Before she could open the door, however, he spoke up. “I think if we’re to work together, Miss Wareham, that we’d better call ourselves by our given names. I don’t think my aunt would have any objections, given her feelings about equality between the sexes.”
Turning back, her hand on the doorknob, Miss Wareham gave a short nod. “All right then, my lord.”
“Quill,” he reminded her with a smile. “Call me, Quill.”
“Very well, Quill,” she said, a little breathlessly.
“Good night, Aphrodite,” he said softly, liking the feel of the word on his lips, like some sort of incantation. Her green eyes widened behind her spectacles at hearing him speak her actual name. But she didn’t correct him. And if he wasn’t mistaken, there was a blush rising in her cheek. Perhaps there was more of the pretty scholar’s namesake in her than she’d previously let on.
But then she seemed to come back to herself, straightening her spine and saying firmly, “Good night, Quill.” With that, she stepped out, shutting the door behind herself with an audible click.
He stared at the door for a moment before what she’d told him returned to the forefront of his mind.
Someone had murdered Aunt Celeste.
He thought back to the last time he’d seen her, just a few months ago. How she’d teased him about his decision to put off marrying for a few years yet to, as she put it, gather his rosebuds. She’d cautioned him not to wait too long. Could that have been because she saw her own life was almost at an end?
She had confessed to feeling a bit under the weather but blamed it on the French cuisine his mother insisted upon in Castle Kerr. Had it been something more? Had someone been poisoning her beneath his roof? It was not to be borne.
If someone had deliberately put an end to Lady Celeste Beauchamp’s life, then he was damned if he’d allow the miscreant to run tame as if nothing had happened.
And something else occurred to him, now. If the motive for Celeste’s murder had been something related to Beauchamp House, then the ladies who stood to inherit the manor were in danger too.
He trusted Serena, his valet York, and those servants who’d been at Beauchamp House since his boyhood, but that was the extent of it. If he was going to learn more about his aunt’s poisoning, he’d need to have someone here he could trust. Someone who had loved Celeste as much as he did.
Searching the desk for writing materials, he quickly scratched out a message. Finding some sealing wax in the drawer, he melted it and quickly pressed his signet ring into the crimson liquid.
When he reached his bedchamber, he found York waiting for him. “I’d like this to go to London first thing tomorrow,” he told the man he trusted with his life. “If you cannot find someone to go, then I’d like you to go yourself.”
The other man’s surprise showed in his raised brows, but that was the only sign he gave of recognizing his master’s agitation. “Very good, my lord.” After pocketing the missive, he went back to brushing out Quill’s greatcoat.
Feeling somewhat more sanguine about his task, Quill readied himself for sleep that did not come.
Chapter 6
Despite her difficulty sleeping, Ivy awoke at her usual early hour the next morning and was pleased to find that Lady Daphne and Miss Gemma Hastings were seated at the breakfast table when she arrived.
“How pleasant to find that I am not the only early riser amongst our little band,” she said as she returned from the sideboard with a plate of eggs and toast and took a seat next to Lady Daphne. “I presume, Miss Gemma, that your sister does not share this proclivity?”
Biting into a piece of toast, Gemma shook her head. “No,” she said with a frown. “Sophia tends to stay up quite late and as a result ends up sleeping late too. It made for many a schoolroom battle when we were younger, I can assure you. She could never understand why she should keep regular hours when she felt more alert in the evenings. She was always falling asleep during our lessons.”
“It can hardly be considered an aberration,” said Lady Daphne returning her teacup to its saucer, “when so much of society spends the season keeping those kind of hours. It is really only the lower classes who value regulated schedules such as you describe, Gemma, and that’s mostly because they tend to work in factories which require it. Is not your father an industrialist? You are surely aware of this as his daughter. I’d think anyone who makes their fortune in such a manner would be.”
