A choking laugh escaped Rose’s throat, startling everyone.
“When I came in,” she said, the words as dull and lifeless as her expression, “I thought he was sleeping. After dismissing my maid, I crawled into bed next to him. I bid my husband good night. He said nothing. I thought he was ignoring me again, to be cruel.” The tips of her fingers rubbed idly against her still-bruised cheek. “I hadn’t forgiven him for striking me, nor for the cause of our argument. So I poked his arm with my finger. When that had no effect, I shook his shoulder. Whenthathad no effect”—her voice trembled—“I slapped him like he slapped me.” She turned her wild gaze from her husband to the houseguests. “He deserved it! But he didn’t feel it. He didn’t say a word. He didn’t even breathe, because he was dead.Dead.” Her fingers clutched at her elbows. “So help me, I slapped a dead man. When I realized…When I—”
Rose fell in a sudden faint. Miss Pemberton’s arms flew forward to catch her. She grimaced, her eyes squinting as though blinded by a bright light. She staggered to one side. Gavin stepped forward to take his sister from her. Benedict intercepted the move, slipping his hands under Rose’s flaccid arms and taking her from Miss Pemberton. With Rose’s dead weight clutched to his chest, he half-carried, half-dragged her toward the bed.
“You can’t put her on a pillow right next to her dead husband,” came Miss Pemberton’s pained voice, stopping Benedict in his tracks. “She’ll faint again the moment she comes to.”
Benedict froze, frowned, coughed.
Gavin rescued his sister’s limp body from the wheezing man. With little effort, he scooped her into his arms and stalked right into the throng of horrified faces. His houseguests parted like the Red Sea, melting against the walls to allow him passage.
“Where are you taking her?” came Teasdale’s quavering voice.
“I don’t know,” Gavin muttered, his footsteps halting. “Away.”
“Put Mother in my room,” Nancy said, her eyes glassy with shock. “I don’t want to sleep alone tonight.”
Gavin nodded and continued his path down the dim corridor. Sconces scattered shadows across old paintings and nervous footmen. The procession of houseguests and servants followed him like rats behind the Pied Piper of Hamelin.
He laid his sister in his niece’s bed and instructed a handful of maids to keep an eye on them both. With a final glance at Rose’s ashen complexion, he strode back through the crowded hallway to the Heatherbrook guest chambers.
As before, the guests followed.
“What now?” Francine asked, once they came upon Heatherbrook lying precisely as they’d left him.
“I don’t know,” Gavin said.
“Now,” said Miss Pemberton as she stepped forward, “We’re going to take a closer look at Lord Heatherbrook.”
Lady Stanton ducked behind a painted fan. “Why?”
“Because Lady Heatherbrook was unable to…tell me,” Miss Pemberton answered, “whether or not she thought his death was accidental.” All gazes locked on Gavin’s. Miss Pemberton’s was the only countenance tinged with something other than suspicion and fear. Her methodical, cool-tempered responses made her seem oddly capable and eerily resigned, like a surgeon approaching a blood-soaked battlefield. “That is, if we may?”
Gavin inclined his head in acknowledgement.
“You think foul play is a possibility?” Francine asked.
“Foul play is a probability,” Edmund corrected. “I’d wager someone in this very room offed the arrogant fop.”
From the weight of so many stares, Gavin wagered he could suppose who his guests assumed had done the killing. “I’d like to prove that false.”
He motioned the servants into the room. They scurried about the perimeter, lighting tapers until every wick sputtered with orange flame.
Slowly, Gavin approached the bed. Now that candlelight chased the shadows from the chamber, he could make out more than Heatherbrook’s general form. A white handkerchief wrapped around the top of the earl’s head. The portion above his left temple was encrusted with dried blood. Gavin glanced over his shoulder at Miss Pemberton, who sighed.
“What is it?” The Stanton chit called from the doorway. “A gunshot? A knife wound? Snakes?”
Miss Pemberton shook her head. “Blood—”
Everyone gasped.
“—but the injury has been bandaged. We’ve no way to know when or how he got the wound. He may have tripped, fallen, and bandaged himself before retiring for the night.”
Or he might’ve had an oil painting land on his head.
Gavin stared at the woman kneeling in her nightrail next to the bed. Would she defend him to the others? Their expressions broadcast their unwavering belief that if anyone had murdered a man tonight, Gavin was no doubt the villain.
Miss Pemberton was the first person in the last eleven years of his acquaintance to turn to logic before rumor when determining guilt. Thankfully, she was unsure about the source of the wound. He did tidy up that frame afterward, didn’t he? Perhaps they’d all assume Heatherbrook had injured himself. As long as there were no other signs of foul play, Gavin would not have to fear being relabeled a murderer.
