by Lynn Messina
Apparently, his grandmother did too, for she interrupted his exceedingly dull catalog (“patched up Wellington’s knee after he suffered a musket ball at the Battle of Seringapatam”) to castigate him for failing to introduce his guest.
“You are Miss Hyde-Clare, I trust,” she said, raising her voice as she turned to address Bea across the room. “Get away from that window. At six and twenty you are far too old to place yourself in the path of natural daylight.”
“Grandmother…” Kesgrave growled warningly.
“That sound you hear is my grandson ordering me to be polite,” she explained. “Very well, I shall. Miss Hyde-Clare, please get away from that window exposing you to unflattering sunlight. There, I hope you are satisfied.”
“No,” he said. “Are you?”
The dowager echoed his negative answer but spoke in such a gratified tone one could only believe the opposite to be true. Even in her state of heightened anxiety, Bea found it impossible not to smile at the older woman’s antics.
“That damn fool Sutton, bringing three teacups when I specifically told him you would need only two,” her grace said peevishly, as she reached down to remove one from the tray. “He is an unrepentant profligate.”
Startled, Bea darted a glance at Kesgrave, who didn’t seem at all surprised by her intention not to join them. She opened her mouth to protest, for she dreaded the prospect of being alone with the duke, but realizing she feared his grandmother more, promptly shut it again.
Although Bea did not say a word, the dowager responded as if she’d spoken. “No, no, I can’t stay. I’m not invited,” she explained with a cross look at her grandson. “In fact, I’ve been given strict instructions not to linger. You’ve got Damien all worked up with your lying and he’s eager to light into you.”
“I did not lie,” Bea said.
“Yes, you did,” Kesgrave said.
Her grace laughed with genuine amusement, and Bea marveled at how much younger she appeared. “I’ll leave you to work it out. Damien brought you here because I have a reputation as a stickler and no one would dare imply anything untoward had happened under my chaperonage. Added to that, I trust my grandson implicitly. Nevertheless, this door will remain open. I wish you the best of luck in sorting out your difference of opinion, and if either one of you is compelled to throw something at the other—and here I am thinking mostly of you, Miss Hyde-Clare, as I know the Matlock men can be singularly immune to reason—do stay away from the blue vase by the window. It’s worth very little but has great sentimental value to me.”
Bea watched her leave with a mixture of relief and disappointment. She was grateful to be free of the older woman’s discerning eye, for surely she had noticed her absurd outfit and would have said something cutting about it sooner or later. But she also regretted the lost opportunity to find out more about the duke, for watching him interact with his relative had been a revelation.
As intriguing as his relationship with the dowager was, gathering notes on the Matlock family dynamic was not the reason she was there.
Purposefully, she turned to him. “I did not lie.”
“You did,” he said, more calmly. “In exchange for my returning you to the Sylvan Press to interview Mr. Cornyn, you gave your word that you would cease investigating the horrible deaths that keep crossing your path. And do not trot out the meaningless semantical distinction that this particular corpse did not cross your path.”
“Ah, but it isn’t meaningless, your grace,” Bea said lightly, for she was on firm footing with her argument and felt confident in her reasoning. He may be impervious to logic, as his grandmother had observed, but that didn’t mean her logic was flawed. “Words matter. Specificity of ideas matters. Perhaps grasping the significance of that will be a salutary lesson for you. The next time you try to limit a woman’s movements, be more precise in your restrictions. Take care in outlining the boundaries. Do not expect that she will fill in the blank spaces for you. Verily, I could argue with myself that when you said corpses that cross your path, you really meant any method by which a corpse entered my life, but I really don’t see why I should have to do the hard work of interpretation. Indeed, I’m already working hard, as I have to maneuver from under your restrictions. If you are displeased with the bargain you made, that is your responsibility, not mine. Now, if that is all, I shall return to my day and let you carry on with yours. Do thank your grandmother for her hospitality and please express my regret that we did not have a chance to chat further.”
