The situation could not stand.
Clearly, it could not, for Marlow must not be allowed to infect the entire staff with his deleterious judgments.
As it was, she could not hear the perfectly anodyne your grace without flinching. How much worse would her twitching problem be when those words were tinged with scorn? Would her entire body convulse?
Even if she was not addressed with derision on a single occasion, the result would be the same because it was what she believed was happening that shaped her reality, not the events themselves.
This fact she also knew from painful firsthand experience because she had suffered a horrendous slight soon after her come-out and had allowed it to ruin the rest of the season. Then she had allowed it to ruin the next season and the next until her aspirations were a hollow echo too faint for even her to hear.
Could it happen again?
Oh, yes, she thought, so very easily. Kesgrave House had an excellent library in which she could happily bury herself for decades.
But she did not want to let the mistakes of the past repeat themselves. Last time, she had fallen silent, sanctioning her own exile and withering on the edges of society. By not defending herself, she had created her own terrible consequences.
Here, however, Bea had to pause and, recalling the duke’s ministrations yesterday, last night and that morning as well as the lovely conservatory with the pink, purple and yellow flowers, conceded that perhaps terrible was not the most accurate description of the consequences she had been forced to endure.
Even so, she had learned her lesson well from Miss Brougham: Allow an imposing creature to define the terms of your existence and six or seven years later she will lead you to your destruction like a lamb to the slaughter.
Patently, Marlow would never stoop to conspiring with Lord Tavistock, as Bea’s archnemesis had, but it was impossible to say what other form his spite might take. And if he was turning the servants against her one by one…
No, she thought furiously, the matter had to be dealt with swiftly and firmly, and resenting the obligation, she had tugged the bell cord.
A footman entered almost immediately, a courtesy that disconcerted her slightly, for at Portman Square one usually had to wait a minute or two for a servant to appear and Kesgrave House was so much larger. Plainly, she stated her request and was further disconcerted when she was informed that Joseph was already present.
“I am Joseph, your grace,” he explained.
“Ah, yes, of course you are,” she said, regretting Mrs. Wallace’s thwarted assemblage of the staff more than ever. Formal introductions would not have necessarily solved the problem, for footmen were inevitably a matched set and therefore hard to distinguish even after being made individually known, but at the very least she would have been aware of the function Joseph served within the household. “Then just Marlow, please. Thank you.”
As Bea waited for Joseph to return with the butler, she was pleasantly surprised to find herself utterly calm at the prospect of the confrontation. She took a breath and discovered that it was not at all constrained by the wild beating of her heart. Her heartbeat, moreover, was barely discernable.
She ascribed her strange composure to her eagerness to perform the task at hand—no, not deflating the pretensions of a portentous butler, for that aspect of the encounter properly terrified her. Rather, she was excited to probe the mystery of Monsieur Alphonse’s grisly death. She might have no idea how to be a duchess, but she certainly knew a thing or two about being an investigator and the sense of familiarity and competence she felt was all she needed to breathe easily. Here, finally, was solid ground.
Terra firma, she thought in homage to her cousin Russell’s inadequate Latin.
Kesgrave would be appalled, of course, but even the prospect of his strenuous objection felt wonderfully familiar. He would argue that she was breaking her word, and she would counter that any promise made under duress was not binding. Then she would add that this particular situation did not meet the terms of their agreement because the neighbor’s body had not fallen in her path. In fact, she had no clue where his body had fallen. Then he would remind her of the spirit of her vow, and she would point out that she made no vow at all, thanks to Mr. Bertram’s offended sensibilities. (“I will not condone the denigration and mockery of the sacred institution of marriage with the introduction of gruesome and violent imagery. If that is what you require, you must seek it elsewhere.”)
Oh, yes, Bea was eager to begin and could feel no sense of guilt or impropriety at the thought of investigating a murder from the high perch of a duchy. She had done everything correctly, even agreeing to adjust her vows, and still the decapitated corpse of Monsieur Alphonse had been delivered to her feet. She would never presume to know the strange workings of Providence or fate, but it did seem pretty clear to her that some higher power desired her assistance.
It would be discourteous to withhold it.
The door to the drawing room opened, and Marlow’s intimidating form entered, followed by Joseph. The two men were of the same height, but whereas the footman was lithe and narrow, the butler was thick and wide, with shoulders that seemed to stretch from one bank of the Thames to the other. It was the stoutness of his form, the way he stood as resolute as an oak tree, that made him so menacing.
His disdainful black brows were merely a bonus—gilding, for example, on a lily.
Examining his blank expression, Bea detected no emotion at all, and although she had not expected
