by Decca Price
“He most likely headed for water—there’s a stream behind the cottage. Wait here and I’ll see. You’ll have the devil of a time in that dress.” Montfort headed off to the left of the cottage, and to his mild annoyance, she rustled after him.
“I’ll keep close and you can tramp down the grass as you go,” she told him. “A horse on his own in full tack could hurt himself. You could startle him. He knows me,” she blurted in snatches between awkward lunges.
They found the big gray, none the worse for wear, grazing placidly under a large apple tree close to a broad beck rippling behind the cottage. Catching Toddy’s bridle, Claire murmured soothing words to the wayward horse.
Watching her, Montfort felt like an intruder. The woman and the attentive animal seemed to understand each other intuitively, and he could have been on the other side of the moon for all he mattered. The solitary tree, free of the orchardist’s pruners over many years, had grown tall and broad and he could hear small birds murmuring high in its mazy branches. Their chatter blended with the song of the beck beyond. The cool air smelled fresh and green.
He forgot himself and his plots and perplexities, simply to drink in the bright clarity of the moment. The dappled light falling through the shifting leaves showered everything beneath it with shimmering gold and rippled across a carpet of fallen blossoms gleaming like pearl around her feet. Free of modern attire, she could have been some ancient spirit of the land, equally prepared to grant a boon or name a curse, depending on whether she took offense at being spied upon.
His mood lasted only a moment. When the light breeze touched his face, it roused him.
“What do you say to bewitch him, Miss Burton?” he asked.
“Oh, nothing really,” she replied, turning her head to address him as she continued to stroke Toddy’s sleek neck. “I merely tell him he is a handsome boy and that back at the stable, apples are waiting for him—which he won’t get here this time of year.”
“Indeed. The eternal Eve,” he said, sketching a curt bow.
“You tease me again, Lord Montfort,” she said with a frown as he came closer.
“I assure you, no. Apples cure any number of the things that ail, as every Herefordshire goodwife will tell you. The serpent did mankind a good turn when it comes to apples.” He leaned against the rough trunk of the old tree. “Besides, I have the greatest respect for good horsemanship. I want to know your secret.”
She pressed her forehead against Toddy’s neck and he didn’t catch her answer.
“If you will wait there, Miss Burton, I’ll fetch my mount and show you a way back over the fields that will save you time. We can go along the bank as far as the churchyard—there’s a footbridge that can carry the horses if your Toddy is not skittish about such things.”
“As you wish,” was all she said.
Her head drooped like a thirsty flower on its stalk, he noticed—then scoffed at himself. He was becoming a poet, and a bad one at that. But observing her evident weariness prompted him to consider whether they should just go back to the inn, where she could retire to a private room and refresh herself. Too bad she was flushed and dreamy-eyed still. She would become the talk of the village if anyone noticed her state, and she would reach home more quickly his way. He decided to chance it.
Soon he was offering his cupped hands to help her mount Toddy—and marveling at how such a buxom woman could fly into the saddle with so little effort despite her tipsy condition. She did it so nimbly she cheated him of the glimpse of ankle or calf a more artful woman would have guaranteed.
“Lead on, my lord,’” she said with a funny little salute.
Montfort laughed, and retorted. “I trust you’ve learned your lesson about the local scrumpy.”
She muttered something that sounded like, “... not that.” He couldn’t be sure and wouldn’t ask. They rode on in silence along the bubbling stream and the thought occurred to him that Claire Burton could be pleasant company. She knew when not to chatter, and when she did speak, she put some thought into her words. But he wished now for conversation, to better gauge what she was thinking.
His mind drifted back to their first meeting and the song she sang. He’d never known a girl of her class to be so buoyant. Then a suspicion hit him like a punch in the stomach. Again he asked himself, what was her game?
“Miss Burton,” he asked after considering his words carefully. “Why did you never marry Joss? You say you loved him and he must have loved you, to drop you into so much bounty. That is to say, he cared enough to provide for you in the event of his demise before the happy day.”
