Lord Gage didn’t even acknowledge my comment, but simply continued to gaze at his son with cold eyes. Gage’s hand wrapped around my elbow, and I whirled around, pulling it from his grasp. The mask of indifference I so hated had dropped over his face, and I wanted to scream at him to remove it, for I knew what it meant.
His voice was soft when he spoke. “Perhaps you should leave.”
“You cannot be serious?” But I could see from his expression that he was. “None of this would have come to light if I had not pursued it.” I gestured broadly. “You all were happy to accept Dr. Davis’s rushed diagnosis. To let her killer go free.”
Gage lowered his voice, moving closer. “Kiera, please.”
I lifted my hands to ward him off and stepped back. I could not believe he was bowing to his father’s demands, after everything that had happened. It felt as if he’d stuck me with a knife, and each pleading look only twisted the blade in farther.
I whirled away and stomped from the room, slamming the door as hard as I could.
• • •
By the time I returned to Cromarty House, my temper had abated, but not vanished. I stood in the middle of my chamber, clenching and unclenching my fists while my thoughts chased furiously around my head. Which was how Bree found me when she entered the room. She took one look at my face as I turned, and she hurried over to take my cloak.
“No luck?” she murmured.
I exhaled gustily. “Actually, we had plenty of luck. Perhaps too much of it,” I added bitterly. Maybe then Gage and his father wouldn’t have forced me out of the interrogation.
I filled Bree in on the night’s discoveries and the state of poor Aileen. Clearly, Aileen had no idea what had befallen her mistress, or she would not have taken the cream and used it. I didn’t blame the girl. Most of the jars and bottles on Lady Drummond’s dressing table would be discarded. Normally there would be no harm in confiscating an item for yourself, though I doubted she had permission to do so.
“Poor lass,” Bree echoed my thoughts. “One thing’s for sure, I can promise she’ll no’ take something from her mistress’s chamber again.”
I nodded absently, still thinking of Gage’s dismissal of me. Bree searched my face, but didn’t press, though I knew she must have wondered just what had made me so angry.
“How are things here?” I asked, shaking myself from my fuming stupor.
“Your sister has been askin’ for you.” She picked up my discarded boots, wrinkling her nose at the smell emanating from them.
“Is she well?” I swiveled around to ask in alarm.
“Aye. As well as can be. I told Jenny I’d send ye to her when ye returned.” She paused at the door to look me up and down. “I’ll scavenge up somethin’ in the kitchen for ye as well. Somehow I doubt ye stopped for a bite amidst all the excitement.”
As if in answer, my stomach growled.
She arched her eyebrows in emphasis.
I knocked softly on Alana’s door, worried that as late as it was, she might be asleep.
“Come in,” she called.
I peered around the door to find her lying in bed, her hands crossed over her chest above the mound her belly created under the blankets. From the heaviness of her eyelids, I guessed she had almost been asleep.
“Dearest,” she murmured. “Come sit beside me.”
I closed her door softly and crossed the room to the chair positioned by her bed.
“Where were you? With Gage?”
I knew she was asking out of curiosity, not censure, but guilt tightened my chest anyway. Here she was, confined to bed, and I was gallivanting about the city with my fiancé, even if our excursions had been for a good cause.
“Yes.” I briefly explained the events of the evening, leaving out any mention of our descending into Old Town with a notorious criminal or the danger we had faced. Thankfully, she accepted my whitewashed version of our meeting with the Chemist, and didn’t ask for the details of Aileen’s poisoning. I was also careful not to mention which cream had contained the monkshood or my rage-inducing dismissal by Gage and his father, but Alana was not unperceptive.
“So what did Lord Drummond say when you questioned him?”
“We’re going to speak with him tomorrow,” I muttered before changing the subject. “Bree said you wanted to see me. Did you need anything?”
The lines at the corners of her eyes deepened, but she allowed me to distract her. “I wanted to ask what you thought of hiring a string quintet for the wedding instead of just having the organ. I know how much you love the Mozart quintets.”
I felt the familiar stirrings of anxiety that surfaced whenever she mentioned the wedding. I forced a smile. “That would be lovely.”
Her face fell. “Did I get it wrong? You do like the Mozart quintets, don’t you? Or am I confused?”
“No. You’re right. I do like them. Particularly Number 3. I just hadn’t given it much thought.”
She gazed at me fondly. “You were anticipating the same dry music. Not for this affair. Something much more lyrical is called for.”
I turned away, lest she see how nervous her plans were making me. Seeing a drawing on the bedside table, I picked it up to examine it.
“Philipa said you were helping her with it this afternoon.”
“Yes. She wanted to do something to cheer you.” The picture depicted their family on a trip to the park—with father and mother, Malcolm, Philipa (with an overlarge bow in her hair), Greer, and the new baby. She had also included me with what looked to be a sketchbook tucked under my arm. I chuckled. “For a six-year-old, she’s really quite good.”
Alana smiled. “She says she wants to be like her aunt Kiera and draw people’s pictures.”
A warmth flooded through me, but I arched my eyebrows in humored skepticism. “We’ll see how long that lasts. She also wants to be a mother. It’s all she ever wants to play.”
