The pug led her through the manor, eager to be outdoors, but Annie balked by the exit. She looked up at Katherine, her eyes pleading. She wore the same sea-green day dress as yesterday, paired with a white shawl to make it appear less likely to attract attention. If Katherine noticed the garment, others undoubtedly would as well, but Annie hadn’t brought many clothes. Katherine suspected she didn’t own many. “Perhaps I’ll return to my room and tend to the moth,” Annie said. Harriet had found a jar for the blasted insect, and it was now more pampered than Emma. “You can make my excuses. Tell them I have a headache.”
Katherine drew herself up. “I will do no such thing. You’ve had a fabulous morning.”
“I haven’t said a word. I’ve been afraid to breathe.”
Emma whined and tried to tug Katherine into the garden. She used all two stone of her weight. Katherine bent and tucked her pet beneath her arm, much to the pug’s dismay. “No one has said a word about the events of yesterday.”
Annie’s cheeks turned pink. “Lord Northbrook asked after my ankle.”
“You see? He is concerned for your health.”
“He was only being polite. He hasn’t acknowledged me, otherwise.”
Steering the shorter woman outside with an arm around her shoulders, Katherine said, “Let’s rectify that, shall we? Are you any good at lawn bowling?”
Annie studied her shoes. “I’ve been told I have a strong arm.”
Katherine smiled. “There we are, then. You’ll impress him during the game, I’m certain of it. Hurry now, before they begin without you.”
Annie nibbled on her lower lip. “Don’t you intend to play?”
Setting her eager dog back on the ground and straightening the jaunty green ribbon tied to her collar, Katherine answered, “I have Emma to look after. We’ll have fun watching, I’m certain.”
Reluctantly, Annie parted from her to rejoin the procession on the lawn. Katherine strolled with Emma, touring a neglected corner of the estate until the dog finished her business. Once Katherine was certain she wouldn’t make a mess in front of the guests, she led her pet closer.
Lord Somerset, Lord Mowbry, and Mr. Greaves were her targets, after measuring the string against most of the other men at the gathering. For the moment, Katherine didn’t spot Captain Wayland. For that, she could only be relieved.
Emma, for her part, was only too eager to make everyone’s acquaintance. She soon drew the admiring eye of every lady at the gathering, and earned several words of praise as she shamelessly begged for attention.
Lord Mowbry must not have been pleased at no longer being surrounded by beautiful women, because he soon waded into the throng to introduce himself to Katherine’s pet.
Emma yipped as he came near. She bolted behind Katherine’s skirt, dragging the leash around her ankles.
“Emma, what’s possessed you?” Katherine yelped as the leash pulled taut and she lost her balance. As she pitched forward into Lord Mowbry, her hand slackened around the leash, and Emma broke free. Katherine braced her hands against Mowbry to soften her fall, but he tumbled to the ground with her. The impact jolted her. As gasps and exclamations resounded, she started to rise. Her hand brushed his boot top.
“Terribly sorry, my lord. Please forgive my clumsiness.” Katherine played the demure, bacon-brained lady as she used one hand to uncurl the knotted string in her palm. While she was so close to him, she must at all costs measure his boot.
“Think nothing of it, Lady Katherine, but please, I beg you—rise.”
Katherine pretended to push herself up, but let her arm tremble. She collapsed across his legs this time. “Oh, dear. I think I’ve hurt my wrist.”
“Allow me to offer my assistance.”
Goodness! Go away, Northbrook.
“Yes, allow me to assist, Lady Katherine.”
Lud, not Wayland too.
When Wayland spoke, the ring of people parted for him to pass. He managed to plant himself in Northbrook’s path without seeming to do it intentionally. Was he helping her?
Katherine laid out the string next to Mowbry’s boot. Sard it all, if he would only stop moving, she could check his foot!
Annie stepped forward, well meaning, and reached out her hands as if to help Katherine rise. No. Leave! She almost had the measurement, despite Lord Mowbry’s squirming and grumbling.
Emma barked as she dashed forward, twining around Annie’s ankles like a cat. With a yelp, Annie lost her balance as well. For a moment, Katherine feared she would fall on the pile.