“It’s simple enough,” she replied somberly. “My father forbad the marriage. The day Josiah sought my hand, Papa had him thrown out of the house.”
Sure there was more, he waited.
“I learned that Josiah left shortly afterward for America. But I knew he would come back for me and so I decided my best course was patience. My father and mother love me—they couldn’t have wanted to see me suffer forever. They would have relented eventually, I was sure.”
“Pardon my assumption, Miss Burton, but you are of age. Why not just go with him? Joss had more than enough income to support ten wives.”
“Lord Montfort! I said my parents loved me. I love them as well. I owed them a duty.”
“Besides,” she added more softly, “Josiah never even suggested it. He cared too much about my reputation.”
Montfort coughed to cover the laugh that nearly burst from throat. He’d shattered one illusion for her today already, it wouldn’t serve him to pile on if he expected to deepen their acquaintance. She genuinely believed in Joss Carter’s decency, but he had no reason to believe love had transformed the man. That sort of thing happened only in cheap novels of the sort Joss wrote.
Their horses approached the footbridge at a slow walk, both riders lost in thought, when without warning, Toddy reared and shied, nearly pitching Claire off his back. Montfort leapt to the ground and seized the plunging horse’s reins. Claire struggled to hold her seat.
Montfort managed to turn the horse back toward the way they had come, so that whatever spooked him was behind him.
Between them they calmed Toddy and Claire dismounted unhurt. Montfort’s horse stood nearby, quiet but tense, the whites of his eyes showing.
“It can’t be the bridge,” Claire said. “Toddy’s not bothered by things like that—he’s excellent in the field, and your horse is upset, too. He’s done this before, though.”
“What set him off then?”
“There was a dead lamb in a field and we came too close before I noticed it.”
“Wait here.” Montfort handed the reins back to Claire and she watched anxiously as he walked slowly along the stream bank toward the bridge, examining the ground.
Just before the churchyard, he halted and knelt. Standing on tiptoe, Claire just made out something large, black and shapeless lying in the grass on the bank, as though someone had thrown a dark sack there. Then she saw Montfort running toward a man in the churchyard. She longed to follow but couldn’t leave the horses.
The man rushed from the churchyard toward the road and Montfort returned to the bank, removed his long coat and spread it over the object there.
He hastened back to Claire, where she stood, anxious and pale. “Go back the way we came,” he commanded.
“What’s wrong? Was is it?”
“There’s a woman—”
“Let me go to her,” Claire cut in. “If she’s injured, I can at least comfort her until help arrives.”
“You can’t help her,” Montfort snapped. “No one can. She’s dead.”
Chapter 8
Montfort had acted swiftly, dispatching the sexton in the churchyard to the rectory across the way with multiple instructions. He and Claire made their way back around the cottage to the road—both shocked into silence by his discovery—and he stayed with her until the gig he summoned from the inn appeared.
“Forgive me for not s
eeing you home myself,” he said after handing her in and instructing the driver.
She leaned back on the seat and closed her eyes, grateful to be at rest at last and free to surrender to the sensations churning inside her. As the gig rolled out of sight, Toddy tied securely behind, Montfort loped back to the place where the body lay, now shrouded by one of Edward Latimer’s fine linen bed sheets, commandeered from his housekeeper. His coat, damp and smudged, hung over a bridge rail, placed there by the parish constable, who had been snatched from his midday meal.
Three tedious hours passed before the coroner arrived from Hereford, and a small crowd of onlookers gathered along the churchyard wall in the meantime. It was all young Frank Reid could do to keep them away, despite his official capacity, until Montfort stepped in and they scattered like sheep.
It took two stout draymen from the inn to place the woman’s body on a plank and carry it back to the inn after the coroner finished a cursory in situ examination. By that time, Abbot Pyon buzzed and nearly every inhabitant found it necessary to have business near the Dragon.
The coroner followed the corpse into a back room given over to him for the duration, and after he assured Montfort he needed him no longer, Montfort strode over to the rectory.