“Yes, Malcolm complained of the very same thing.”
I set the drawing back on the table. “Has Philip seen it?”
“No. He’s out.” Her brow creased. “Or at least he was. Perhaps he’s returned.”
I could see the worry reflected in her eyes, and it made the fury I had only recently banked flare back to life. I vowed, no matter his protests, I would force Philip to talk to me tomorrow. This had to stop. His odd behavior was causing Alana more harm than good, and no matter his distance of late, I knew my brother-in-law did not want that.
I noticed her rubbing a hand over the side of her belly in fast, anxious strokes. “Does it hurt?”
She stopped, as if she’d only just realized what she was doing, and then resumed. “No. But it itches. Although that cream Lady Drummond sent me has helped immensely.” Her eyes dimmed. “I wish I could thank her.”
I smiled tightly. I’d considered telling her to stop using it, but if it was helping, then it seemed wrong to ask her to discard it just because the thought of her using it made me feel uncomfortable.
She yawned and I rose from the chair to excuse myself. Like a small child, she protested she wasn’t the least bit sleepy, but I could see the drowsiness dragging down her eyelids. I leaned over to kiss her forehead, and then slipped out.
True to her word, Bree had left a tray of bread and cheese and an apple on my bedside table. I sat in the chair by my hearth and ate. However, rather than making me drowsy, as expected, I suddenly felt more alert. I doused my lamp and climbed the stairs to my studio. If I wasn’t going to sleep, then I could at least be productive. Lady Drummond’s portrait was almost finished, and I hoped by concentrating on it, my mind might be free to ponder our inquiry. I was always worried there was something I’d missed, some crucial observation, and ironically, distraction seemed to be the best way of uncovering it.
CHAPTER 18
I was still in my studio the next day when Gage
finally came to see me, though I was no longer working on Lady Drummond’s portrait. Sometime around sunrise I’d finished it and slunk back to my room to rest for a few hours. Upon waking, I’d realized I would drive myself mad if I didn’t do something to occupy my mind while I waited for Gage to call. So I climbed back up to my studio to continue working on a painting I’d begun months ago.
However, as the day stretched on and I watched the sun rise and then begin to sink in the sky, the anger I had suppressed began to build again. Perhaps Gage didn’t intend to show himself. Perhaps, like his father, he had dismissed me from the investigation entirely. By the middle of the afternoon I was so furious that I had to set aside my paintbrush. I was too consumed with hurt and resentment, which made my movements stiff and jerky.
Instead, I threw open my window, ignoring the chill in the March air, and set about preparing a batch of new canvases. The exertion of stretching the fabric over the frames and then coating them with an emulsion of gesso and linseed oil was just the mindless activity I needed. When Gage did arrive, I was making such a clamor that I didn’t even hear him until he spoke.
“That smell is awful,” he declared, burying his nose in his sleeve.
“Of course, it is,” I snapped. “It’s animal glue, chalk, and linseed oil. It’s not meant to smell good.”
He stared at the new canvases arrayed before me with a sickened look on his face.
I sighed in exasperation. “Either go or come. But shut the door. I don’t want the fumes wafting down to the nursery at the other end of the hall.”
He wrinkled his nose and shut the door. “Can’t we talk somewhere else?”
I turned back to the task I was performing. “We could have. Had you arrived six hours ago when I expected. Or better yet, we wouldn’t even need to have this discussion had you not expelled me from the Drummonds’ town house like an errant child.” I swiped my brush across the canvas in front of me in broad strokes.
“That’s not what I did,” Gage argued.
“Oh, excuse me. I meant to say, like an errant wife.”
“That’s not fair. You heard my father. Had I not asked you to leave, he would have ejected us both. He does not jest when he makes threats.”
I rounded on him. “And just how was he going to eject us? Physically? Your father might still be healthy, but he’s at least sixty, and no match for you.” I set aside my jar of gesso emulsion and dumped the brush into a glass of linseed oil. “You bowed to his will, Gage. You fell in line and hopped to his orders just like you were one of his sailors. You did exactly what you said you refused to do.”
“That is not what happened,” he bit out.
“Isn’t it?”
“No. We needed information from Lord Drummond, and I recognized that the fastest way to get it was by listening to my father. He was right about one thing. Lord Drummond is not comfortable around you.”
“Because I actually stand up to him.”
He exhaled in frustration. “I don’t know that he would have told us anything had you been there.”
I gave him a bitter smile. “I guess we’ll never know.”
He turned to the side, raking his hand through his hair. “I don’t know what you want me to say, Kiera. I made a judgment call. Maybe it was wrong, maybe it was right. But what’s done is done.”
“So this is what I can expect when we’re married? That I’ll come second to your father’s wishes.”
“Don’t,” he ground out. “Don’t make this another excuse for you to be afraid of marriage. You know that’s not what happened.”
I stared at him with pain pressing down on my heart. “All I know is that you could have supported me,” I said in a quieter voice. “Your father has been despicable to me, and he and everyone else have been calling me a meddlesome ghoul for insisting that Lady Drummond was poisoned. Last night proved them all wrong, but instead of standing by me, you sent me away.”
