“Cats are miracles from God, my lady,” he said, his dark eyes glinting with humor behind his spectacles. “I think his highness, King Irusan, sensed an admirer and so allows me to serve as his palanquin.”
“That cat is a devil,” Lord John raged, holding a cloth to his cheek.
Anne entered the room and said, “I most humbly apologize and beg your forgiveness for Irusan’s irascible temperament. He was supposed to be confined to my bedchamber. I can’t think how he got out…” She trailed off, seeing Lydia’s beseeching gestures behind her husband’s back.
“He was in here,” the man bellowed, “sitting on Lydia’s lap when I came in. All I did was push him off, and he attacked me.”
“John, dear, he was asleep, and you gave him such a whack!” Lydia said.
“Nevertheless,” Anne said, refraining from upbraiding him for his behavior toward her cat, “I apologize most deeply for my cat’s bad manners, my lord. If you need some cream for that—”
“No, Lady Anne, I do not,” he said, pushing past her and out to the hall. He stomped away, muttering under his breath, and was soon gone from sight and sound.
“Goodness,” Anne said, glancing between Lydia on her divan and Mr. Boatin near the door, who still held Irusan. Lydia looked pale but composed, and Anne said to her, “I will talk to you later, my dear. Right now, I think I should take Irusan back to my room and make sure he doesn’t cause any more mischief. Mr. Boatin?”
“At your service, my lady,” he said.
“Follow me, then.” She had a second chance to talk to the secretary, and this time she was not going to let him escape without answering some questions.
She led Mr. Boatin to her room and asked him to set Irusan in a chair. “Mr. Boatin,” she said, “how is it that Lord Darkefell came all the way to Hornethwaite to fetch me concerning my cat’s bad behavior? Was this scene frozen for an hour or more, Lord John kept at bay all that time by my ferocious puss?”
He laughed, a rich, throaty chuckle. Petting Irusan, who still curled in his arms, he said, “No, I am told that before being cornered in Lady John’s room, he led the footmen on a merry chase while your lady’s maid, Mistress Mary, followed, remonstrating, saying if they would just leave him alone, the feline king would return to his quarters on his own.”
“True. Left alone, he’s well behaved. Unfortunately, like me, he misbehaves when people don’t treat him properly. Please, Mr. Boatin, sit for a moment with Irusan. You seem to have a calming effect on him.”
The man looked doubtful but was won over when Irusan stretched in his arms and butted the secretary’s chin with his enormous, shaggy head. “He is a very big cat.” He sat down in a chair and cradled the feline on his lap.
“He’s almost two stone.” Trapped, Anne thought, eyeing Mr. Boatin. As long as Irusan luxuriated in his arms, he would probably not move. “Why were you and his lordship here?”
“Some estate business required Lady Darkefell’s input, for it involved Ivy Lodge. The marquess is diligent in consulting his mother on many points, as it is her home. We found chaos, and the marchioness commanded her son to find you and bring you back.”
“You became involved involuntarily?”
“I thought I might be of assistance.”
Deciding that the man, obviously intelligent and indubitably well mannered, deserved honesty, Anne told him gently about her venture into Hornethwaite, the smelly drunk to whom she gave a farthing, and what he said about Osei being under an African curse. She held back for the moment, not asking about the almost incoherent insinuation that he was seen with a young woman, possibly Cecilia. He had no comment, merely shaking his head.
“How did he get such an absurd idea?”
“It may have come from some of the younger members of Lord Darkefell’s staff in their occasional visits to the taproom. Some of them make sport out of anything. Teasing a drunk with wild stories would not have been beyond them.”
“I can only imagine, Mr. Boatin, how difficult your life here has been, even with your employer. As good as he is, still the marquess cannot be easy to work for. Have you not had run-ins with him?”
The secretary admitted it with a nod of his head. “But we resolve our differences quickly, and I never forget how much I owe him.”
“Have you ever considered going back to your homeland?”
He nodded again, more slowly. “But I can never repay the debt of gratitude I owe to his lordship. He did far more than save my life, he saved my spirit. I came here with little comprehension of the world into which I had been thrust, and he gave me everything I required to save myself. He offered me language and knowledge, the two pillars upon which the fate of the world rest. And more than that… he gave me hope. My only wish is to find out if my sister survived and where she is. I wish I could rescue her from slavery, if she is so bound.”
