As Death Draws Near

by Anna Lee Huber

  “I never had the chance to ask,” I said over my shoulder as she tugged at a stubborn button. “Why were you seeking me out earlier? When you passed Miss O’Grady?”

  “Oh! I completely forgot. Mrs. Scully wanted to have a word wi’ ye. Wouldna tell me why. Said it was best if she talked to ye herself.”

  I exhaled in relief as the button finally came loose and the gown dropped to pool at my feet. “Well, I suppose she’ll understand why I failed to come see her. I’ll be sure to speak with her tomorrow.”

  Bree pulled a simpler maize yellow morning dress from the wardrobe and dropped it over my head and fastened me up before sitting me down in front of the dressing table to repair my hair. Fortunately, my bonnet had preserved most of my unruly tresses from the rain.

  “What of you?” I murmured, watching her in the mirror, her own strawberry blond curls matted against her head. “Have you heard from your brother?”

  Bree removed and replaced pins, and reshaped a few curls with her fingers, all of which she focused on with a great deal more attention than was warranted. “Nay, m’lady. But he were always slow to respond, if at all.”

  I frowned, unable to figure out why she seemed to wish to avoid this topic of conversation, but I decided it was not my place to press her.

  “It’s good enough,” I told her as she continued to fidget with one stubborn curl. “Go get yourself dry and warm.” She bent to retrieve my gown from the floor but I told her to leave it. “It will keep while you repair yourself and find something to eat. If the stains have ruined it, then so be it. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to wear it again without thinking of Mother Mary Fidelis anyway.” I rubbed my hands over the lower part of my arms revealed beneath the puffed sleeves of my gown and nodded toward the corner of the dressing table. “The same goes for those gloves.”

  “Aye, m’lady.”

  With an ivory shawl draped around my shoulders, I joined the gentlemen in the parlor, where a tea tray and an arrangement of assorted sandwiches and cakes had been laid out for us with commendable speed. I was surprised Gage and Marsdale had not fallen onto them like ravenous wolves, for that was how I felt, but they’d shown admirable restraint, waiting for me to appear. I didn’t waste time with conversation, but instead sank down to pour out everyone’s tea. They hurried forward from their positions standing near the large stone hearth to sit around the low tea table, and we all ate happily in silence.

  The only accompaniment to our contented chewing was the sound of the rain still drumming against the windows beyond the faded chartreuse drapes. Next to the puce cushions of the furniture and the silk goldenrod throw pillows, they would have seemed horribly out of place if not for the patterned Axminster carpet which featured all three shades. Even so, I was glad the remainder of the furniture and décor were rather staid in design so as not to completely overwhelm my senses.

  Unsurprisingly, it was Marsdale who spoke first as he reached across to fill his plate with more food. However, he did not open with a flippant gambit, as expected, but a sudden, unexpected insight. “I wonder if that nun went to confront my cousin’s killer herself.”

  I paused with a sandwich lifted partway to my mouth.

  “It’s possible,” Gage said around a mouthful of cake, before swallowing. “Why else would she have been out there when she was supposed to be instructing her students?”

  I hesitated, glancing toward the closed door. We’d been cautious not to speak of such matters anywhere the staff might overhear us, but with Marsdale present, there was really no other option. We couldn’t exactly invite him up to our bedchamber. I could just imagine what the staff would say about that, not to mention the crude insinuations Marsdale himself would make.

  “Actually,” I murmured, lowering the sandwich. “She had asked the mother superior to send me to her when I arrived.” I frowned. “But she only said in the gardens. I don’t know if she meant to take me to that place beyond the wall, or whether she found herself drawn there for some reason.” I hesitated to say the third option, but Gage had already gotten there himself.

  “Or if she intended for you to both confront the killer together.”

  I stared at him, trying to understand why the sister would have wanted to do such a thing. Had she thought the culprit could be reasoned with?

  “If not that, then why else would he have killed her?” Marsdale asked.

  Gage lifted his tea to drink. “Pure opportunity. Reckless though, it seems, with a class full of students so nearby.”

  “But he may not have even known they were so close,” I pointed out. “That could have been mere bad luck.” I thought of Miss O’Grady and how terrified she had been. I hoped she would be able to sleep tonight.

  He frowned into his cup. “Or maybe Mother Mary Fidelis knew something about Miss Lennox, something about her death that the killer feared would give him away, and so he killed her to keep her quiet.”

  “Something she refused to share with me yesterday,” I added with an aggravated sigh.

  His grim smile sympathized with my frustration. “Yes.”

  I dropped my eyes to the stack of letters I had laid on the settee beside me. “I suppose we may never know.”

  “What are those?” Marsdale asked.

  “All of the correspondence I found in Mother Mary Fidelis’s room. I hoped perhaps they might give us some insight into what is happening at that abbey.”

  His eyes flew back to the pile of missives, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed his latest bite. I could see the thought stamped across his features before he ever uttered the words. “Did my cousin have any letters?”

  “I’m afraid not,” I replied gently. “At least, none that we could find.”

  He frowned and nodded, clearly wondering, as I had, why she had not.

