But a mere few days in Tess Nicholson’s company had torn all his pride from him, and filled him with a conviction of his own worthlessness. He was rich, he was a baron, he was accounted handsome and pleasing to females, and yet none of that made him an acceptable husband to that shameless chit. She preferred her uneducated woodworker or poor horse-obsessed Ulric to Edward, Lord Tarvin of Harfield Priory and Grosvenor Street, London.
What was he to do now? Nothing. There was nothing he could do to win her.
***
Tess hid away in her favourite secret place, the balcony overlooking the great hall. The great advantage of wearing black, and possibly the only advantage, was that hiding was much easier. A flash of white muslin glimpsed between the balusters would perhaps attract attention, but in her mourning gown she was invisible, with no need to swathe herself in a dark cloak as she used to do.
For a few minutes she seethed with rage at Edward, who had taken it upon himself to interfere in her life. If she had been able to talk to Tom, to kiss him, perhaps, she could have turned his mind away from that stupid poultry maid, she was sure. Tom was as soft as butter in her hands, easy to mould to her own wishes. Easy to distract. All men were foolish where women were concerned. But men had power, too, the power to obtain a licence so that Tom could marry the poultry maid instantly, and put himself forever out of Tess’s reach.
Not that he had been within her reach, without her fortune. If she could only have got her hands on those gold bars! But there again, the interfering Edward had taken that option away from her. Such an arrogant, high-handed man! Now there was only Ulric left to her.
A shiver of uncertainty hit her, as she remembered Edward’s words.‘I can give you something you can never get from Ulric,’he had said, and then he had kissed her. She trembled as she remembered his kisses, soft and warm and gentle, infinitely tender. Tom’s kisses were enthusiastic, certainly, but had nothing of Edward’s comforting affection. And from Ulric, there would be no kisses at all, and could she live with that?
Below her in the great hall there was a bustle of activity, as one of the footmen who waited there was summoned to the entrance hall, returning moments later to lead a man of nondescript appearance up the stairs.
“I didn’t catch your name, sir. How shall I announce you?” the footman said, as he passed below Tess’s vantage point.
“Just say,‘A person to see you’,” the man said.
“Is the captain expecting you, Sir?”
“Oh, yes.”
Neither his face nor his voice were familiar to Tess, but nevertheless, she thought she recognised something about him. He looked like a bailiff or perhaps a farmer, in the sort of hard-wearing, somewhat outmoded clothes that would be practical for outdoor work. She would not know anyone of that nature, but perhaps in a different context…
She had it! He had been a footman in the not too distant past, although a rather unusual one. Not one of theirs, a visiting one, although she could not remember whose. That was intriguing.
Impulsively she jumped up and slipped through the door to the service stairs, and up to the attic floor. There were a few tiny bedrooms for the servants there, but around the perimeter was a low space, just the right height for a smaller-than-average child to walk in. As an adult, she had to stoop but she could still creep about up there. Over the years, she had gradually loosened and shifted boards or even drilled small holes so that she could hear what was going on below her. It was only the bedrooms, so although she heard much snoring and other odd noises, there was little conversation to be overheard. A man discussing the arrangement of his neck cloth with his valet, perhaps. The women were more interesting. Aunt Caroline gossiped dreadfully with her lady’s maid, and Tess had learnt much of interest from her. Walter and Eustace had quarrelled sometimes, before Eustace had inherited his own house and moved out. And of course Izzy had always been entertaining with her melodramatic tantrums.
The old school room had not been used for a number of years, but now, with the arrival of Captain Edgerton and hisassociates to investigate her father’s murder, there was much that was worth listening to. Now she crept along the low space until she was above the room and could hear voices below. Then she stretched out on her stomach and laid her ear to the gap between the boards.
“…this letter, James.”
That was Captain Edgerton’s voice with its clipped military tones. For a while, there was silence, apart from the faint scratching of a pen.
“There! That should do it. Give that to the attorney, and this one from his lordship, and that should get you inside. You are to give them due notice — two days at least.”
“They will have hidden everything of interest,” a second voice said. The quiet tones of the man on the stairs.
“Yes, but those are the earl’s explicit orders. We cannot do otherwise. But then straight in. Take Sandy with you, and those two from the inn — the big fellow and his brother, and the attorney, of course. You have a bailiff arranged to value everything, I assume.”
“Of course. A Scarborough man. I wish you could be there, Michael.”
“So do I! But I must talk to Whyte.”
“Nicholson’s natural son?”
“That is the fellow. Shapman’s confession took him off my list for a while, but now I must talk to him. He is one of the few people who has a genuine grievance against Nicholson, and a quarrelsome family who just might turn to violence against the man who fathered a child on a girl and then refused even to acknowledge him. Not so much as a mention in the will, either. So I must see Whyte without further delay. I talked to the smith and a couple of the sons, and they hardly seem the type to break into the castle at dead of night and murder a man with an axe. A brawl in the street, certainly, and possibly a hostile delegation totalk to Nicholson and persuade him to do the right thing by the boy, but they are not secretive types, I should have thought.”
“And the boy is only sixteen.”
“Precisely!” Captain Edgerton said. “It seems most implausible, yet who else do we have? Only Miss Nicholson, who is even more implausible, and Shapman, who has a rock solid alibi. James, I depend on you to find me something useful at the Pickering house.”
“Apart from Miss Nicholson’s gold bars, you mean?”
“Yes, apart from that. Nicholson’s papers there may have something of interest.”
Tess heard a door open and close again.