Irusan stretched in the gentle man’s arms and purred loudly.
“You were friends with Cecilia Wainwright.”
He nodded.
“And you were with her the evening she was killed?”
He nodded again. “We were walking and talking, no more than that, my lady. Serving staff are allowed a couple of hours each evening to walk outside or rest in their rooms after their duties are done. I walked her to the back door and saw her go in.”
“You saw her go in?” She chewed her lip for a long moment. “Why would she go back out, I wonder?”
He was silent. She eyed him. He knew, or he thought he might know, she realized, judging from his downcast gaze and concentrated lack of response to her question. How could she reassure him that she didn’t wish to blacken the girl’s name or reputation? “Mr. Boatin, if there was any way you could help discover Cecilia’s murderer, you would do it, as her friend, wouldn’t you?”
He nodded, misery deep within his dark eyes.
“I think you have an idea why she went back out but don’t think it involves someone who could be suspected of murdering her?”
He nodded again as he scruffed Irusan under the chin and behind his ears.
Anne leaned forward. “But what if you’re wrong?”
Mr. Boatin stood and gently set Irusan on the chair he had just vacated. “But I am not, my lady.” He bowed. “You must excuse me. I have work to do.”
As Osei left, Mary entered Anne’s bedchamber. “How did that man calm Irusan? Puss was yowling, taking on in sech a manner, and for him to go from that wild beastie to a purring puss in two minutes is beyond wonderful.”
“Some people just have a way with animals,” Anne said, staring at the door.
“Aye, like that Jamey, the lad all the girls are crazy for,” Mary said, brushing cat hairs from the chair just vacated by the cat. Irusan had decided the bed was more to his liking for a midday nap and was now curled in the center of a pillow.
“Jamey, the groom Ellen walks out with? Does he have other flirtations?” She watched Mary as the woman bustled around, tidying small things put out of place.
“Indeed he does. And that explains a brangle between Ellen and Cecilia,” she said, turning away from the dressing table. “Come, have your hair done properly, milady, for it’s gang agley.”
Anne obediently sat in the dressing-table chair. “A falling out? An argument? I thought they were best of friends. Who heard it? What was said?”
“Well, first, Jamey is new to his lordship’s stable staff, hired at last Martinmas servant fair to work on the home farm, but Dandy Lincoln—he runs the home farm wi’ his wife Peg—told the marquess that Jamey was a dab hand wi’ horses, and so he came to th’castle in December, just afore Christmas.”
“About when John and Lydia arrived at Ivy Lodge with Cecilia, from their bride trip. Whom did he work for before?”
“Now that’s interestin.’ He worked for Mr. Grover and so knew the ways o’ the castle and some of the staff. During the holiday nonsense that always happens with extra time off and spirituous fluids, Jamey Spencer flirted with all the maids,
from the tales I’ve heard.”
“Among them Cecilia and Ellen.”
“Aye. There was much foolishness at first between the girls, good-hearted, mostly. But that appears to have ended badly on St. Agnes’ Eve.” Mary twisted Anne’s hair tightly, winding it into a neater style and pinning it, her face in the mirror a study of concentration.
“What happened on St. Agnes’ Eve?” Anne finally asked. That was in late January, just three months before.
“Ah, well, Caroline, one of the maids, was there an’ another maid who has since left service and married. The girls, Cecilia and Ellen, needed two more girls to do the love posset that would tell them who Jamey was truly meant to wed, for the fool girls went so far as to think the fellow serious about matrimony.”
“What on earth is a ‘love posset’?”
Mary sighed. “Have you no’ ever bin a daft girl, milady? Called a ‘dumb cake,’ as well. Some girls did that even back home when I was a lass. I dreamt of my own dear Collin after such a thing. But these fool girls don’t think they will dream of the fellow, but that his living spirit will actually come to them!”
“Oh, I know!” Anne cried. “I’ve heard of this, of course. Some of my friends did it. Four girls make a cake—when it’s made, it’s cut into four pieces, and each girl gets a piece and stands in a corner of the room. Then you do some nonsensical hocus-pocus, and the spirit of your husband is supposed to take the cake.”
