“I don’t want you here,” Missus Faraday’s voice split the air like a thundercrack.
Olivia paused in mid-step.
“Which you would have known before you accepted this… whatever this is,” her mother continued. “I don’t want you upsetting the Greenes, telling them that you think Roger was murdered. I don’t want you dancing before the pyre of our family’s legacy, flouting your refusal to take any of it seriously when you’re the only blood heir. And I especially don’t want you, you of all people, asking questions, rooting about like a pig, trying to solve one of your little puzzles. Especially not during the most important time of the year for the people who care about this place. If you mean to accept your place here, then by all means. Otherwise, I’ll see you for Solstice.”
Rosemary looked back and forth between Olivia and her mother. Chris tried very hard not to alert them by breathing.
Olivia turned back. She gave her mother a small, sad smile. “Do you know how many people over the years have thanked me for giving them closure, Mother?” she asked. It was the saddest he’d ever heard her voice. He hadn’t even known she could sound so… regretful.
“Closure. Hah. How many of them were foolish enough to think that’s what motivated you?” Missus Faraday shot back.
“Oh, good, there it is. Who cares about results when there are feelings to consider.” Olivia reached up, ran her hand through her silky, straight hair, and then sighed. “Well. I’m sorry you don’t want me here, Mother, but I was requested quite specifically. If you wish to get into a fistfight, then by all means. Contact Officer Maris Dawson at Darrington. You two can slam up against each other like stags in rut! But then… I hear you aren’t so fond of police.”
“Always so inappropriate,” Miss Faraday said but sighed. Her gaze slid off her daughter, and some of the rigid tension drained from her shoulders. “You can’t help yourself, can you?”
“Of course not. Now, should I get started on my investigation so I can leave as soon as possible? Please, do have Walter put Christopher beside me. I know it’s terribly scandalous, but he’s my assistant, and I don’t want to walk all the way to another wing when I need him.”
“Across the hall,” Missus Faraday countered. “With a lovely view facing the orchards. I insist that you observe some decency while you’re in my house.”
“Well enough,” Olivia agreed, turning back towards the oak doors. The butler, Mister Rimbleton, was bringing in their bags. Olivia smiled at him with what seemed to be full sincerity and indicated for Chris with one crooked finger. “Come along, Christopher.”
“I—” Chris said, looking down at his sister. “Olivia, we just got here, and Rosie….”
Rosemary’s eyes flicked from him to Olivia and back. She opened her mouth as if to say something, and then paused, closed it, and swallowed. When she smiled up at him, it seemed oddly strained. “No, go!” she said, patting his hand. “Elouise and I were halfway through a game of rummy. We should finish.” She looked over her shoulder toward Olivia’s mother. “Shouldn’t we?”
Missus Faraday actually looked at Chris for the first time since they’d come in the front door. She had the grace to look slightly abashed. “Welcome to Miller Orchards, Mister Buckley,” she said. He was genuinely surprised at the warmth of her voice, after hearing her talk to her daughter. “Your sister is a lovely young woman, and I’ve been more than glad to have her company here. I’m looking forward to getting to know you.”
“Thank you, Missus Faraday,” Chris replied. He felt like he’d been turned around three times and asked to pin the tail on the donkey.
“Elouise, please,” she corrected with a smile. “I loved my husband with all my heart and soul, but he’s been gone an age, and I still feel strange being called his name. I’m too much the Miller.”
“Then thank you, Elouise,” he said. It felt strange calling her by her first name, but he thought he understood her reasoning.
Rosie stepped back, and he turned to follow Olivia. Missus Faraday’s voice, sharp once again, stopped them before they left the manor house. “Supper is in two hours, Livvie,” she said firmly. “This is civilized country. I will not be pleased if you aren’t in attendance. Make it a priority, won’t you?”