Latimer rang for the maid when he appeared in the rector’s study.
“Ale and sandwiches? They’re ready—Nellie just has to carry them in. Have some refreshment, then tell me the news. They say a woman staying at the Dragon was found dead near my church. By you.”
“Yes, one of the girls at The Dragon recognized her gown,” Montfort said between bites of roast beef and brown bread. He hadn’t eaten since breakfast. “She gave her name there as Mary Collins, but no one knows for sure where she came from.”
“A common enough name, and likely not her own,” Latimer observed. “Some unfortunate girl, then, lost to her family and destitute. It’s a pity she chose to destroy herself here...”
“Destroyed? Someone murdered the woman! I saw the marks around her throat! Some brute throttled the life out of her. And she must have fought back. Her hands were those of a lady, but they were cut and scraped as though she had clung to something rough or been dragged.
“If there was misfortune,” he added, “it must have been recent. Her gown was good-quality stuff, as were her boots, far too fine for the outdoors.”
“Her clothing was torn?” Latimer asked.
“As to whether she’d been interfered with, that’s impossible to determine,” Montfort said, catching his meaning instantly. “The damage to her clothing could just as easily come from catching on stones or branches in the water. The coroner deduced she fell or was thrown into the beck upstream from the village, though it’s impossible to say exactly where, or when. Davies says it couldn’t have been more than a day or two.”
“Whatever led him to conclude that? Has he taken to speaking with spirits?” Latimer scoffed.
“Her body was not much altered, hence the time. And there were leaves entangled in her clothing. I recognized them as rhododendron fortunei—the only plantation hereabouts is in my park, near the beck.”
“You are quite the detective, Montfort. But I advise you to leave the matter to the coroner. You don’t need more scandal. The first thing you know, people will be saying you knew this woman,” Latimer said. “Let the coroner’s jury decide whether her death was an accident or not and where—though I suppose what you say puts paid to the possibility of either misadventure or suicide.
He cast a sheaf of papers aside.
“I shall have to rewrite my sermon for Sunday. This is a fearsome business and the parish will expect some topicality. ‘All flesh is grass,’ hardly seems suited. Perhaps Galatians will loosen someone’s tongue.”
“Be careful, Latimer, we don’t want to turn this into a witch hunt. Surely the man who did this is long gone.”
“Do you suppose some thug saw this Mary Collins in Hereford, followed her here and accosted her?”
“Why do you say Hereford, Latimer? She could have come as easily from half-a-dozen other places. Bristol. Or Cardiff.”
“I thought I heard someone say Hereford at the Dragon. I made my way over there earlier today to see if I could be of use.”
“And?”
“It was evident you had everything in hand, so I returned home to my labors.”
“Sally White says she took breakfast up to the woman before 6 this morning and her bed hadn’t been slept in. That’s one of the points the coroner’s jury will try to establish—the last time anyone saw her. That shouldn’t be difficult, since she was a stranger. There wouldn’t have been anywhere she could have gone without being noticed.”
“Perhaps she visited friends in the neighborhood?”
“That’s just it—too many perhapses.”
“You—the authorities—searched through her belongings for anything that would lead to her home or her business here?”
“Davies had Frank Reid seal up her room until the inquest. He hopes to convene that the day after tomorrow.” Montfort finished the last bite of his sandwich. “There’s another thing that’s troubling—she hadn’t been robbed. She wore a number of rings and the usual adornments you expect to see on a woman from a comfortable home. She carried a fine ladies’ pocket watch and several sovereigns in a purse in her pocket.”
“Perhaps the villain never intended to kill her and lost his nerve when he saw what he’d done?”
“Another ‘perhaps.’ Frankly, I prefer to think some personal quarrel is behind this. Otherwise, no one will rest easy even after this is resolved. We’re supposed to be out of the age of highwaymen and footpads.”
