“Yes, as it happens.I don’t sleep well, and I can assure you no one left our house in the middle of the night.Not Harold, nor my father, nor his apprentice.”
She was no fool, this girl Edward had supposedly ruined.“Who would have attacked him, Anne?Who hated him enough?”
Anne shook her head.“I don’t know.People do unexpected things in a moment of idiocy or passion.Regret can’t change what you’ve done, however quickly it comes upon you.”
April held her gaze.The girl hesitated but said no more.
“We are going next up to Edgwick Farm,” April said.“Perhaps you can direct us?”
“Go on out of the village and take the fork on the right.”Anne drew in her breath.“It might be best if you take care with your questions to Mr.Troy.He’s liable to take out any temper on his wife.”
“From something I heard,” April said, “it would not be the first time.”
“Nor the second.It already happened before she met Edward,” Anne said.“I expect that was his attraction, to be honest.Whatever else he is, Edward is not violent.”Anne’s eyes flickered and April saw a young man enter the forge, still chewing the remains of his dinner.He cast Anne and the strangers a quick smile and a nod.Presumably this was the apprentice she had spoken of.
“You’ll excuse me?”Anne turned and hurried back into the house.
***
HETTY TROY, THE MISTRESSof Edgwick Farm, had just finished washing the grazed knee of her youngest, and sent him back out to play with his siblings in the yard, when she saw the dazzling sight from the window.
She straightened with a faint grunt of pain.A young lady in a smart scarlet riding habit and a very fine gentleman were walking their handsome horses into her yard.The children had stopped playing and were staring open-mouthed.
Hetty didn’t blame them.Who on earth could the strangers be?
Of course.They must be the people who’d taken Temper House while the Temperleys were in London.Hetty had harboured hopes that Sir Dominic would have taken Edward with him, thus deflecting her husband’s constant anger, but he hadn’t.Hetty had the bruise on her ribs to prove it.
Hastily, Hetty went to the back door and dropped a curtsey before catching the children to prevent their clearly intended lunge at the newcomers.
“Mrs.Troy?”the lady asked pleasantly, while the gentleman tied up the horses and showed the children how to stroke the beasts’ noses.“Forgive the intrusion, but might we have a few words?I’m Lady Petteril, and this is my husband.We are staying at Temper House with our guests.”
Hetty did not want them here, but she could hardly refuse.Her best course was to hear them out and get rid of them before her husband got wind of them.
The gentleman was polite, ushering both women before him.Hetty liked that courtesy, with a wistfulness that never quite left her.
“You’d best come through to the parlour,” Hetty said reluctantly.The kitchen was no place for the Quality.
“Oh, we’re comfortable wherever you’re prepared to put up with us,” Lady Petteril said cheerfully.“We don’t want to hold you back—you have your hands full, I can see.What a comfortable kitchen.”
Hetty shrugged and invited them to sit.They did, looking like the bright tropical birds she’d once seen in a book, among the bleak, ordinary surroundings of Hetty’s life.
“What is it I can possibly do for you?”Hetty asked, allowing all her bewilderment to show.
“It’s about Edward, the footman at Temper House,” Lord Petteril said.
Hetty grasped the edge of the table, feeling the blood drain from her face.She couldn’t faint.The Petterils would summon her husband and then...
“What about him?”she asked fiercely.She focused hard on Lord Petteril’s face.He had kind, dark brown eyes that at first glance were pleasingly vague.On second, they were clever and alarmingly perceptive.
“We’re not here to cause trouble,” he said quietly.“I don’t know if you’ve heard that someone attacked Edward last night?He has not yet recovered consciousness.We need to know what happened.”
Oh God...She glanced fearfully toward the window, then turned back to her visitors.“Last night?When?”
“About two o’clock we think.”
“Will he live?”she blurted.Better for her if he died, and yet she could not wish that,wouldnot...
“We don’t know,” Lord Petteril replied.“May I ask when you last saw him?”