“Of course, Mother,” Olivia twisted to fix her mother with a bitter smile. “Really. I’m hardly a monster.”
hris followed Olivia down a stone pathway overgrown with dog violets, watching his footing as they went. The path was shockingly uneven, and it would be easy to place a foot wrong and twist an ankle. His scrutiny doubled as an opportunity to not speak to his employer as the encounter with her mother played through his head.
Olivia had always painted the picture of a bitter, old matriarch she avoided for good reason. Rosemary, on the contrary, spoke of Elouise Faraday warmly, characterizing her as a stern but kind and attentive woman. And Rachel Albany, who Chris desperately wished he’d seen in the foyer, described a clever, intelligent businesswoman, occasionally harsh but just as often generous.
Chris’s impression was largely that she was… formidable.
“Three hells,” Olivia said suddenly, breaking the taut silence, “but that girl has possibility sprouted. When I met her at the train station the day she left Darrington, she was barely taller than me. It was lovely not having to crane my neck! I suppose Buckleys come only in one size.” She sighed. It was cloyingly dramatic. She was trying to bury the altercation with her mother, and Chris was only too glad to grab a shovel and help her.
“I know,” he said. Despite the affected nature of the conversation, he couldn’t help the sincere affection and excitement that crept into his voice. Just the sight of Rosie buoyed his sunken spirits, no matter the circumstances under which they were here. “It’s only been six months! It doesn’t seem possible, does it? From a little girl to a young lady in no time at all. She was always such a late bloomer. She looked more eleven than thirteen before she left. She hadn’t even…” He trailed off, coughing delicately. He didn’t really want to talk about his gratitude for not having to explain certain facts of life to his young sister, when he knew, really, absolutely nothing about them. “Well, it just seems unbelievable that the moment she left my sight, she blossomed.”
“As far as I can tell, your nanny’s done a fine job with her.”
A flash of Rachel Albany’s shy smile flickered through his mind, and Chris nearly tripped over the lip of a stone.
Olivia craned her neck to smile back at him. “Hm, oh yes. Where is Miss Albany?”
“I haven’t seen or heard anything you haven’t, you know.” He tried to keep his tone light, but in truth, he kept searching for Rachel out of the corner of his eye. What would she do when she saw him? So many things had been left unsaid between them after the night of the attacks at the Piffleman’s Galahouse. Ignoring them was considerably easier on the other side of a mirror pane than it would be in person. Especially with Rachel’s heartreading thrown into the mix.
The thought was both nerve-wracking and thrilling. How would things go when they did come face to face? He couldn’t help but imagine enfolding her into his arms, feeling her slender body close to his. Would she let him kiss her? Would she welcome it? Would she lean into his embrace? Would she kiss him back?
His mind slid through a crack and thoughts of Rachel were suddenly thoughts of William. Visions of them both, pliant and willing and wanting in his arms, shattered.
“Where are we going?” he asked, his voice coming out sharp and a bit rough.
“Why, to the murder scene, of course.”
Chris stopped, a vision of Miss Banks lying in a pool of blood crashing through the fading ghosts of his fantasies and demolishing them. “I… wh… but, she, we don’t know if….”
Olivia clucked her tongue and shot him a warning look. “Roger Greene’s murder, silly. I can hardly not investigate the matter, after my old mentor Mister Geoffries called me here specifically to do so!”
“…Oh,” Chris
said. He ducked his head, abashed. Of course. The stablemaster’s suicide was ostensibly why they were here, and Olivia had maintained that fiction for her mother and the butler. “Right. Of course.”
“Roger was found hanging from the rafters in his stables,” Olivia said. There was a strange edge in her voice. “We need to see if there’s anything telling in the area.”
Chris jogged a few steps until he was keeping pace with his employer. They fell into step, stride for stride. He leaned close enough that she would be able to hear him, which was close enough to smell her clean linen scent. “Ah,” he said. “How are we meant to investigate Miss Banks, if we’re busy with….”
Olivia craned her head and fixed him with one of her knowing smiles. Their faces were close enough that the proximity was a little unnerving. “Have faith, Christopher,” she said. “I’m known to be an incorrigibly curious sort, and Maris was right about one thing. I can go places on this property where no other investigator could without inviting questions. We’ll play it by ear, but I have a tune in mind.”
