Iris turned her face toward him, still smiling. “Master Boyd, are youflattering me?”
His teeth flashed at her, and there was no trace of discomfort on his face now. He opened his mouth to reply but was cut off by the clear ringing of a bell.
Everyone in the hall stood—a hushed roar of wooden legs on stone, the rustling of finery—as Vaughn Hargrave led his wife to their seats at the lord’s table. Lady Hargrave’s gaze stuttered briefly over Iris at the table, but she did not give her away with sustained attention. The noblewoman’s skin was cloud white save for the bright red patches high on her cheeks, and Iris grew ashamed. Here she was, playing at being a lady and enjoying the attention of the handsome man at her side while her charge suffered under the ever-watchful eye of that monster,Lord Hargrave.
Perhaps the lady was feeling similar sentiments about Iris’s position.
Father Kettering cleared his throat.“Let us pray.”
After the lengthy blessing—prolonged for the benefit of the priest’s increased and noble audience, no doubt—Vaughn Hargrave held his palms toward the room with a generous smile, full of ease.
“Friends, honored guests, my lady wife, please, be seated.” He looked on benevolently as the crowd once more found their places. “Thank you for answering my call to Darlyrede’s final hunt of the season. Our lands have prospered, and it is my fondest wish to share our bounty with such good friends as have gatheredhere tonight.”
There was a polite stomping of boots and several calls ofencouragement.
“But,” Hargrave continued, “there is a concurrent occasion for which I have summoned you all here to be witness. As you know, during our long, long time as neighbors; the many years—decades—during which our holds have flourished, my lady wife and I have suffered much loss. First, our dearest daughter, Cordelia, and then our beloved young niece, Euphemia. Perhaps you do not know—as several of you cannot claim quite the distinction of age as can I”—here the crowd twittered—“that Lady Hargrave and I first came to Darlyrede House some two score years ago, to care for the young son of our beloved friends, Lord Tenred, Baron Annesley, and his lady, Myra.”
He smiled, and his thick eyebrows rose in encouragement. “Do you remember them? Yes, it was very long ago. And yet only yesterday it seems that we received the tragic news of their passing, and the bereft state of their only child, their son Thomas.”
An awkward silence fell over the hall now, and Iris felt a chill race up her back. She dare not even glance at Padraig from the corner of her eye.
“Yes, him you likelydoremember. Or, at least, you know of him,” Hargrave conceded. “Thomas Annesley. Whom Lady Hargrave and I raised as our own son, and even gave our blessing that he should wed our beloved Cordelia. Darlyrede House was to be theirs, and indeed it should be they who give the welcome onthis hunt eve.
“But alas, they cannot,” Hargrave continued, his voice subdued now, his expression dour.
What is he doing?Iris asked herself. The crowd was alive with salacious glee. They’d all heard the stories, gossiped about the grand estate overhanging the river. From Iris’s investigation, she knew they all envied it, feared it, and could not keep the name Darlyrede from theirlips for long.
There had been no missing persons for months now. No vanishings. And the crowd was eager to know why they had really beengathered here.
So was Iris.
“As you all know, Thomas killed Cordelia on the eve of their wedding, and it was later discovered that he had done many other terrible deeds, befouling both our fair land and his parents’ good names.”
“Those are lies.” Padraig stood in a rush, and his voice rang out clearly over the hushed crowd. “My father didnae kill anyone.”
Oh, my God. Hargrave’s plans were becoming clear to her now, and Iris wanted to take hold of Padraig’s arm, beg him tosit, be silent.
But it was too late. Hargrave turned his sickeningly condescending smile toward the Scotsman as if he’d all but forgotten Padraig was there.
“Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce Master Padraig Boyd, Thomas Annesley’s alleged heir, and my special guest at Darlyrede House.”
Any nod to polite quiet was forgotten by the crowd in that moment as guests leaned their heads together to exclaim, or craned their necks to look at the large man standing behind the lone table set apart from the rest of the room.
Hargrave was giving them what they all wanted: a victim in their very midst. They were going to witness with their own eyes, with Hargrave in plain sight, blameless. Iris’s heart raced.
Padraig’s voice rang through the chatter like a hammer on an anvil. “Did you think me to sit in silence while you so freely slandered my father, Hargrave? There’s nae so much English in me as to rollover for that.”
“No,” Hargrave admitted quietly. “I did not think you would remain silent. Not in the least. And while I can understand your reluctance to accept the horrific truth of your errant sire—even respect that reluctance, to a degree—I must beg your forbearance to hear me out in full.” He paused, and the pleading sorrow on his face was so thickly applied that Iris thought it might slide off and crash to the tabletop at any moment. “Please, Master Boyd. Allow me to finish. I assure you, you will have an opportunity to rebut what you will at the end. I am, after all, a fair man.”
Iris could feel the anger radiating off Padraig. She had never experienced the quiet, deliberate Scotsman in such a way—she fancied the silk of her sleeve was rippling like the surface of a pond.
“Go on, then,” Padraig demanded, buthe did not sit.
“It has been my sole mission these past thirty years to find Thomas Annesley and bring him to justice for his heinous crimes. I do admit to you all that I became rather obsessed with the man in my passion to avenge my daughter’s death, and to give peace to the many families in our own village as well as throughout Northumberland whose loved onesare missing.”
Hargrave paused and artfully looked down at the tabletop as if shamed, and Iris had to concede that the man was a master at his craft.
“So much obsessed that I even went so far as to track down Thomas Annesley’s bastard children, who he had sown throughout Scotland, intent on making them pay for the crimes of a man they’dnever even met,” he ended in a ragged whisper. He raised his eyes to the crowd again, his delivery perfect. “I regret that, now. And I confess before you all—before Sir Lucan, the king’s own man, before God and before Father Kettering—that I heaped blame upon blameless heads.”