  Given the circumstances, it was only appropriate that Marsdale should be solemn, and indeed, anything else would have met with a scold from me. But this morose version of his normally irreverent self somehow seemed almost unbearable on a day when we’d already endured so much.

  I left them to their discussion, finishing the rest of my food, and then settled back with another cup of tea to arrange Mother Fidelis’s correspondence in some sort of order. The men did not offer to help, and for once I was grateful of it. There were not many letters, and it would be easier for one person to peruse them all to look for any context or connection.

  Most of them were from various members of her family, so I elected to read all of those in the order they were written rather than separately, reasoning that some of their news would overlap. They seemed to begin almost a decade earlier, when the sisters—then just the reverend mother, a Mother Mary Ignatia, and Mother Fidelis—moved to the abbey. What had become of her letters before that date, I didn’t know, but there were allusions to information in previous missives.

  The early letters began cordially enough with the normal tedium, affection, and grievances veiled as concern which characterized any family, though I did notice that the Therrins perhaps squabbled more than most. I gathered that they had been a rather wealthy family, which had paid a large dowry to the convent when Mother Fidelis—or Anne, as her family continued to address her—joined. However, some members of the family seemed to refer to the matter as if there had been conditions set to it, though what Mother Fidelis could have done from inside the abbey other than pray, I didn’t know.

  Then at some point, the letters became rather less affable. Apparently, she had elected to limit her contact with her family even more than she had already done by living in a convent. There were rather spiteful references from some of the letter writers about her telling them that discourse with seculars was a challenge, and that they were an impediment to her religious life. What precisely she had written, I couldn’t say, as I did not have access to the missives she had penned them, but from the repetition of similar language across
the authors, I assumed some of the passages were direct quotes.

  It also became painfully obvious that the Therrins had fallen on hard times. They were angry with her not only for what they called, “abandoning them,” but also for paying such a hefty dowry to the convent when a smaller portion would have done, or none at all. There were allusions to something in her past, and accusations of selfishness and hypocrisy after all they’d done for her. In and of itself, this sounded suspicious, but when compared with the other language in the letters, it seemed like just one of those typical childish threats that siblings seemed to coerce each other with even after they became adults. I noted that the last three letters, which went on in the same vein, had not even been opened, their seals unbroken. The only change came in the final letter, which reported the illness and subsequent death of her father two months earlier.

  Setting them aside to analyze them, I didn’t know how I felt about Mother Fidelis’s actions toward her family. In one sense, I could appreciate her desire for peace, and how their incessant pettifoggery could hinder her efforts to focus on higher things. However, they were still her family. If my sister were to have done the same thing, I would have been incredibly hurt, and perhaps felt a little betrayed. I had no delusions that I understood everything about the Roman Catholic Church or becoming a nun, and maybe that accounted for it, but I still found the entire situation bothersome.

  Right or wrong, her actions in this didn’t so much matter to our inquiry as those of her family. Would one of them have been furious enough to move beyond letter writing to physical confrontation? But then how did Miss Lennox become involved?

  When I explained it all to Gage after Marsdale departed, he agreed the supposition was weak, and rather absurd. “And yet many of the rantings in these letters are also absurd and unreasonable,” I told him, holding up a pair of them in illustration.

  The furrows in his brow deepened as he skimmed their contents. “I see what you mean.”

  “Is it worth even looking into?”

  He raked a hand back through his hair and sighed. “I suppose anything’s worth looking into at this point.” His pale eyes reflected the same fatigue and frustration I felt. “Though, in this case, perhaps first we should discover whether she had any recent visitors at the abbey. Then maybe find out if any of her family members lodged nearby. If they lived in County . . .” he lifted one of the papers to look at the address “. . . Monaghan, they would have had to spend the night somewhere.”

  I nodded, following his logic. “If we can’t prove they were even near Rathfarnham, then they can’t be viable suspects.”

  “Just so.” He sank back against the settee cushions and lifted his arm to drape it over his eyes.

  “I did have one more thought.”

  He grunted for me to continue.

  “If Mother Mary Fidelis was so intent on separating herself from the world, with limiting her contact with secular matters, then it wouldn’t make much sense for her to have anything to do with the rebellion against paying tithes. ‘Render unto Caesar,’ and all that.”

  He lifted his arm so that he could peer under it at me. “But tithes aren’t like other taxes. They’re money paid to the church and its priests for their maintenance and keep. So it could be argued that it is a religious concern.”

  “I hadn’t thought of it that way.” I bit my bottom lip in consideration. “So I suppose we must leave that motive on the table as well.”

  He shifted the stack of letters to the other side of him on the settee, and then pulled me toward him, settling my head in the crook of his neck. “We have too many potential motives, and none that makes much sense.”

  I had to agree, though it also reminded me of something else. “At least Marsdale has been behaving himself. Though, I admit, it’s a bit disconcerting. Bizarrely so. I don’t think I heard him make an inappropriate quip all day.”

  “That’s because you didn’t spend any time with him before we reached the abbey. I nearly ran him over with the phaeton after a particularly coarse remark he made about abbesses.”