“Aye, the key being the fellow is visible only to the maiden he’ll wed. The lassies did this, and Ellen, being more gullible than Cecilia, so it sounds, believed her when Cecilia claimed to see the spirit of young Jamey walk right up and take her piece and eat it. That’s when the trouble started.”
“Hmm. But Ellen claims to have been a dear friend of Cecilia’s. She was crying the morning after Cecilia was murdered.”
“P’raps she was feeling that badly that the girl was kilt an’ there bein’ bad feelings still between them?” Mary finished her fussing and patted Anne’s hair. “Better.”
And indeed it was, Anne thought, twisting this way and that in front of the mirror. “You’re a miracle worker, Mary. You should have seen the abomination foisted upon me by Ellen.”
“I’ve heard of it. Begging your pardon, but it’s become legendary in the servants’ hall. Therese, Lady Darkefell’s abigail, a French woman,” she said with a sniff of disapproval, “said that Ellen ought to have been brought up on charges for murderin’ your appearance. Not one o’ the other servants, to their credit, thought that humorous, after the events that took puir Cecilia’s life. But then, none o’ them have any use for Therese, and most like Ellen.”
“So Ellen, far from being a friend of Cecilia’s, was her rival for the affections of Jamey.”
“A rivalry that Cecilia is said to have won.”
“I shall speak to Jamey. Perhaps he’s the father of her unborn baby. I wonder if she had already told him? Perhaps she went back out that night to speak with him about what she should do once she started showing her condition. A girl would lose her position over that. I wish I’d known this before I spoke with Mr. Boatin just now.” She thought for a moment then said, “How could I get to speak to Jamey?”
“I’ll talk to Sanderson, milady—the coach and horses are kept up at the castle, but Sanderson is bedded here and eats his supper in the servants’ hall. He might be able to tell us more about the lad.”
“I did ask him to befriend Jamey, as I suspect he’s involved in this werewolf business. And I’ll speak to Ellen and even the terrifying Therese, the superior French abigail. According to Ellen, Therese said that she, too, saw the werewolf.”
“Aye, I already asked her aboot that, but she claims ’twas just from a window.”
“Mmm, that’s not enough to question her on. I had hoped for a lucid account—French women are supremely rational. I suppose I’ll get busy, then.” But first… “Mary, this is dreadfully inappropriate to ask, but you’re the only one who may know.”
“Aye, tell me then. I’ve had a feelin’ somethin’ was amiss.” Between them was a boundless trust and complete understanding. Mary and Wee Robbie were mired in destitution after her husband died in the Gordon riots. Catholic to the bone, Collin MacDougall had been protecting a priest from the mob incited by the rabidly anti-Catholic Lord George Gordon, and died shielding him. The church would have taken them both in after such a martyrdom as her Collin endured, but Mary preferred to work for her living.
“I wouldn’t say it’s anything amiss,” Anne answered, pondering how to raise the topic on her mind. She touched her hair and glanced at it in the mirror one more time, though she already knew it was perfect. When Anne found out about Mary from a friend, the Scotswoman knew nothing of being a lady’s maid, but Anne hired her anyway. It was just a few months after Anne’s fiancé had died, and sequestered in mourning, anyway, she was beginning to realize she didn’t wish to rejoin the marriage market, baiting a spinster’s hook with her considerable personal fortune. Mary had repaid the kindness of a job for herself and a home for her child, Wee Robbie, by applying herself to the art of taking care of a lady and becoming proficient at it, even though she didn’t truly care about such fripperies as bonnets and hairstyles.
Anne, still unsure how to go on, moved the brushes Mary had laid out precisely. “Mary, if a man has no interest in a woman, would he still kiss her?”
“Beggin’ your pardon?”
Anne repeated what she said, adding, even as she focused her gaze on a spot above Mary’s face, “Men, I’ve heard, use seduction to get what they want just as some women do. Do you think a man might kiss a woman he has no interest in, perhaps just to shut her up? Or confuse her and stop her from asking questions?”
“Are you asking, milady, do I think Lord Darkefell kissed you to silence you?”