Ivy had thought perhaps she’d imagined the mathematician’s excessive good looks the night before, but the bright light of day only proved Lady Daphne Forsyth to be more beautiful than Ivy had first thought. Taller than the other ladies, her figure was not so buxom as to be vulgar but not so svelte to be thought unfeminine. And her golden hair, arranged in fashionable ringlets that perfectly framed her face, was like something an actual Greek goddess would possess—which made Ivy feel rather inadequate to her given name.
The girl’s lack of tact, however, she had not imagined, and after posing her question to Miss Gemma Hastings, Lady Daphne simply sipped her tea, as if she hadn’t just called the Hastings family common. Or at the very least, called attention to their position in a class lower than her own family hailed from.
Given that her own family was often made aware of its fall from the exalted heights of society by ladies of a similar rank to Lady Daphne, who sought to depress any pretensions Ivy and her sisters might have to raise themselves through marriage, Miss Hastings was maybe more sensitive to such pointed comments. And lord knew she’d been insulted in far subtler ways than Daphne had just done. Even so, Ivy was unable to stop herself from coming to Gemma’s defense.
“If you are suggesting, Lady Daphne, that Gemma is vulgar for valuing the merits of maintaining a regulated sleep schedule,” she said tightly, “then you must surely call me vulgar too, for I am also someone who values waking before the morning has passed.”
At Ivy’s annoyed tone, Lady Daphne frowned in puzzlement. “I didn’t call Gemma vulgar,” she said with real confusion. “I merely pointed out that people of her social standing tend to value such sleeping regularity. I fear I am an aberration to my own class, for I also would rather not sleep the day away. But then, I can get by on only a few hours of sleep without much trouble. Sophia, it would seem, is far more suited to the life of an aristocrat despite her being born the daughter of an industrialist.”
Gemma placed a hand over Ivy’s but said to Daphne, “I understand what you meant, my dear. I fear Ivy hasn’t got used to your plain speaking yet. It will take her a bit, as you well know.” Turning to Ivy, she continued, “She means no insult, I can assure you. And Sophia, the wretch will likely be quite pleased to know she is suited to the life of an aristocrat. God knows Papa has told her that often enough.”
“I seem to lack the ability to make my words fit into the sort of polite chatter that is needed to converse without insulting my listeners, Ivy,” said Daphne with an apologetic smile. “I hope you won’t hold my clumsy speech against me. By all accounts you are considered to be a brilliant linguist and I should hate to think we will live together in Beauchamp House for the coming year and you will hold me in dislike all the while. I truly did not mean offense.”
Despite herself, Ivy was touched by the apology, which seemed heartfelt at least. “Do you truly not recognize it when your own words could be construed as insulting?” she asked, curious about the other girl’s deficiency.
Daphne’s beautiful features twisted in unhappiness. She nodded. “I never mean it, but I am always saying the wrong thing to someone. I tend to avoid polite company because of it. Which is quite acceptable to me, since I would rather spend my time working on calculations and constructing proofs. It can be lonely at times, but so few people are able to understand my work that it is not all that interesting for me to converse with them anyway.”
Ivy certainly wouldn’t be able to say the first thing of sense about mathematics. What a lonely existence Daphne must have. And yet, she didn
’t seem particularly unhappy. Indeed, she was sanguine about her situation. Ivy was sure of it.
“I wonder,” Daphne continued, “why Lady Celeste included me in this group at all, given how different my own talents are from yours. If any of us is the odd woman out, it is I. Though for that matter, why did she choose any of us?”
At the mention of their benefactor, Ivy recalled to mind her own task set forth by that lady. “Did any of you know much about Lady Celeste before you received word of your inheritance?” she asked. “I know that I had never met her before, but it seemed as if she knew quite a bit about me, and my studies.”
Sophia’s appearance in the doorway of the breakfast room delayed their discussion for a moment while they waited for her to fill a plate and join them at the table.
“We didn’t move in the same circles,” Gemma said with a wry smile given Daphne’s earlier statement about the Hastings social placement. “But I was aware of the brief pieces she contributed to a small journal a few of her bluestocking friends published about her findings amongst the fossils of the South Downs. We shared a friend in common. But we never met. And I certainly didn’t expect to be invited to remain in her home for a year so that I could excavate the cliffs myself.”