The stable was considerably larger than Chris had imagined: a building as long as three railcars linked together and as tall as the estate itself. He covered his nose and mouth as they drew close and the scent of manure became more intense.
Olivia shot him a delighted little fanged grin. “City boy,” she teased.
Inside, the stench was much worse, and Chris was glad that they weren’t here at the height of summer. Two long rows of stalls extended all the way down, with a long aisle between them. Horses, ponies, unicorns, and a few ragged looking hippogryphs like the ones that had brought them from the station wuffed and approached the lattices of their stalls curiously as Olivia marched past. She didn’t seem to have any care for her fine shoes or long skirts, and so Chris did his best to be equally cavalier. There were no human beings in sight.
“Hullo?” Olivia called, raising a hand to cup her mouth. The only response was an enthusiastic whinny.
Chris had never considered himself uncomfortable around horses. They were placid, pleasant, big-eyed, gentle beasts as far as he was concerned. But the sheer number of them watching their progress down the long aisle actually made him a bit nervous. There was a sense of conspiracy in so many eyes upon him, no matter how utterly irrational that was. He focused his attention, instead, on an area of the stable that seemed to function mostly as storage. The bodies of old carriages, discarded wheels, old tack, and one large shape shrouded in a white sheet dominated. Chris peered at the concealed object as they passed by, but its shape didn’t seem to match anything he could place.
Olivia stopped at a seemingly random spot, hands on her hips, looking upward.
He followed her glance and swallowed hard.
They’d seen far more horrifying things in their work together, but there was still something disconcerting about the gouge of raw wood in the beam above them.
“Roger’s rope must have sawed a solid groove into the wood,” Olivia said. That strangeness in her voice was back. He struggled to place it. “The file Maris supplied me with said that he tied the rope off here…” She walked several steps and laid her long-fingered hand against the hitching hook outside of the stall. “He threw the noose over the rafter, climbed a stool, kicked it away, and…” She sighed, hands falling to her side. She surveyed the scene in silence for a long moment. “Oh, Roger,” she murmured. “What the bloody hell happened to you? You were always such a jolly fellow. Where did this come from?”
He blinked and furrowed his brow. “Olivia…” He laid a hand on her shoulder. “Are you… are you mourning?”
She snapped a glare at him and shook his hand off, dancing a step away. “Hardly!” she scoffed. “I just… it’s—” She growled and turned away from him. “It’s odd, that’s all. It’s just… it’s just so very odd. Roger Greene has been alive forever. He was the stablemaster’s brat when I was a girl. He put frogs in my boots and then shrieked when I biffed them right at his smug face. I kissed him once in the hayloft. My mother was furious. I remember his wedding! The night his daughter was born! He was barely older than me, and now he’s just… gone.”
“Do you feel…” He struggled for a word that would unlock some depth of emotion for her, but the one he found was woefully inadequate. “… are you sad?”
“Gods, no!” Olivia shot back. “There is a very short list of people I would allow myself to feel grief for, and Roger Greene was certainly not even a runner-up for it.” She picked invisible lint from her skirts and shrugged. “I suppose I just feel altogether quite…” A sad smile curved her lips. “It’s strange, all right? It’s all very strange.”
“Miss Olivia?”
They turned as one. A young woman not much older than Rosie stood several yards away. She wore dirty trousers, a loose cotton shirt, and her long sandy hair was tied back into a smart braid. Freckles dusted her cheeks, and her skin was heavily weathered from the sun.
“Mabelle!” Olivia said, snapping to attention. She took two steps forward, opened her mouth, and raised a finger as if she were about to launch into one of her rambling speeches. But then she deflated. Annoyance, frustration, and sadness flew across her face in equal measure. “I… well, it’s quite sad. Roger, I mean. Your father. I mean… how sad for you.”