  I lifted my head to look at him. “Wait. Isn’t that . . .” I couldn’t finish the sentence.

  From the set of his mouth I could tell he didn’t wish to explain it either, but he would. “An abbess is also a term to describe a female keeper of a brothel.”

  I pressed my lips together tightly, fighting a wave of anger. “Well,” I murmured on an exhale as I lowered my head back to Gage’s shoulder. “I suppose the world can’t be going to complete ruin if Marsdale is still capable of being so crude.”

  His chest lifted beneath my ear on a huff of laughter. “Yes, there is that.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  As a newlywed, when your husband wakes you in the middle of the night, you naturally expect it to be for a pleasant reason. So to then be flung aside rather cruelly is somewhat a shock to the body.

  I lifted my head from the twist of covers into which I’d been thrown, blinking my eyes blearily at the sight of Gage tugging on his trousers. He crossed to the window in three quick strides and parted the curtains to peer out, a stray beam of moonlight striking his bare chest.

  “Sebastian, what is it?” I mumbled.

  Noises outside the window began to penetrate through the fog in my brain. It sounded as if there was half a dragoon of mounted riders stamping about in the carriage yard, the beat of their horses’ hooves accented by their shouts.

  I stared wide-eyed at Gage as he bent over searching for something on the floor. He stood, tossing my nightdress to me as he pulled his shirt over his head.

  “Dress, and find your pistol. Do not leave this room.” He paused at the threshold, staring back at me. “I mean it, Kiera.” His voice was sharp, the lines of his body taut. “I’ll send Bree to you.”

  Then he was gone with a slam of the door before I could utter another word. I swallowed the sour coating of fear which had filled my mouth, and forced myself to do what he told me. With the nightdress over my head, I slid from beneath the warm covers to scamper across the room toward the dressing table. Once standing, I could see the light from the torches the men on horseback carried through the thin curtains, and my legs stiffened. Did they intend to burn the house down?

  The crash of something below made me jump, and I turned back to my task. On the third try, I found which drawer Bree had stored my reticule in, but then had to struggle with the string closure on the bag to extract my percussion pistol. I inhaled deeply, telling myself the shot would do me no good should I need it if I could not get my hands to stop shaking.

  I inched back toward the window, pulling the curtain cautiously aside to see. The opening of the door brought my head around with a start, but it was only Bree, huddled in a wrapper, her curls restrained under a mobcap. She shut the door and turned the key in the lock, before crossing the room toward me.

  “M’lady, get away from there,” she hissed. When I ignored her, she tried something harsher. “Do ye want to get shot?”

  I scowled. “I am not going to cower in bed with no idea what is happening. Besides, if they set the house ablaze, it’s best we know immediately rather than stand around being singed.”

  This silenced her. After a moment’s hesitation, she moved forward to stand at the other side of the window. I peered across the space at her, the torchlight clearly illuminating her as it flickered in the reflection of the glass, and caught her eye in an instant of solidarity. Then the shout of voices below recaptured our attention.

  I couldn’t see Gage, but I could hear him, his voice rising above the tumult to speak to the men who seemed to be the leaders of this mob, their horses standing at the front, facing the door. I noticed the lower half of the cowards’ faces were covered by some sort of kerchief, attempting to obscure their identity.

  “All right, then. You’ve brought enough attention to yourselves. What is it you want?”


  I was shocked by the bold defiance of his speech, and afraid of what they might do to him. It was clear he refused to be cowed by these men. Whether this was the right tactic to take, I didn’t know, but my muscles tightened in trepidation.

  “What we be wantin’ is for ye to leave,” one of the men sneered in reply. “We’ve no need of ye nor do we want yer help.”

  Several of the men voiced their agreement with shouts and grunts.

  “We takes care of our own,” a second man shouted.

  “We don’t need the bletherin’ English muckin’ in our matters, sure we don’t,” said a third.

  At this, Bree’s hand tightened on the curtain, making it waver. I glanced up to find her eyes narrowed on the third man.

  “He does look familiar, doesn’t he?” I whispered.

  She flicked an uncertain glance at me. “Maybe.”

  The horses’ hooves began stamping in the dust again, drowning out some of what was said. But I did hear quite clearly when the first man threatened us. “Consider dis yer warnin’.” He raised his arm, as if in signal, and the mass of horsemen churning about the yard began to turn as one toward the exit. Even as they did so, two of the men broke off from the group to ride toward one of the smaller outbuildings across the drive, flinging their torches onto the roof. I gasped as the thatch caught fire.

  As the last of the horsemen disappeared into the night, Gage led several of the male servants out into the yard toward the smoldering building, shouting directions. After watching their efforts to extinguish the fire for several minutes, I crossed the room to replace my pistol, picking up my wrapper as I stepped over it. Throwing it over my shoulders, I moved to unlock the door.

  “But m’lady,” Bree protested, hurrying forward to stop me. “Mr. Gage said no’ to leave this room.”

  “Until the riders were gone, yes. But those men are going to need something when they return. Cold water to drink and more to wash in, at the very least. I’m not going to cower in this room when there’s something that needs doing.”