thayne and I need to show you something.”
“What?”
“We can’t tell you, ma’am,” Oliver said. “You need to see it for yourself.”
Lady Cheevers looked at Rhodes, wide-eyed and worried. He smiled at her reassuringly. “Trust us, ma’am.”
She gave a doubtful smile of her own. “Very well.”
Lady Cheevers allowed herself to be escorted along the corridor. She said nothing aloud. She didn’t have to. Her face said it all: confusion, uneasiness, trepidation.
When they reached the vestibule they encountered Lord Cheevers. Oliver felt a surge of exultation. He lifted his eyes skyward. Thank you, Lord.
Lady Cheevers turned to her husband, relief vivid on her face. “Frederick!”
Cheevers looked at the three of them and put up his brows. “What is it, my dear?”
“Will you please come with us, sir?” Oliver said.
Cheevers’s brows rose still higher. “Where to?”
“It’s a great secret, Frederick,” Lady Cheevers said, with a nervous laugh. “They won’t tell me.” She reached out a hand to him.
“It’s something you need to see, sir,” Rhodes said, very seriously.
Cheevers’s brow twisted in bemusement. He took his wife’s hand, patting it comfortingly. “What on earth—”
“Please, sir,” Oliver said. “It’s extremely important. We wouldn’t ask otherwise.”
Cheevers looked at him, and then at Rhodes, and lastly at his wife. Then he shrugged. “Very well, Your Grace.”
Rhodes checked his pocket watch. “Less than six minutes left.”
They climbed the thirty-six stairs Oliver had fallen down yesterday. At the top, Rhodes checked his watch again. “Five minutes.”
They traversed the corridor between the North wing and the South, crossed a long gallery hung with paintings, and came to a smaller, sunnier gallery. Rhodes looked at his watch. “Three and a half minutes,” he said in a whisper.
Lord Cheevers opened his mouth.
Oliver hushed him hastily.
Cheevers blinked, taken aback, and then whispered, “What is going on?”
“You’ll see very soon,” Oliver whispered back. He laid a finger warningly over his lips.
Cheevers frowned, but made no protest. He might think this a trick, some tomfoolery, but he knew he was outranked. He wasn’t going to argue with a marquis and a duke.
Oliver laid his finger to his lips a second time and then crossed the gallery with exaggerated care, almost tiptoeing.
Lord and Lady Cheevers followed silently.
At the far end of the gallery, the flight of four steps rose.
A yard from the bottom of those steps, Oliver halted, in almost the exact spot that the housemaid had scrubbed away Miss Warrington’s blood. He breathed shallowly.
Lord and Lady Cheevers halted alongside him, flanked by Rhodes.
Oliver narrowed his eyes and stared at the newel post. He couldn’t see any string tied there. He transferred his stare to the air a few inches above the topmost step. He couldn’t see any string hovering there, either.
He told himself that the string was lying flat on the floor at the moment, invisible to their eyes—and that as soon as Miss Middleton-Murray heard Primrose’s door open she would pull the string taut and they would see it.
Unless she’d gone to the music room to practice on the pi
anoforte. In which case, they’d look like the greatest fools in England.
Oliver shoved that thought aside, turned to the Cheevers, and laid his finger over his mouth again.
Lord and Lady Cheevers stared back at him, uncomfortable, bewildered, and in the viscount’s case, growing angry.
Oliver ignored those things. All he cared about was silence, and that he had—as long as the Cheevers remained intimidated by his rank.
Rhodes silently held out his pocket watch. Oliver peered at it. There was one minute left.
He put his finger to his lips one last time, then turned his attention to the topmost step and waited.
Ten seconds passed. Twenty. Thirty. Oliver could feel Lord Cheevers’s growing impatience, his growing anger.
A door opened and closed in the corridor above—and as if by magic, a string appeared six inches above the topmost step.
Oliver’s breath hissed in silent triumph. He turned to the Cheevers and pointed at it. Look, he shouted at them silently. Look there.
Cheevers frowned. He took a step closer and peered at the string.
Lady Cheevers’s mouth opened in a silent O of horror.