Bea turned to walk to the door as if she were about to leave, but she was too clever to believe the matter had actually been settled. Kesgrave would now make his long speech explaining why her reasoning was fallible and insist that she comply with the original compact. Given his penchant for pedantry, she imagined he would cite legal precedent and local statutes and Broughton’s rules for boxing.
She sighed wearily, for she did not have time for such a long and pointless address. Her promising investigative lead had gone nowhere, thanks to Kesgrave’s machinations, and she needed to go home, change into a respectable walking grown, figure out how to finagle information about his stuff dealer from her uncle without raising his suspicions, change back into Annie’s dress and sneak out of the house for the second time that day. To minimize the likelihood of being intercepted on the way to the door, she’d utilized the servants’ entrance, which came with its own hazards. Now she would have to slip past Mrs. Emerson and Dawson three more times.
“You confirm it, then?” the duke said.
Surprised by the comment, Bea halted only a few feet from the door and looked at him. “That I outwitted you? Yes, your grace, I readily confirm it.”
He shook his head dismissively. “Your interest in Lord Penwortham’s mixture—it’s in pursuit of a murderer. Despite your promise to me, you’ve embroiled yourself in another investigation.”
“On the contrary, I did not promise to callously refuse a plea for help from a distraught source who did not know where else to turn,” she said calmly. “Once again, if you had thought to include such a provision in our agreement, I would have of course turned this person away.”
“Someone asked you to investigate a murder?” he said, thoroughly appalled. “Please assure me you did not advertise your services.”
Advertise, Bea thought speculatively. That option hadn’t occurred to her when she was trying to devise ways to locate another mystery in need of solving.
“No, Miss Hyde-Clare, no,” he said firmly, responding to the expression on her face, which indicated he had given her an idea worthy of consideration. “I was not making a suggestion. Please, sit down. Let me pour the tea and we will discuss this rationally.”
Although the offer was everything gracious, she eyed him suspiciously. “If by ‘discuss this rationally’ you mean talk me out of my current course of action, then, no, thank you, I’d rather not. And you will note, I hope, how I’m not assuming your words are limited to their surface meaning. I’m digging deeper to examine all possible interpretations. I say this as a way of demonstrating how you might approach all your negotiations in the future,” she explained with meticulous condescension. “It’s shocking to me that you’re a member of the House of Lords and don’t understand how slippery oaths can be.”
“Bea!”
She sat down.
Kesgrave took the chair adjacent to the settee, filled two teacups and handed one to her. “The brew will be tepid because my grandmother’s grasp is uncertain and the housekeeper does not want her to scald herself. I trust you will not mind.”
“Of course not,” she said amicably.
After taking a sip of tea, he leaned back in the chair and said with deceptive mildness, “I could tell your aunt and uncle.”
So much for a rational discussion, she thought, feeling far less affable now that his opening maneuver was to issue threats. But her demeanor revealed none of her anger as she answered matter-of-factly. “You could, yes, but it would be a be
trayal of such cruelty I could never forgive it.”
His calm nod gave no indication if such an outcome would be problematic for him. “At least you would be unharmed.”
Bea laughed without amusement. “Would I, your grace? Would I truly be unharmed?”
As with many things, the question contained the answer, and she watched the expression on his face as he considered how her family might respond to the news of her investigative activities. They would not beat her or physically abuse her—in that way, he was correct, she would not be harmed—but they would react in anger and deny her freedom. And that was to say nothing of the damage it would do to her spirit and heart.
Raising her teacup, Bea made a quick calculation and said with straightforward candor, “I do not think my French maid story is quite as irresistible as I supposed when I came up with it this morning. It’s impossible to say, though, as your interference ensured that it did not get the proper trial run it deserves. I suspect Monsieur Dupasquier would have been more sympathetic to my plight if he did not know you were waiting in the wings to relieve him of my desperate presence. Am I right, by the way, in assuming you sent me to the wrong place?”