She fell into Lord Northbrook instead. At least he was occupied for the moment, and Wayland busied himself putting the pair to rights.
Mowbry’s boot lined up with the knots on her string in a perfect match. Katherine’s heart skipped a beat, and the blood roared in her ears. Mowbry had been lurking in the garden. She remembered Mrs. Burwick mentioning something about one of the eligible men losing his fiancée, and she’d heard rumors connecting Mowbry and one of the victims. Had he been involved with—and possibly killed—two women? This was hardly damning evidence, but it was a start.
With a less than polite expression, Lord Mowbry got to his feet, as Wayland clung to Katherine’s elbow and helped her to rise. Weakly, she apologized again for her clumsiness. She found her dog and bent to grab the leash.
When she straightened, Wayland remained indecently close. His eyes gleamed. “You found something.”
Yes, but something that she would most certainly not be sharing with him. Upon excusing herself, she hurried to tug her pet closer to Annie.
The young woman looked close to tears. Her face was as red as a cherry, which camouflaged her freckles. She tried in vain to hide behind a fringe of hair that was neatly tucked onto her head. “I want to leave,” she mouthed. If she used her voice, it didn’t carry as far as Katherine’s ears.
She put her arm around Annie’s shoulders and steered her closer to the playing field once more. “If you do, you will certainly be the subject of gossip. This was all Emma’s fault—she tripped me, as well. Don’t let them conjure reasons for the accident that don’t exist. You did nothing wrong.”
Although the game resumed and Annie agreed to stay for the duration to preserve her reputation, she seemed to shrink in embarrassment. Her tosses toward the pins were weak and earned her few points and even less praise. For once, Wayland kept his distance. He ensconced himself at the sides of Lord Mowbry and Mr. Greaves, though his gaze continued to turn toward Katherine.
She ignored him as best she could, while using the other chaperones as a barrier between them. She found herself standing next to Mrs. Burwick and Lady Reardon. As Mrs. Burwick’s aloof daughter hefted the ball to take her turn, the gray-haired woman drew herself up. She cleared her throat loudly, thrusting back her shoulders and giving a pointed glance toward Lord Mowbry and Mr. Greaves.
Miss Burwick’s expression soured further, but she improved her posture as she stepped forward to take her shot. None of the men seemed at all interested in the outcome of her game.
Lady Reardon chuckled. “Perhaps you’d have better luck if you arranged for Prudence to fall on top of him. Lady Katherine, might we borrow your dog?”
Katherine accepted the snide remark with poise. “You’re welcome to her, but I warn you, Lord Mowbry isn’t at all in the mood to look graciously upon anyone who crosses him.” She searched the expressions of the two women for any signs that they recognized a sinister streak in the man. Katherine had to know more about him and his past with the two victims, and whether there was there a connection.
“Nonsense,” Mrs. Burwick said. Her bearing was as stiff as her voice. She never took her eyes off her daughter. “He’s grieving. You must make some allowances.”
Katherine raised her eyebrows. Emma whined and pawed at her, asking for attention. She lifted her dog and scratched her while pursuing the conversation. “Forgive me, but he doesn’t appear to be grieving at all. He’s always smiling at the bevy of women around him.”
“He’s polite,” Mrs. Burwick answered, snipping off her words. The shrewish expression in her eyes dared Katherine to contradict her.
She turned to Lady Reardon instead. “What say you? Is he polite but grieving?”
For all that she had been willing to disparage a duke, the matchmaking mama seemed much less keen to speak a poor word of Lord Mowbry. Hesitantly, she answered, “He did seem rather distraught when poor Miss Smythe was found.”
So the rumors were true. “He cared for her, did he?”
“Cared for her?” The stinging voice travelled down Katherine’s spine as Mrs. Fairchild joined them. She almost seemed to be gloating. If Miss Young had been given an offer already, it certainly wasn’t from Lord Northbrook—he stood with his mother as he awaited his turn in the game.
With a thin smile that served as little more than a veneer atop her hostility, Mrs. Fairchild added, “I have it on good authority that he asked her to marry him right before she died.”
