He wondered what had moved her to extend the hand of salvation to this woman. A chance meeting of the eyes, perhaps? Some intuitive recognition by the young, heartsick Earl’s daughter that this other woman, this widowed mother of a dying baby, knew a despair far, far greater than her own?
“I wanted to die, too,” said Tess Bishop, her voice little more than a whisper. “But Lady Guinevere, she said I mustn’t. She said if we’re given a hard road to walk in life, we just have to fight to find some way to make what we want out of what life has given us.”
“And she hired you as her lady’s maid? Even though you’d no experience?”
Tess Bishop’s head came up, her lips crimped together in stubborn pride. “I worked hard to learn, and I’m quick. I haven’t let her ladyship down. I’d do anything for her.”
“You’re letting her down right now,” said Sebastian, pressing his advantage. “If you were really willing to do anything for her, you’d help me figure out who murdered her.”
She leaned forward, her small gray eyes flashing with unexpected fire. “I can tell you who killed her. His name is Bevan Ellsworth. He’s Lord Anglessey’s nephew and he’s wanted her dead ever since the day she married his uncle four years ago.”
“Wanting someone dead and actually going so far as to kill them are two very different things.”
Tess Bishop shook her head, her nostrils flaring on a hastily indrawn breath. “You didn’t hear him. You didn’t hear him when he came here—”
“When was this?”
“Just last week. Monday, I think it was. He came storming into the house while her ladyship was at breakfast. Shouting so loud we all heard him, about how his creditors had learned she was with child and that he might not be the next Marquis of Anglessey after all. He said they were threatening him—threatening his life, even. And then he threatened her.”
“Threatened her? How was that?”
“He said he’d see her dead before he’d let her foist her bastard in his place.”
A sampler hung on the wall just behind the abigail’s head, a sampler worked in silk thread against a linen background. Sebastian stared at it, at the neatly stitched flowers intricately entwined around the letters of the alphabet. But he wasn’t really seeing it. He was remembering the glitter of hatred in Bevan Ellsworth’s eyes, and the sound made by a boy’s arm breaking on the playing fields of Eton.
“What did her ladyship do?” Sebastian asked.
“She told him to get out. And when he said he’d go all right and tell everyone who’d listen that she’d been playing the whore, she…” The abigail’s voice trailed off.
“She what?”
Tess Bishop’s color was high. She hesitated, then said in a rush, “She laughed. She said he’d only show himself to be the fool he was, because her son would be the next marquis even if he’d been begotten by a hunchback in the gutters.”
It was a legal principle that had come down to them from the Romans, a doctrine known as
“You’ll have to excuse me now, sir,” said the abigail, pushing to her feet. “His lordship has asked me to help with organizing the staff’s mourning clothes.”
Sebastian rose with her. “Yes, of course.” He kept his voice casual, although deep within his breast, his heart had begun to beat uncommonly fast. “There’s just one other thing I wanted to ask. You wouldn’t happen to know where her ladyship got the necklace she was wearing the day she died, would you?”
“Necklace?” Tess Bishop wrinkled her forehead in a frown. “What necklace?”
Slipping the bluestone triskelion from his pocket, Sebastian held it out in the palm of his hand. “This one.”
She studied it for a moment, then shook her head decisively. “That’s not her ladyship’s.”
For an instant, Sebastian imagined he could feel the necklace burning his flesh, although the stone was cold in the dreary light of the rainy day. “She died wearing it.”
“But that’s impossible.”
“How is that?”
“Because she was wearing the Pompeian that afternoon.”
“I beg your pardon?” said Sebastian, not understanding.
“The walking dress of Pompeian red. It’s made high at the neck, with an upstanding collar and raised epaulets, and worn with a goffered lawn fraise.”
“A what?”
“A fraise. It’s a kind of neck ruff with three tiers,” said Tess Bishop, impatient with his ignorance and anxious to be gone. “Her ladyship could never have worn a necklace with that dress.”
BEVAN ELLSWORTH, nephew of the Marquis of Anglessey and heir presumptive of all his lands and titles, kept a small suite of rooms two floors above an exclusive shop on St. James’s Street.
Using the skills he’d honed over five years in the army doing things no gentleman should ever do, Sebastian let himself in the main door from the hall. He found himself in a small parlor, opulently furnished if untidily kept, with riding boots left lying discarded across the Aubusson rug and a scattering of invitations and unpaid bills spilling off an ornate inlaid desk.