It was hardly an expression of deep sympathy, but Mabelle Greene–the name was incredibly familiar–just nodded once, as if she’d expected no more. “Thanks, Miss Olivia. Only… well, Gods. Why are you here? You never show for Harvest Faire.”
Olivia opened and closed her mouth. “Well,” she said eventually, floundering, “you see….”
She turned and fixed a pleading look at Chris.
Ah. He blinked. He thought he understood. Olivia didn’t want to just come out and blurt to the girl there were some suspicious circumstances at play in her father’s death—not when it was a lie. It was a surprising show of empathy. And she wanted his help.
“Miss Greene,” he said, stepping forward and smiling. “There are some small matters relating to your father’s passing that the local police wanted looked into. They thought it would be best to bring in someone familiar with the property.”
Miss Greene’s dark eyes flashed as if he’d said something incredibly revealing. “This is about the horses, isn’t it?”
Chris frowned. Hadn’t his sister just said the same thing?
One of Olivia’s eyebrows shot up. “The horses?”
“Yes! They’ve been agitated since… since the day he died, and the police have been dragging their feet sending a wildwhisperer up to question them and find out what they’ve seen! I’ve said it to Missus Elouise three different times and got Rosie to take a message to her, too. I was starting to think she’d never let the coppers up here to look into it. You know how she is. But… they brought you in, Miss Olivia?”
‘Rosie?’ Miss Greene was talking about Rosemary. A rush of realization crashed around him, and Chris recalled where her name was familiar from: she was a friend of his sister’s. The stable girl. The one who’d seen her singing up undines in the orchards from a treetop perch.
He boggled and examined Miss Greene again under this new context—she was hardly an appropriate sort of companion for his sister, now was she? He certainly didn’t approve of the trousers. The last thing Rosie needed was inspiration for more scandalous behaviour! He opened his mouth to say something—very likely something impetuous and foolish—but Olivia seemed to have made a decision.
She cocked her head to one side. “You do know that wildwhisperers can’t actually question animals, right?” she asked, her voice lighter than it perhaps should be when speaking with the daughter of a recently dead acquaintance. “They really rather just… partake in an emotional exchange. And if your father’s beloved horses had watched him–that is, I… I’m not…” She visibly fumbled with words and then gave up, looking at Miss Greene with helpless apology writ on her features.
Miss Greene gave her a tired, bitter smile. “
As ever, huh, Miss Olivia? Don’t hurt your fine self trying to sound normal.”
Olivia tensed as if she were going to scold the girl, and then sighed. “I suspect the horses would have the same emotional state whether they witnessed a murder or suicide or something else entirely, Mabelle.”
“Maybe,” Mabelle agreed, bobbing her head in a nod. “But I think I know a mite more about wildwhisperers than you do, seeing how often Dad has Mister Foster up caring for the animals. Whispering is a little more nuanced than you think. A horse might not be able to tell what happened in so many words, but it’s not just heartreading. They can tell ‘friend’ from ‘stranger,’ for one thing. And even just ‘two humans’ from ‘one human.’ If any of the animals saw something, I don’t think it would all be locked behind their distress.”
“I—”
“If it’s not why you’re here, then please at least try to get a wildwhisperer up?” Mabelle asked. Her mature, self-confident way seemed to melt, and suddenly she looked very much Rosie’s age—an uncategorized girl elevated to stablemaster before her time, doing her best impression of her deceased father. “If not one from the police, at least talk to Foster, the animal doctor. You’re looking into this anyway, and I know he’ll find something.”
Olivia awkwardly tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “Mabelle….”
“Please, Miss Olivia? Dad was fine. I swear it up and down and back again. He was fine when I saw him last, and I would have known. I would have known.”
Chris turned his face away, her words scraping hard against the healing scabs on his heart. They were damn familiar because he’d said them a thousand times, himself, after Fernand’s death. He swallowed hard.
“Mabelle,” Olivia murmured, her voice strangely gentle. “If you truly believe the horses know something, why haven’t you brought a whisperer here, yourself?”
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