“She declined?” That would give him motive.
“Gracious, no!” The matchmaker fluttered her hand over her chest. “What woman in her right mind would turn down the heir to a marquis? Aside from your client, that is.”
Annie threw another shot toward the pins. This one barreled down the lawn but utterly missed the target. Instead, the ball rolled twenty feet long and lodged in a rosebush.
Mrs. Fairchild scoffed. “Not that Miss Pickering will be getting an offer any time soon.”
Katherine wanted to defend Annie, but she didn’t have time. She needed to learn more about Lord Mowbry. “What makes you believe that Lord Mowbry is in a fit state to make a proposal to anyone? Like you said, his betrothed was murdered.”
“If he’s proposed once, he’s looking for a wife. It won’t be terribly hard to bring him up to snuff again,” Mrs. Fairchild said.
Unless he’d had genuine feelings for Miss Smythe, but if he’d killed her, one had to wonder how deep those feelings could be. A murder of passion might make sense, especially if she’d turned him down, but that didn’t explain the death of Miss Rosehill. Perhaps had he rebounded quickly, as Mrs. Fairchild had suggested, and asked Miss Rosehill to marry him, too. It seemed unlikely that two women would reject him, however.
Mrs. Burwick lifted her chin, validated. “Precisely. He has a hole in his life that only a wife can fill.”
“How do you know this?” Katherine asked. “Did he propose to Miss Rosehill, as well?”
“Don’t be daft,” Mrs. Fairchild snapped. “He paid no more attention to her than he did to any other debutante at the party. Not a woman with so poor family connections as she.”
Lady Reardon pointed across the lawn. “Oh dear, Lady Katherine. It looks as though you should tend to your charge.” Her voice was thick with amusement.
Annie crouched on all fours, her bottom wiggling as she tried to fish the ball from beneath the rosebush without finding herself scoured by the thorns. Katherine took the opportunity to leave. To be honest, she was glad to be rid of those busybodies, even if they had provided vital information about her main suspect in the pink-ribbon murders. If Lord Mowbry murdered his fiancée, she would need to find a way to prove it.
Chapter Seven
“I was thinking,” Katherine said. “Maybe Miss Smythe’s death was an accident. Maybe Miss Rosehill was the intended victim all along. By all accounts, their appearance was similar. Do you think the murderer intended to kill her the first time but chose the wrong target? It would have been dark in the garden.”
Harriet laid the ivory-backed brush on the vanity and pulled the hairpins out of her mouth. “Stop twisting. I can hear you well enough if you face forward.”
“Harriet,” Katherine lamented, drawing out her maid’s name as she capitulated. She wanted her friend’s opinion on the theory.
Once she retrieved the brush, Harriet tapped it on Katherine’s shoulder. “You’re speculating.”
“That’s what detective work is—speculation based on the facts.” Once Katherine had a sound theory, she could discern the best method of pursuing it. It didn’t make sense that Mowbry would kill Miss Smythe given that he’d asked for her hand, but then again, she also knew of no motive for him to kill Miss Rosehill. At least not yet.
Harriet’s voice was muffled, likely from hairpins stuffed between her lips, when she answered, “Then use the facts. You could have made a determination like that before arriving here. What have you learned since?” She continued to dress Katherine’s hair as she spoke, removing one pin at a time to coil her tresses for supper.
“Blast, you’re right.”
She pulled a lock of Katherine’s hair tighter than it needed to be. Katherine cursed, wincing at the sting.
“Language, my lady.”
“I could have said something worse,” Katherine grumbled under her breath. When it seemed as though her maid meant to argue, she raised her voice. “Very well. I know now that Lord Mowbry was in the garden yesterday evening. He ran from Annie’s scream, only to return with the guests. Why would he do that if he weren’t up to nefarious purposes? It’s possible he might have meant to do harm to Annie, but her shriek frightened him away before he could act on it.” What a stroke of luck, in that case, to find an ugly moth with a prodigiously long tongue.