“And she was quite well known amongst the fellows of the Royal Society,” said Sophia with a shrug. “Though I never met her either. Not even when my painting was shown. She apparently didn’t make the journey to town very often. Especially not this last year.”
Ivy frowned. “What was different about this past year?” she asked. Had word of Lady Celeste’s poison-induced illness made its way to London? And if so, who had spread the word of it?
* * *
“The first night we were here, Mrs. Bacon told us that Lady Celeste was ill for much of this past year,” Daphne said. “The local physician was never able to learn what the cause was, but it seemed to come and go. And the unpredictability of it made her reluctant to travel given that she never knew when an attack would overtake her. I should have thought such an illness would prompt her to seek out a Harley Street specialist, but she allowed sentiment to keep her loyal to her local physician. Which is quite maddening when one considers that her foolishness may have caused her untimely death.”
Biting her tongue, Ivy reminded herself that Daphne was not being purposefully insulting about Lady Celeste. And her frustration mirrored Ivy’s own. Especially since determining the cause of her demise was something she—a classics scholar for heaven’s sake—had been entrusted with. What on earth did she know about investigating crime? She might as well have been asked to solve one of Daphne’s mathematical equations.
“So, the servants were aware of Lady Celeste’s condition?” Ivy asked, stifling her self-doubt for the time being.
“Certainly,” Gemma said with a nod. “And when you consider it, they often know far more about our lives than we know about one another. I know our maids have been privy to more of our scrapes and misdeeds than our parents have been.”
“Which is all for the best,” Sophia said with a grin. “Else we’d neither of us been allowed to travel to the south coast at all. Mama and Papa are sadly rigid about their ideas regarding feminine behavior. Much more so than the upper ten thousand if Daphne is to be believed.”
Having only one maid who served all five of the Wareham sisters, Ivy was perhaps not as familiar as the other ladies were about life with personal servants. But even in their small household, with just a handful of servants, there were certain things about the Warehams that their maids knew better than those with whom the family socialized.
“Why are you so curious about Lady Celeste’s illness?” Daphne asked. “It is unlikely to have been something that would linger in the household, as by all accounts she was the only person in Beauchamp House to suffer from it.”
Mindful of her agreement with Lord Kerr to keep their investigation of Lady Celeste’s murder to themselves, Ivy shrugged. “I was merely curious. Never having met the lady, I was foolishly wondering if there may have been some way of preventing her death. Which is silly now that I consider it. Especially since there is nothing to be done about it now.”
“But hardly unusual,” said Sophia gently. “When someone you love dies unexpectedly I think there is always a tendency amongst the mourners to wish it hadn’t happened. And we, all of us, owe so much to Lady Celeste. I know neither Gemma nor I would have been able to devote an entire year to our passions without our benefactor’s generosity. And I dare say it’s the same for both of you.”
Ivy nodded in agreement, but Daphne shook her head. “My father allows me to do as I please so long as it doesn’t bring ridicule on the family.”
Sophia bit her lip, stifling laughter. “Most of us, then,” she amended with a wink at Ivy. “And even Daphne would wish to be able to thank Lady Celeste.”
Before Daphne could object—and her mouth opened as if she was going to—Ivy broke in. “Of course she would. No matter how pointless it is to wish something that happened in the past hadn’t occurred. Isn’t that right, Daphne?”
“I suppose so,” said Daphne with a frown. “But really it is not realistic to dream of the fantastical. It will only lead to disappointment. It is far more sensible to acknowledge a bad thing has happened and then to move on.”
Smiling ruefully, Ivy decided a change of subject was in order. “Have any of you seen Lord Kerr this morning?” Knowing that the inquiry would lead to speculation from the others, she added, “One of his bags was brought to my room by mistake so I wished to let him know.”
“I feel sure you could have your maid take it to his valet,” Sophia said raising her brows.
