“After her husband’s dreadful scene, she’s likely only curious,” Iris said. “Everyone is now.”
“Maybe she thinks you’re my wife,” Padraig said smoothly and cut a perfect portion of venison with his knife. He admired it on the point, turning it this way and that. “You might encourage it.”
Iris turned her head, feeling as though Padraig Boyd set out to shock her with every word from his mouth tonight.
He was still contemplating the venison. “That would remove suspicion from you, would it nae?” He turned his head to regard her casually. “Perhaps if I kissed you again before everyone here it would remove all doubt. I’ve thought of nothing else, since.”
Iris tried to command her slack mouth to respond, but she couldn’t seem to drag her eyes away from Padraig Boyd’s shapely lips long enough to order her thoughts.
“There is no kissing at dinner,” she stammered stupidly.
“I see,” he said, nodding gravely. “Later, then.”
A strangled wheeze beyond Padraig’s wide back drew Iris’s attention, and she saw a writhing dark shape in the wedge of shadow between the wall and the floor.
“Padraig,” Iris gasped.
He dropped his knife with a clatter and bolted from his seat, Peter doing the same in the next instant. Both men went to where Cletus choked and thrashed on the stones, and a moment later, Lucan stood over them.
“We need help here,” Padraig shouted toward the hall. “A man is ill.” He met Iris’s eyes.
Iris looked to the forgotten piece of meat still speared on Padraig’s knife, the dripping coagulating from the cut like blood.
“What is it?” Lord Hargrave’s voice rang out curiously over the din. “What’s happened?” His tone conveyed a feigned interest in the scene, much as one might in a simplistic riddle being put to them by a child.
The servants helped Padraig and Lucan lift the twitching Cletus between them and began shuffling toward the exit of the hall. Iris gained her feet but then paused, fixing the rest of their dinner companions with a stern look.
“Don’t eat or drink anything on this table,” she warned in a low whisper, and then Iris hurried after Padraig.
* * * *
They went as far as the doorway that led to the courtyard before they were forced to place Cletus on the floor of the corridor beneath a torch. He had retched and fouled himself so that the close space smelled like a slaughterhouse, and now only the man’s left arm twitched slightly. His gaze was fixed, unblinking, and only the faintest of wheezes came from him, the silence between his gasps growing longer, longer…
Swift footfalls approached from the blackness, and in a moment the fat priest, Kettering, appeared, still masticating a portion of his meal. Beryl arrived on his heels, and she brought a delicate hand to her face covering her nose and mouth at the stench.
Kettering approached. “Step aside, if you please, gentlemen.” He lowered to one knee with a grunt and then leaned toward Cletus’s face, peering into the man’s unseeing eyes. He waved a hand before his face, snapped his fingers, then lowered his ear above the man’s mouth.
Father Kettering crossed himself, muttering a string of Latin. He made the same sign in the air over Cletus and then rose to his feet with a groan. He turned to Padraig.
“He’s dead.”
Padraig felt as though he’d been butted in the stomach by a ram. He’d held no love for Cletus when he was alive, but the idea that the man had died within arm’s reach of him was hardly comprehensible.
“What am I to do for him?” Padraig asked.
“Not much at this point, I’m afraid, besides bury him,” Kettering allowed, his eyes repeatedly flicking to Padraig’s chest. “The hunt will be breakfasting afield in the morn.”
Lucan chimed in. “I do doubt Lord Hargrave would miss out on the festivities to attend the funeral of such a base servant.”
Kettering frowned. “In any case, Cletus was Master Boyd’s servant at the time of his death. Lord Hargrave shall not be pressed into attendance by propriety.”
“Therefore it is my responsibility to see to his burial,” Padraig acknowledged. The priest’s expression of upset had deepened. “Surely you doona think the man’s death is my fault?”
“What? No, I—” Kettering broke off, his eyes once more going to Padraig’s chest. “I only—Master Boyd, where did you get that?” He pointed to the pin fashioned to the fan of plaid on Padraig’s chest.
Padraig dropped his chin to look down, and he absently touched the wooden peg with a finger. “It was given to me by my da. He—”
Before Padraig could finish, the priest reached out and ripped the pin from his tunic, the fabric between the slits giving way with a tear.
“How dare you,” Kettering gritted between his teeth, and then he shook his fist in Padraig’s face, his fingers gripping the pin until the skin was white about his knuckles. “How dare you? Have you Blake’s prayer book as well?”
Chapter 12
Padraig drew back his head. “I doona ken what you’re talking about, Father. What prayer book?”
But Kettering only scowled at him with watering eyes before turning his attention to the male servants. “Bring the body to the chapel.”
Padraig reached out for the wooden brooch. “I’ll be having that back—”
Father Kettering flung his arm in a wide, surprisingly powerful arc, knocking Padraig’s grasping hand away. “You’ll not touch it again,” he growled. Then he turned and strode through the doorway, disappearing into the darkness of the courtyard.
The stench was horrible, but the oppressive atmosphere left by the priest was worse. Padraig looked at Lucan and Beryl in turn as Peter and another pair of servants struggled to lift Cletus’s limp, soiled corpse and then shuffled with it through the doorway. Beryl’s face glowed as white as the moon