When Harriet remained mute, Katherine continued to speculate. “Mowbry had a personal connection with the first victim. For a man who was set to be married, he isn’t making much of an effort to appear as though he’s grieving.”
Harriet jabbed the last pin into Katherine’s hair. “We all grieve in different ways. Bear that in mind. You can turn now. I’d like to see how it looks from the front.”
As Katherine pivoted on the stool, she raised an eyebrow. “Does one usually grieve by flirting with every woman to approach within ten feet?”
The other woman rearranged the locks by Katherine’s temples then crossed her arms. “When you were ten, you made it your mission to frighten Lady Susanna into fleeing the house. Is that the manner in which one usually grieves?”
Katherine winced at the reminder of the horrors she had inflicted upon her stepmother during the first few months. She might have continued terrorizing a woman she now considered a second mother had she not found Susanna crying after a particularly vicious prank. Once she’d learned that her stepmother did not mean to replace or erase her mother in any way, Katherine gradually learned to trust her. “You’ve made your point,” she mumbled, though she added stubbornly, “You weren’t employed with our family at the time.”
Harriet grinned. “Perhaps not, but I’ve heard stories. In any event, Lord Mowbry may be acting flirtatious to cover up the pain inside.”
Katherine didn’t care to know which stories Harriet might have heard. She returned to the more important topic at hand. “I will admit that Lord Mowbry might be grieving, but that doesn’t excuse him as a suspect. His boots fit the measurements. Perhaps he discovered Miss Smythe had another lover. By all accounts she was beautiful, with fair skin and hair. She would have attracted many. If he learned of a liaison, that might make him angry enough to kill even if he does regret it now.”
Katherine shut her eyes as Harriet retrieved a box of cosmetics. She held her breath while her maid dusted powder across her nose and cheeks. “Have you measured all of the other suspects’ boots? What motive do you attribute to Mowbry for the second victim?” Harriet asked.
Katherine didn’t answer. She hadn’t measured Somerset’s or Greaves’s boots, and she had no motive for Mowbry to kill Miss Rosehill. She tried to sigh but accidentally inhaled a sniff of powder and spluttered.
Her maid put the bitter powder away, though she made Katherine remain still while she applied a few finishing touches.
“I don’t know why you insist upon putting in so much effort for a country house party,” Katherine said. “Focus your efforts on Annie. It isn’t as though I have anyone here to impress.”
“No?” A sly smile tipped up the c
orners of Harriet’s mouth. “I’ve heard a certain captain seems inclined to keep your company of late.”
Katherine grimaced. “Captain Wayland is inclined to glean what information about the murders he can from me so he can solve them himself. He has no romantic aspirations.”
If anything, Harriet’s smile deepened. “If you insist.”
“I do.”
“It might do you well to garner a bit of male attention, you know. It does wonders for confidence.”
Katherine gave her friend a droll look. “I don’t believe I’m lacking in confidence. And in any case, I don’t like Wayland or his methods. I don’t think he always speaks the truth.”
Katherine returned her attention to the mystery at hand, pondering what motive Mowbry could have had for killing Miss Rosehill. He must have had a reason, though allegedly, he hadn’t paid any undue attention to her. Katherine couldn’t figure out why he’d found himself out in the garden with her that fateful night.
On the bed, to which she had been confined after trying to steal the cream ribbon now tied beneath Katherine’s breasts, Emma whined. She turned her round, mournful brown eyes toward Katherine as she begged for more attention. The wag of her tail betrayed that she didn’t feel nearly as pathetic as she looked. Nevertheless, Katherine crossed to her and sat on the mattress while Harriet tidied the room. When Emma rolled onto her back, Katherine rubbed her stomach while she mused aloud. “Papa has never dealt with a murderer who killed two women with such similar appearances. Do you think their physical similarities are of importance in this case?”
Harriet hummed under her breath tunelessly. Upon completing her task, she perched on the stool Katherine had vacated. “I suppose that depends upon what you believe their appearances to signify. You’ve surmised that the first murder was personal, not random.”
Katherine nibbled on her lower lip. “I have, and it makes little sense to assume the second random in nature, then.”
An Invitation To Murder Page 7