Oliver crept closer to the stairs on tiptoe. He pointed at the string again, almost touching it with his finger, and looked back. Lord and Lady Cheevers were staring, open-mouthed and aghast. Rhodes wasn’t open-mouthed. He was tight-lipped, grim.
Light, unhurried footsteps came closer. The string remained taut, hovering above the topmost step. Almost invisible. Lethal.
Oliver silently climbed the steps, arriving on the third one at the same moment that Primrose reached the top of the stairs. Their eyes met. They almost smiled at each other.
For a brief second they made a tableau—all of them frozen in place—and then a shriek of warning broke the silence. “Be careful!”
Oliver ignored Lady Cheevers’s shrill cry. He stepped over the string and turned towards the alcove. “Hello, Miss Middleton-Murray.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
There was an uproar. The biggest uproar Primrose had ever heard in her life. Rhodes bounded up the stairs, Lord Cheevers on his heels, both intent on looking into the alcove. Lady Cheevers followed more slowly, her face stark white with horror.
“What’s the meaning of this?” Rhodes demanded, while at the same time Lady Cheevers clutched Primrose’s arm and said faintly, “Oh, my dear . . . I thought . . .” Her gaze turned to the string, lying on the floor at their feet.
“It’s all right, ma’am.” Primrose patted her hand.
Miss Middleton-Murray emerged from the alcove. Her face was flushed, her eyes sparkling brightly, but she didn’t look cowed or repentant or even embarrassed at having been caught; she looked wrathful. She lifted her chin and stared at Primrose, and if looks could kill Primrose would have been struck dead.
For a moment Primrose was tempted to play Oliver’s trick: fling out her arms and fall to the floor. The impulse was wholly inappropriate and easily mastered—but it almost would have been worth it to see the look on Miss Middleton-Murray’s face.
“Explain yourself,” Lord Cheevers commanded.
Miss Middleton-Murray lifted her chin. “It was merely a joke.”
“A joke?” Rhodes’s voice was loud enough to make Primrose wince.
“And was Miss Carteris’s broken wrist a joke?” Oliver asked. In contrast to Rhodes and Lord Cheevers, his tone was light, almost conversational. “And Miss Warrington’s nose?”
Miss Middleton-Murray tossed her head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“No?” Primrose said. “Then perhaps you’d like to explain the scratches on the newel post. Two scratches, where two pieces of string have been cut off.”
There was a long moment of silence. Lord Cheevers looked from the newel post, to the string lying on the floor, to Miss Middleton-Murray. Anger flushed his face. He seemed to swell with outrage. “You harmed my guests?” The fury in his voice made Primrose shiver.
Miss Middleton-Murray didn’t shiver. Nor did she weep or ask for forgiveness; she just stared coldly back at her godfather.
That was when the uproar started.
Lady Cheevers released Primrose’s arm and stepped forward. The feathers in her turban bristled. “How could you do such a monstrous thing?” she cried.
“You harmed my guests?” Cheevers said a second time, more loudly, and then a third time, in a thunderous bellow: “You harmed my guests?”
Primrose exchanged a glance with Rhodes and Oliver.
Oliver nodded at the stairs.
Primrose obeyed that nod with relief, descending the four steps, Rhodes and Oliver at her heels. Behind them, the noise level rose. “A serpent!” Lady Cheevers cried. “In our bosom!”
“Out!” Lord Cheevers roared. “Out of my house!”
They hastily crossed the two galleries and stepped into the corridor beyond. The uproar was still audible.
“Despicable!” Lady Cheevers cried. “The basest, lowest behavior—”
“—gone within the hour!” Lord Cheevers shouted.
They traversed the corridor quickly, the sound fading behind them. At the top of the stairs—the thirty-six steps Oliver had been pushed down yesterday—they halted.
Oliver grimaced. “That went well.”
“Yes,” Primrose said, because it had gone well. It had been perfect. But it had also been deeply unsettling. She repressed a shiver.
“Did you see her face?” Rhodes said. “No remorse. None at all.” He sounded baffled.