Latimer grunted. “The death of this unfortunate will be a seven-days wonder in the village, no doubt, but you and I have more important things to discuss. You were with Miss Burton today.”
“Is that a question?”
“No, it is an observation. You met her at The Dragon, walked with her to the old Watkins place, went in and shut the door—shocking behavior, Rhys!—and then took her behind the cottage, again where you were out of view of decent people for rather too long.” He grinned. “As pastor of this parish and your spiritual counselor, what am I supposed to think of such behavior?”
“There’s nothing to think, Edward. She wants to start a school for older students worth educating, and see to it they can afford to attend. It’s actually not a bad idea, though I’m surprised Joss thought of it as she claims, and I have a place suitable for the scheme. And we weren’t together that long.”
“You must be losing your touch. Or was today just your opening gambit? Do tell, Rhys. What’s the wench like? I want all the details. Did you buss her? Nibble on one of those delicate earlobes? Did she let you slip your hand up a silky thigh under her skirts when no one as looking?”
Montfort reddened.
“I see,” Latimer laughed. “The lady demurred. Clever girl! Perhaps she knows you too well already, thanks to Joss, and is on her guard. Or perhaps she fancies me better.”
“You!”
“Oh yes. I visited the bower of Miss Burton and her dull companion yesterday. We strolled in the garden and enjoyed a charming interlude in her summerhouse—though I refrained from revealing all its history. She cherishes it already as the place Joss did ‘his best work.’ If she only knew.”
“Go on,” Montfort growled.
“Only this. Miss Burton has agreed to let me assist her in organizing Joss’s papers. I’ll be spending hours with her every day while you are out studying leaves, chasing murderers and whatnot. That’s just the opportunity I need to convince the lady I am the protector she needs.”
“Suit yourself, Edward, but from what I’ve seen of Claire Burton so far, she has a mind of her own.” He rose. “It’s been a long day. Thanks for the food.”
Latimer walked with Montfort to the study door but stopped him from leaving, his arm across the oaken frame.
“I am in deadly earnest, Rhys,” he said, loo
king him straight in the face. “Claire Burton may not be every man’s first choice for a wife, all things considered, but I would marry her under the right circumstances. I am the kind of husband she needs. She’s flighty, but no worse than any other woman without a man to rule her. She’s refined, respectful, eager to be led.” He lowered his arm.
“And what can you offer her, Rhys? Think what you’ve done. You’re not fit to take another bride. I am willing to redeem her now, but I won’t take up your leavings if you can’t control yourself. What you really want is Oak Grove. I can promise you’ll have it. Don’t cock this up for both of us.”
By the time the gig pulled up to the front door of Oak Grove, Claire’s headache had subsided to a dull steady pain behind the eyes. Quiet greeted her in the front hall and she realized the time was scarcely two o’clock. Everyone, servants and Simmie alike, would be at the back of the house, taking a respite at their midday meal. On a fine day like this, Simmie was apt to be on the terrace.
She sent the servant hovering nearby to deal with Toddy and threw her hat and crop on a side table. She was headed for the broad staircase when Simmie emerged from the dining room to the left of the hall and intercepted her.
“Claire, dear! I’m so glad you’re back,” she said. “Mrs. Hanniman called. We’re just in here. Do join us. She is most interested in the school and has such a good idea.”
Then Simmie noticed the strain on Claire’s face. “What’s wrong? Was that Lord Montfort so very awful, then?”
“Oh no, Simmie.” She hesitated. “Something terrible happened in the village, and I’d like nothing better right now than to lie down and be cossetted like I was back in the nursery at Thurn.”
“I’ll make your apologies to Mrs. Hanniman then and look in on you in a bit.”
“No, no, Simmie. I won’t be self-indulgent. Let me make myself presentable and I’ll just step in for a few moments. A splash of cool water on my face may be all I need. If not, I’ll excuse myself. It will be wonderful to have another ally for the school and I don’t want her to think we’re not grateful for her interest. And Lord knows, she’s the only woman in the village willing to be civil to me.”