Thirteen
Anne gasped.
Mary said, “D’you think you weren’t observed?” Her rolled r’s rippled with laughter. “In the servants’ hall they’re a’chatterin’ about the master’s behavior. E’en though Ivy Lodge is Lady Darkefell’s domain, make no mistake, milady, the marquess is still master. They daren’t cross him. I overhaird the chatter, for they wouldna have spoken to me ’bout such a thing.”
Anne defiantly crossed her arms over her chest. “Since I have no secrets, Mary, what do you think?”
“A man’s capable of anything, milady, some more’n others. I’ve no’ had time to study the marquess, though a powerful handsome man he is. As far as I ken, he’s no’ in the habit of inflictin’ such behavior on ladies of his acquaintance, leastways not at the lodge nor th’castle.”
“Oh.”
“So, what was it like, the marquess’s kiss?” Mary asked, her eyes wide.
“It was adequate,” Anne said, retreating to hauteur and disarranging the brushes on the dressing table yet again.
“Likely more’n that,” Mary said under her breath, apparently recognizing that no amount of prodding would elicit a dram more of information.
“I’m going to visit Lydia and find out how Irusan happened to be in her room,” Anne said hastily. “I suspect he was invited there and took umbrage when Lord John swept him aside as if he were a common cat.”
She started out the door but, at that moment, heard a commotion downstairs. A loud voice shouted, “They’ve got him—they’ve got him!” She swiftly descended into the hall and found Hiram Grover joyously calling out to Lady Darkefell, who was approaching from the corridor as Andrew, the footman, stood back from the open door.
“What is it, Hiram?” the dowager marchioness said, her cold tone bell-like and echoing in the great hall.
Anne continued down the stairs.
“They have the murdering bastard who killed the maidservant, begging your pardon, my lady, for the coarseness. I’m that turned about with relief!”
“Who is it?” she cried, her hands clutched together and held out in front of her, an oddly beseeching position for so hau
ghty a woman. “Who? Tell me, Hiram!”
“That drunken wretch from Hornethwaite, William Spottiswode.”
As Anne watched, the woman staggered slightly, and her voice weak, she said, “Thank the good Lord!”
Hiram Grover guided her to the drawing room off the great hall. Anne followed, and Lord John, drawn by the commotion, followed too. Gathered in the drawing room, Hiram Grover helped Lady Darkefell to a seat and then held court, Lord John sitting by his mother, on the arm of her chair, her hand in his, and Anne standing nearby.
“I was in town to see about selling some of my horses to a fellow there,” Mr. Grover said. “I happened to see Sir Trevor. I called out to him, but he was in a hurry, on his way to the alehouse, for something extraordinary was happening. I followed.”
“Go on, Grover!” Lord John prodded.
“Patience, my lord,” Grover said, his face even ruddier than normal. He mopped his brow with a cloth pulled from his pocket and sat down near the fireplace. After a moment, he said, “I followed Sir Trevor into the alehouse, and there was the most extraordinary sight! William Spottiswode—that fellow they call Spotted Willie, the disgusting drunk who begs outside the tavern—was sitting with a circle of young fellows surrounding him, and saying he murdered poor Cecilia Wainwright.”
Anne gasped, and her legs felt wobbly. Was that the same fellow who had accosted her outside the alehouse and begged a farthing? Had she been that close to solving the murder if she had asked the right question?
“What happened?” Lady Darkefell said.
“Sir Trevor charged him with her murder, and Spottiswode is now confined in a cell below the guildhall. I heard him with my own ears—the fellow claims he was Cecilia Wainwright’s lover and the father of her unborn bastard. He met her that night to discuss her demand that he marry her, and they argued. He had no money to marry, but she said that didn’t matter, for she would not bear an unnamed child. He became enraged when she taunted him with talk of her new lover, Lord Darkefell’s secretary, and murdered her.” He put one hand over his heart and said, “How terrible! The poor girl. That her immoral behavior should lead to her death may seem a judgment from God, but I, for one, cannot find it in my heart to condemn the poor child’s conduct, as disgraceful as it was.”
Lady Anne 01 - Lady Anne and the Howl in the Dark Page 14