“That’s because she’s a harpy,” Oliver said. “Metaphorically speaking.”
“No, in this case I believe it’s literal,” Primrose said. “She truly is a harpy.” She tried to repress another shiver, and failed.
Oliver noticed. “You all right?”
“I found it rather disturbing,” Primrose confessed.
Oliver reached out and took her hand, even though Rhodes was standing there. He gave her fingers a squeeze.
“I thought she’d be mortified,” Primrose said. “I would have been. But instead, she was angry.” Miss Middleton-Murray’s rage hadn’t been hot and blustering, like Lord Cheevers’s; it had been cold and silent. “She scared me a little.”
Rhodes took her other hand. “You’ll never see her again.”
“She’ll be gone from here by nightfall,” Oliver said. “And you can be certain she won’t dare show her face in Society after this.”
“Do you think so? She has a lot of nerve.”
“She was caught red-handed by a duke, a marquis, a viscount, a viscountess, and a duke’s daughter,” Oliver said. “Not even Old Nick himself would have the temerity to show his face in Society after that.”
“No. I suppose not.”
They descended the stairs slowly. Oliver didn’t release her hand. Neither did Rhodes.
“Do you think she has no conscience?” Rhodes asked, when they were halfway down.
“I’m certain she doesn’t,” Oliver said.
When they reached the vestibule, they paused again. Rhodes looked back up the stairs. Primrose listened for the sound of raised voices, but heard nothing.
Rhodes released her hand. “I think I’ll just drop a quiet word in Miss Middleton-Murray’s ear, let her know that I’ll bring her before a magistrate if she ever comes within twenty miles of you.”
“Make that a hundred miles,” Oliver said.
They watched Rhodes climb the stairs and disappear from sight. Oliver was still holding her hand. “I want to check on Ninian,” he said. “Make sure he’s safe.”
Ninian was still in the blue salon with Miss Cheevers. Neither of them noticed the door open; they were sitting on the window seat, their heads tilted towards one another, talking in low voices.
Mrs. Middleton-Murray didn’t notice the door open either. She was intent on her needlework, unaware of the disaster bearing down upon her.
Primrose and Oliver retreated back into the corridor and looked
at each other.
Primrose thought they were thinking the same thing, and it was confirmed when Oliver said, “The State apartments?”
A minute later, they opened the door to the State reception room and slipped inside. Oliver led her through the sitting room and the dressing room and into the bedroom, where he settled himself on the bed with a loud sigh. “Thank God that’s over.” He tugged her down to lie alongside him and put an arm around her, gathering her close. “How are you, Prim? You all right?”
“Yes.” Primrose nestled into his warmth, resting her head on his shoulder, placing one hand on his chest. And then, as if to make a liar of herself, she shivered again.
Oliver felt it. His arm tightened around her.
“She looked murderous,” Primrose whispered.
“She did indeed. The murderous Miss Middleton-Murray.”
They were both silent for a moment, while the alliteration echoed in their ears, then Oliver whispered, “Did you hear that, Prim?”
“I did.”
“Worth a kiss?”
“Perhaps.” Primrose found one of his coat buttons, and plucked at it. “Do you know what her first name is?”
“I think I heard it once.” Oliver frowned. “Lucy? Lucilla? Something like that.”
“Millicent. And her middle name is Mary. She told me this afternoon.”
This time there was a very long moment of silence.
“Are you serious?” Oliver said finally.
“I am.”
He slanted her a glance. “The murderous Miss Millicent Mary Middleton-Murray?”
Primrose bit her lip, and nodded.
Suddenly they were both giggling helplessly, and then they were laughing, laughing in great whoops, laughing until they almost cried, until they ran out of breath and lay gasping on the State four-poster bed.
Oliver released a sigh. “It’s not actually funny.”
“No.” Primrose sighed, too, and plucked at one of his buttons again, and they were back where they had started.
She managed to repress her shiver this time. Miss Middleton-Murray was in the past; Lord Algernon lay ahead. That was what they needed to think about now.
Primrose and the Dreadful Duke: Garland Cousins #1 Page 22
