No, with a modesty even her indiscriminately censorious Aunt Vera would admire, Bea held her impish sense of humor in check for a full fifteen minutes and did not allow even one faintly amused chuckle to escape her until they were firmly ensconced in Kesgrave’s bedchamber.
Then she laughed and laughed and laughed.
And so did the duke.
Chapter Thirteen
In a pleasant state of languid satiation, her head resting on Kesgrave’s shoulder, the candles burning low, a glass of warming champagne on the night table beside a plate with four biscuits and half a gooseberry tart, Bea said, “What about the severed head? Could there be a particular meaning in the way he was killed, with violent hacks to the neck? We don’t know how it was actually managed, but I cannot imagine it is easy to cut through muscle and bone, even with a very sharp cleaver. If ending his life was the intention, then slicing open his gut would have achieved the same end with considerably less effort.”
As these observations were preceded by nothing remotely similar, their most recent exchange consisting mostly of delighted sighs mingled with murmurs of endearment, she would not have been offended if he protested the gruesome turn her thoughts had taken. An eyebrow raised archly, perhaps, as he commented on her charming conversation.
But he did not. Rather, he brushed the hair gently from her forehead and allowed that one would not be wrong in drawing certain conclusions from the ferocity of the act. “But I think it would be erroneous to build your argument from there. People behave in incomprehensible ways.”
Bea knew it to be true and said with regret, “It is a shame we do not have the body to examine.”
“It is?” Kesgrave asked, his amused tone indicating that he thought precisely the opposite.
“Obviously, I am as horrified as anyone by the notion of scrutinizing a severed corpse, but there is much information to be discovered from it,” she explained, shifting slightly so she could address him directly. “I believe the roughness of the cut would tell us how the job was managed, which would give us some indication of who could have done it. Or mayhap he died of another wound that was overlooked. Having the body would aid in our investigation.”
Smiling, he shook his head slightly and said, “No, I don’t think that’s true.”
Bea considered him with a look of fond condescension and attributed their disparity in their opinions to his lack of experience. “You have not been presented yet with a corpse to know how much information is to be gathered from one.”
“No, brat,” he said with a pinch on her hip that caused her to squeal and squirm. “I meant I do not believe you are as horrified by the notion as everyone else. I don’t think you are horrified at all and instead regret the opportunity to acquire knowledge about the human body and file it away in your remarkable brain for some future use.”
He spoke lightly, without resentment or anger, as if making an anodyne observation about the condition of the drapes (quite excellent, as far as she could tell, with no fraying or fading), and yet the topic was not the trifle his tone implied.
Here, now, they had arrived at the heart of it, and she could not say if he had stumbled ineptly into difficult territory or strode confidently. She had known their brief exchange in Mr. Mayhew’s drawing room would not be the end of it, and he had every right to protest her involvement in another murder. The words themselves did not matter—the pledge she made, the vow she did not—because people were governed by expectations, not contracts. She knew what Kesgrave wanted and expected from a wife, and if she’d had no intention of providing it, then she should never have married him.
He would help her carry out this current investigation, of that she had no doubt, for he had demonstrated himself to be reasonable and kind time and again. But it was the future they were discussing now and he would make it clear once and for all that this strange hobby of hers would end here. All he had to do was state it simply, as he was her husband and no longer had to bother with pledges and vows. His word was law, conferred by church and state, and she was bound by the same institutions to follow it.
She had anticipated this moment for over two weeks and yet was startled to discover she was not prepared for it. It was the setting, she told herself, the intimacy of the marriage bed, the lovely lethargy of physical satisfaction, so unfamiliar and unexpected, that made her feel unsettled, as if, vaguely, he was rejecting some part of her. Two things had entered her life during that extraordinary sojourn to the Lake District—Kesgrave and murder—and they felt inexorably entwined. Staring at the duke athwart the cooling corpse of Mr. Otley in the darkened library, she had changed, and as much as she knew that agreeing to halt her investigations would not change her back to the woman she had been before, drab and silent, she could not quite smother the fear.
’Twas wholly irrational because she knew it was not her pose as an amateur Runner that had secured his affection. It was her wit and intelligence and courage and a sense of humor so impish it actually made her appear beautiful.
Oh, but what part of love was rational, she wondered, feeling as though one of the barriers that kept the old Bea at bay was about to be demolished.
Determined to delay the conversation for a little while longer, she extricated herself from his arms to don the night rail that had been discarded in haste next to the bed. Raising an eyebrow archly, she smiled and said, “You think my brain is remarkable, your grace?”
But the gown wasn’t enough. Even with it
