The new carriage he’d ordered after the first of the year, beautifully appointed on the inside with blue velvet that matched his wife’s eyes, also had the newest in metal springs and rode far more comfortably than their old carriage. It should make the long journey bearable.
“Are you feeling well?” he asked.
Cecilia turned toward him. A small, rueful smile graced her lips. “Yes, my love. While I own, I am not yet up to my past energy levels, I can sense a shift in feelings. As the coughing spells ease, the cloud that has hung over me is not so oppressive,” she said, her smile widening.
“Then why that pensive, sad look I’ve been observing on your lovely face?” he asked.
She sighed and leaned back to nestle against him. He put his arm around her. “I’ve been thinking about Soothcoor and Mrs. Montgomery,” she said. “—More so about Mrs. Montgomery and her marriage to Mr. Montgomery. By my reckoning, they lived together for sixteen years before he went into a sanatorium. What were those years like and did anyone else know about his peculiar affliction of the mind?”
“He might have been good at keeping those ‘others’—I don’t know what else we should call them—suppressed,” James offered.
“Hmm. Yes. And if that was the case, what changed?”
“What do you mean?”
“I am thinking about cause and effect,” she said. “My melancholy, we know, came from my long illness, and that it has been difficult for me—and you by extension, I am aware. I wonder if the issues he began to have with these ‘others’ didn’t have a cause? I didn’t think to ask Mrs. Montgomery anything of this nature.”
“You mean you wonder what was going on in their lives that might have caused him to no longer control these ‘others’?”
“Yes.”
He nodded. “You may be correct. But what would that have to do with him being murdered now?”
She shook her head. “I do not know. Probably nothing,” she admitted with a drawn-out sigh. “Do you think Soothcoor has worn the green willow for Mrs. Montgomery all this time?”
James cocked his head as he considered her question. “He has never fallen into the parson’s trap with any woman, nor has he shown an interest in any of the ladies who regularly make an appearance in society.”
“Except for Mrs. Montgomery,” Cecilia said.
“Except for Mrs. Montgomery,” he concurred. “He has been called‘the Dour Earl’for as long as I have known him. Thoughhe might smile and laugh, the light of laughter never reaches his eyes. Gossip, as it is in society, decided he’d suffered a disappointment of the heart.”
“Which, we can now be confident, he had,” said Cecilia.
“I assume so with the rapidity of his association with Mrs. Montgomery and her tale of their shared past.”
“If she makes his smile reach his eyes, she has my gratitude. We will do whatever is needed to see him freed,” she declared.
“That we will,” concurred her husband. “That we will.”
Their carriage rolled into the yard of the Taurus Stagecoach Inn and Tavern late that night—close to eight o’clock, due to the steady rain that began in the mid-afternoon. It made for sloppy roads and slow going. Thankfully, the booking request James had sent ahead had been received, and they had a bedroom reserved. Mr. Drupple, the innkeeper, wringing his callused hands against his dark blue waistcoat, asked if they wouldn’t mind sharing the private parlor with a young man who’d suffered a carriage mishap. Said he was on his way to Stamford, as he understood they were.
James frowned. Cecilia laid a gentle hand on his arm. “What happened?” she asked the innkeeper. “Has he suffered any injury?”
“Sprained his wrist trying to ketch hisself when the carriage tipped. The missus wrapped it tight. Be jolly good again in a day or two. But wurst were to the gen’lman’s valise. Tumbled out it did, popped open. All his clothes landed in a muddy puddle. Got ’im wrapped in an ol’ banyan sum gent left ’ere, sittin’ by the fire in the parlor.”
“The private parlor we reserved,” James clarified.
The innkeeper had the grace to look down. “Yes, sir.” He looked up again. “But I’ll get his room warmed up good and move him there. Not to worry. Done in a tick.”
“Has he had his dinner yet?” Cecilia asked.
“No, my lady. Not rite yet.”
“Then he may eat with us while you prepare his room.”
“Cecilia!” protested her husband.
“I want to know who he is, and why he is in such a hurry to get to Stamford that he should risk a carriage accident in the rain.”