His face softened as if he seemed to finally grasp what I had been trying, but apparently failing, to say. I inhaled a shaky breath and turned away to clean my brush. The last thing I wanted was to break down in tears. With everything that was happening, I wasn’t sure I would be able to stop.
I heard Gage shuffle a few steps closer. “Do you want to know what Lord Drummond told us?”
“Yes. Did your father let you press him about the suspicious information we uncovered?”
“Not as hard as I would have liked,” he muttered crossly. “But enough to get some answers. I think he wanted to know what his responses would be as much as I did. It is freezing in here,” he exclaimed, breaking off.
I glanced up to find him staring at the open window. “I am aware. But those fumes you were complaining about earlier would have been strong enough to make me ill had I not opened the window.” I laid the brush down to dry and turned to look at him, leaning against the table. “The cold is easy enough to bear when faced with the other prospect.”
“Well, are you finished? Can I close it now?”
I nodded. “But leave it open about two inches. The gesso emulsion isn’t finished drying, so there are still vapors to smell.”
I watched as he reached up to push the window down, admiring the breadth of his shoulders and the dashing figure he cut. As he turned to face me, I whirled around to carry my supplies back to their shelves in the special storage unit Gage had built for me. If I was as bad an actress as he claimed, the moment he saw my face, he would know what I had been looking at, and then I might never get him to answer my questions about their interrogation of Lord Drummond.
“So what did Lord Drummond have to say for himself?”
Gage leaned back against the wall beside the window with his arms crossed indolently over his chest. “He claims that he didn’t know anything about it. That he truly believed his wife had died of an apoplexy like Dr. Davis pronounced.”
“So he’s claiming he’s innocent?”
“Yes. When I asked him why he’d so readily accepted the physician’s diagnosis even though it had been made in such a hasty manner, he argued he had no reason to doubt it. I’m afraid we can’t dispute that.” He scowled. “Though I would like to question Dr. Davis about it.”
I removed my painting apron. “What of the allegation that he needed money and had already spent Lady Drummond’s dowry?”
“He scoffed at the suggestion, as did Father. In any case, it’s easy enough to verify. And I intend to.”
I reached up to hang my apron on its peg on the wall. “Did he know if his wife was expecting?”
He shook his head. “Once again, he claims that if she was, he didn’t know anything about it. I suggest we ask her maid.” He paused. “If she survived.”
I stiffened at the reminder. “I hope they would let us know if she hadn’t.” I frowned. “Or would they have alerted your father? And we already know how easily he shares information.”
“I suspect they would send word to you before Father.” He pushed away from the wall and cleared his throat. “Let me rephrase that. I suspect Jeffers would send word to you before Father.” He skirted my table and the easel where the painting I had been working on was propped. “You were not with us in the drawing room while we waited to hear the fate of Lady Drummond’s maid, but I noticed how much the Drummond butler disliked my father. He could have put some of the butlers I’ve encountered in London to shame with his display of haughty disdain.”
“Really?”
Gage nodded, turning to study the portrait.
“I’ve never seen Jeffers behave that way, and I’ve been at the receiving end of more than my fair share of condescension from butlers,” I muttered dryly. Servants, especially those of higher rank, were oftentimes far more snobbish than their masters.
“Well, then. I like him even more.” He turned to me. “Do you think we could tempt him away? After all, we’re go
ing to need a butler for our own household.”
This startled a short laugh out of me. “You want to poach Lord Drummond’s butler?”
“Why not?” He shrugged, moving closer. “I’d like to know the staff I have installed in our house are loyal to not only me, but my wife. And the fact that he dislikes my father doesn’t hurt.” He stared down at me almost eagerly. “What do you think?”
I tilted my head. “I think you’re straying from the topic.”
He didn’t look the least chagrinned, and I wondered if these playful comments were meant to distract me.
“So we need to question Aileen. Did you ask Lord Drummond whether his wife had a lover?”
“No.”
I frowned.
“Given the answers we still needed to find elsewhere, it didn’t seem necessary.”
“Didn’t seem necessary?” I repeated. “His reaction could have told you a great deal. Was he jealous? Secretive? Angry?”
Gage scowled. “Father would never have allowed such a question, so it seemed fruitless to ask. It would only have given Lord Drummond time to plan his response if it should come up again.”
“Which, I suppose, means you didn’t ask about his brutal treatment of his wife, or how his first wife died?”
“No. Because, once again, Father would not have allowed it. And the answers to the true cause of his wife’s first death are better found elsewhere. If he’d had anything to do with it, he simply would have lied.”
I reluctantly conceded that. “Well, did you at least find out whether he has a mistress?”
“Yes. And I can assure you there is no danger of her becoming the next Lady Drummond.”
“Why? Is she already married?”
“No.”
“Then how do you know?”
His expression grew wary. “Let’s just say, she’s not the type of woman a man of Lord Drummond’s stature would wed.”
I realized then what he meant. “You can’t know that for sure,” I argued. “After all, the Duke of Lancaster married an opera dancer.”
A Study in Death (Lady Darby Mystery, A Book 4) Page 18