He confirmed her supposition with an abrupt nod.
“What gave me away?” she asked.
“You said it was a birthday gift for your uncle,” he explained. “And while I find that in itself highly suspect, the fact is we gave Lady Abercrombie the same excuse when we asked her about the jade dagger.”
Bea shook her head, slightly amused by how the mind worked. “No wonder it had come to me so quickly.”
“No wonder.”
“Well, regardless of how it was contrived, this morning’s exchange at the old established firm of Dupasquier and Morny makes me less than sanguine about my gambit’s success in the future. With that in mind, I’d like to suggest a partnership.”
Ah, he wasn’t expecting that, Bea thought with satisfaction as surprise overcame his features.
“A partnership?”
“Your grace,” she said, leaning forward while balancing the teacup delicately on her knee, “it has long been my goal to pursue and identify the perpetrators of these crimes in private. On all three occasions I have examined the evidence on my own and neither sought nor requested your assistance, and yet here we are, implausibly, in your grandmother’s drawing room. For reasons neither you nor I can understand, you keep inserting yourself into matters that have nothing to do with you. Undoubtedly, you are operating under some sort of compulsion, and I would never seek to deny you something you need. Indeed, it seems much more sensible to make use of it, so, yes, I propose a partnership. We solve the matter of who killed Mr. Wilson together.”
The word together echoed in her head as Bea wondered if what she was proposing would do her further harm. Having never been in love before, she could not properly estimate the damage yet to be done, but it seemed to her that the system itself must be finite. There could not be degrees of misery. She was already devastated. What else was left?
Giving the matter additional thought, she conceded that watching Kesgrave court Lady Victoria would provide her with a new and different sort of pain. But would it be a larger pain?
That she couldn’t say.
Nevertheless, she felt fairly certain that identifying Mr. Wilson’s murderer together would not increase the likelihood of her having to spend more time with the beautiful heiress. If anything, it would ensure that she spent less.
Having made her bold offer, the last thing Bea expected from the duke was amusement, but he smiled brightly at her, as if relieved, and said, “Mr. Wilson?”
“Yes,” she said definitively.
“The same Mr. Wilson you were so convinced had secretly infiltrated the Skeffington household, you found yourself unceremoniously locked in a shed by our hosts’ son?” he asked. “The one who was almost assuredly on a ship home from India, if not still in that country, the whole time you were placing him at the top of your list of suspects? Is that the Mr. Wilson you mean?”
Ah, so that explained his attitude—he was convinced she was investigating the murder of a phantom. She knew she should not take offense, but his conclusion was as insulting as her aunt’s conviction that exposure to Mr. Otley’s corpse and Mr. Davies’s death had corrupted her ability to think clearly. Nevertheless, she told herself she should be relieved, for her original plan to stay out of the duke’s path still seemed like the most sensible one.
“I did not expect you to make light of my suffering, but, yes, that Mr. Wilson. To be clear, then, you are declining to lend your assistance to my investigation? I trust this is the end of it, your grace. You will stay out of my path when I, employing a different ruse, hopefully one more successful than fear of being cast out by a cruel mistress, attempt to persuade another shopkeeper to give me access to his list of clients?” she asked, not entirely sure if she was trying to be provoking or merely expressing a sincere hope. “Naturally, I will stay out of your way, as well, although I trust it goes without saying that I would never stand in the way of any man in his pursuit of insipid children. After all, dull progeny are the birthright of the ruling class.”
And there it was, she thought sardonically as she observed herself coming down decisively on the side of provoking.
Alas, Kesgrave didn’t rise to the bait. Rather, he calmly explained that he’d assumed she had been mocking him by naming Mr. Wilson as the victim. “You will own that you enjoy teasing me.”
Bea stared at him with her eyes wide and innocent, but she couldn’t quite smother the smirk that rose to her lips. To hide it, she dipped her head into the teacup.