“If you wish to engage in an affair with Lord Kerr,” said Daphne baldly, “then you would do far better to summon him to your bedchamber to retrieve the bag.”
Sophia and Gemma covered their startled laughter with coughs. Ivy felt her face turn red with mortification. “I most certainly do not wish any such thing, Daphne. I truly only wished to return his bag, I can assure you.” Though the notion of what an affair with Lord Kerr—Quill, as he’d asked her to call him—would entail gave her a moment’s pause as she considered it. Even so, she would hardly admit to it here in the breakfast room.
“I believe I saw him headed toward the servants’ quarters on my way here,” Sophia said once she’d managed to stifle her laughter. “Perhaps he was in search of his bag.”
But Ivy knew precisely what his lordship was in search of and it wasn’t his fictitious missing bag. He was beginning the investigation into Lady Celeste’s murder without her, curse him, which was not the plan that they’d agreed to. She might have known that all his promises to work together with her to find his aunt’s killer had been mere pretense. He was distrustful of her from the start so it should come as no surprise that he didn’t trust her enough to include her in the questioning of the servants. No matter that his aunt had asked her—not her high-handed nephew to find out who killed her.
Rising, she threw down her napkin. “I shall simply have to seek him out downstairs, then. Pray excuse me.”
Chapter 7
“You still make the best scones in the county, Mrs. B,” Quill said, fighting the urge to pat his stomach after consuming three of the housekeeper’s famous pastries. It was unusual for a housekeeper to undertake such a task, of course, and many cooks would not condone an interloper in their kitchen. But since Mrs. Bacon only made one thing—scones—the cook at Beauchamp House, a no-nonsense woman named Mrs. Mason, overlooked the irregularity when the chatelaine came in search of flour and butter.
When he was a boy, Quill had spent many a happy hour at the broad kitchen table where the servants took their meals. There was something about the easy manners of the servants—a family, though none of them were related—that offered him a welcome reprieve from the stifling formality of his own home. Of course, Beauchamp House itself had been less formal too, but he’d never have managed a trip to the kitchens in Kerr Castl
e without receiving a swift reprimand. Here he knew that there would be no repercussions, no matter how his aunt might chide him when she found him wiping crumbs from his mouth.
“You’re the only one who ever said so, my lord,” said the housekeeper with a fond smile. “You and his grace, the Duke of Maitland, that is. Though it wasn’t a great mystery since the pair of you could eat a kitchen’s worth of food in your day.”
“In my day!” Quill raised a hand to his chest. “You’re not saying I’m an old man, now, are you? I confess I’m pained to hear you say so.”
“But you are old, cousin,” piped up Jeremy from the chair beside Quill’s where he was doing his best to consume his third scone. “Least, to me you are. Though Mama says I shouldn’t call old people old.”
“That’s because when one is old, young Jem,” said Quill wryly, “one doesn’t like to be reminded of it. Certainly not by young rapscallions who declare they’re going to break one’s scone-eating record.”
“Uncle Dalton says records are made to be broken,” said the boy, chewing unrepentantly.
The marquess would have responded, but Mrs. Bacon’s curtsy toward the doorway made him turn.
Her expressive green eyes narrow with suspicion behind her spectacles, Miss Wareham—or Ivy, he corrected himself, though it was a devilishly prosaic name for such a fiery creature—stepped into the kitchen warily. “I do apologize for intruding Mrs. Bacon,” she began, “but I was told I could find his lordship down here.”
Having stood as soon as he saw her, Quill nudged Jeremy, who had missed the lady’s entrance so wrapped up in his scone was he. “Mind your manners, Jem.”
The look of chagrin on the child’s face would have been comical if Quill weren’t sure the panic had been seeded in some sharp word from Jeremy’s late father.
“It’s all right,” he told the boy in a low voice. “You stood as soon as you knew.” He placed a comforting hand on Jeremy’s shoulder, and they both bowed to Miss Wareham.
Ready Set Rogue Page 5