Beryl couldn’t help her gasp. “An army riding on Darlyrede?” She turned her gaze to the lady once more.
But rather than showing frightened dismay, Caris Hargrave’s chest heaved—the high neck of her dressing gown gaping around her spindly throat, emphasizing the anatomy of her windpipe and tendons. “I would not prefer,” she said through her clenched teeth. “Beryl, go below in my stead. Find out who this person is, and if we are truly to be laid siege to.”
“Of course, my lady,” Beryl said, scrambling from the bed.
“And take him with you,” Caris added bitterly. “It is well known that there are to be no men in Lady Euphemia’s chamber. Rolf?”
“Milady?”
“Should your boots ever again cross the threshold of this chamber, you will be set from this house, and I care not what Lord Hargrave should say. Do you understand?”
Rolf bowed awkwardly as he backed through the doorway. “Aye, milady. Forgive me, milady.”
“Come on,” Beryl muttered as she swept past the nonplussed steward and into the corridor.
She struggled to keep pace with the long-legged man as they fairly flew down the polished stone staircase. They were yet two floors above the entry of Darlyrede House, and already Beryl could hear the echoes of angry shouts, words without form; blustering accusations and loud reports of footfalls from below.
Beryl’s heart pounded as she rounded the balustrade on the second floor, but it was not from exertion or fear; she was angry.
I want to tell you a secret…
What had Lady Hargrave wanted to tell her? Was it something more about Euphemia’s disappearance? Perhaps she was poised to incriminate her husband. So many whispers of Vaughn Hargrave, so many peculiarities about the man. The way he sometimes looked at Beryl made her skin crawl.
Has he touched you? I don’t like it when he touches my girls…
The missing servants, the missing villagers. They couldn’t be blamed on Thomas Annesley, gone from Darlyrede House for more than thirty years. He was supposed to have been located early that year, executed in London. But he had vanished again.
Like Euphemia Hargrave.
Like the villagers.
Like the purses of the wealthy nobles who dared travel unguarded over the road of the moor.
Perhaps it could all be blamed on the band of criminals inhabiting the wood beyond Darlyrede. Caris Hargrave was likely justified in her heartbreaking hope that her niece had met a quick and accidental end. If young Euphemia—a physically frail, sheltered noblewoman barely out of childhood—had had the misfortune of encountering those base thieves, her fate would likely have been quite gruesome indeed. Beryl had stood for what probably amounted to days now, staring at the portraits of Euphemia Hargrave that welcomed visitors in the entry hall of Darlyrede House. Euphemia at seven, with her wolfhound; Euphemia at ten and two, in close profile; Euphemia at fifteen, one pale hand resting on the back of a chair, a single white lily in the other.
Her hair had been the color of winter sunshine, her blue eyes too big for her dainty, heart-shaped face, and always she wore an expression that hinted she was watching something frightening unfold just beyond the gilt frame.
I want to tell you a secret…
Damn it all! Whoever this person was who had destroyed the moment of victory Beryl had been working toward so diligently, so carefully, for six months, had better brought a large army with him, for if Vaughn Hargrave didn’t see the interloper dead, Beryl felt she might just be so inclined.
She hastily crossed herself for the sinful thought out of habit.
Beryl and Rolf gained the main floor in nearly the same instant, and both slowed their running to brisk strides as they came upon the rear of the motley group gathered on the marble paving before the large main door. A collection of servants and men-at-arms formed a barrier behind the tall, gray-haired figure in the center.
Lord Vaughn Hargrave.
Rolf penetrated the line easily, slipping between the house servants and disappearing, while Beryl was left to struggle against the flank of the older head maid.
“Let me through,” she said, seeking to wedge her body into the crowd.
The woman buffeted her back with such force that Beryl staggered on her feet. She felt her eyebrows lower and then she charged forward again, pulling at the woman’s gown.
“I said, let me through—Lady Hargrave sent me.”
The woman jerked the folds of her gown from Beryl’s hand with an ugly frown and then sent her through to the center of the group with a shove.
The sheer number of people pressed together should have prevented her fall, but as Beryl tried to regain her balance, the servants moved away from her as if on cue, and she went down on the marble with a frightened shriek, her palms slapping the cold stone, her nose only a hair’s breadth from smashing against the floor as she slid to a stop nearly at the toes of Lord Hargrave’s costly boots.
And another set of footwear—this one dark and dull and old; gouged and stained and mended. If this was the visitor, he was not worldly.
“What in the devil’s name is this about?” Vaughn Hargrave demanded in a series of barks.
Beryl got her knees under her and then felt a hand grasp the crook of her elbow firmly, helping her to stand. “Forgive me, my lord.”
She raised her face at last and saw that it was not the barrel-chested, malevolent lord of Darlyrede who had assisted her, but the owner of the old boots. She looked into his face and her heart fluttered a half beat, throwing off the rhythm of her anger, her humiliation.
His hair was the color of polished oak, curling in a lock over his forehead, his eyes blue like the sky in their depth and clarity; his features seemed to be set with precision within the frame of his face, his skin bronzed and supple-looking beneath the stubbled beard of a traveler even in this late time of the year, when all other Englishmen were already