“Is he truly dead?” Kesgrave asked, leaning forward. “How did he die? How did you become involved? Was Mrs. Otley the distraught source who was so desperate she requested your help?”
“Not at all,” she said, recalling how little the widow had welcomed her assistance. “It was Mr. Skeffington.”
Unaware that the young heir had been courting the Incomparable Miss Otley, let alone that their relationship had progressed so far as sanctioning murder investigation requests on the other’s behalf, the duke tilted his head at this apparent non sequitur. “Mr. Skeffington?”
Bea refreshed her cup of tea, noting that it had progressed from tepid to cool, and settled in to give him a full explanation of recent events. She left nothing out, starting with Mr. Skeffington’s wish to make amends for his behavior at Lakeview Hall and ending with her realization that the snuffbox in the pocket of Mr. Wilson’s banyan was far too expensive to have been purchased by him.
As Kesgrave was unable to contain his shock at several developments, the narration took far longer than she’d expected.
His first interruption came immediately after she explained that she’d examined Mr. Wilson while he was still in bed.
“In his nightclothes?” the duke gasped.
Although he did not turn pink at the notion, his discomfort was plain and Bea had to squelch the laughter that rose in her throat. It was so impossibly funny that she, a spinster of advancing years, was less prudish than a duke who must have had several if not dozens of mistresses. “Yes, in his nightclothes. It didn’t strike me as prudent to have the butler dress him in his afternoon attire and arrange him in the sitting room. For one thing, it would have been ghoulish to see a dead man with the affect of an alive one. Furthermore, it would have ruined any opportunity for me to gather useful information from the scene itself. But that is just my opinion and you should of course feel free to attire and arrange the next corpse you examine in whatever way is least offensive to your sensibilities.”
She’d meant to make him feel ridiculous for his scruples, but he merely thanked her for the suggestion and promised he would indeed keep it in mind should the situation arise.
He gasped again, this time in awe, when she explained how she had settled on nux vomica as the poison that felled the former opium smuggler.
“Even if I were half as well-read as yo
u, I would never have been able to sort through so much information to arrive at the correct conclusion,” he said admiringly.
Now she did blush.
“To be fair, we don’t know if my conclusion is accurate,” she felt compelled to admit. “However, I think the best course is to assume I’m correct until new evidence surfaces to refute it.”
“Why do you think the poison was delivered via snuff?” he asked.
“The snuffbox was elaborate and well-made, with gold filigree, and the materials and craftsmanship were far too refined to be the possession of a man of his standing,” she explained. “The snuff itself was quite expensive as well, as you yourself pointed out. It seems more likely that Mr. Wilson received both as a gift. Discovering who had purchased the sort recently would give us a list of names of suspects to be examined further. As you are determined to thrust yourself into my investigation—”
“I’m reasonably sure your suggestion of a partnership is what is generally called an invitation by everyone else,” he murmured.
“—you can peer imperiously down at the snuff dealer, presumably the correct one this time, from your great ducal height and intimidate him into providing us with the information we seek,” she said.
“I’m merely an inch above six feet, which is hardly towering,” he said mildly.
“Naturally, you would feel compelled to point out the distinction,” she allowed graciously, “but I was speaking figuratively in my description. If I’d meant to be literal, I would have said ‘peered down from your slightly-taller-than-the-average-gentleman ducal height.’”
Kesgrave’s lips twitched at the rebuke. “Of course. Lord Penwortham’s sort is actually mixed and distributed by the Mercer Brothers, which is on Clifford Street. Although I’m not a customer, I’m familiar with the establishment and am confident the proprietor will respond positively to my request for information. I suppose it’s too much to ask that you trust me to make this inquiry on my own and report back on my progress? Yes?” he said, reading her expression. “I thought so. As the long-suffering French maid did not prosper in the way you’d hoped, I assume you will be going as Mr. Wright, my steward.”