Magnus said, “Lady Mairead and Lizbeth are here with me in the corridor, Wilfred has gone in tae speak with the Earl for Lady Mairead’s honor!”
Sean came back up the corridor with a couple of his men and two servants rushing behind him.
From in the room, Wilfred projected again, “My name is Wilfred Weaver. I am Lady Mairead’s husband. I would like a word!”
We pressed close to the door, to block anyone else from getting too close.
At the other end of the corridor at the stairwell, I saw more people from the household coming up the steps.
Magnus wiped sweat from his brow. We were all trying to be good actors, but this had been a shock and we were unpracticed at covering up crimes.
We didn’t have our story straight.
And a crowd was gathering.
CHAPTER 26
WILFREY
I TAKE THE ROLE OF A LIFETIME
The door clicked shut behind them.
The Earl was dead. I had never been around a dead man before.
I said, so it would project from the room, “My name is Wilfred Weaver. I am Lady Mairead’s husband. I would like a word!”
I knelt beside him and closed his eyes, and said quieter, “Stop looking at me, I am trying to save Mairead’s daughter.”
I glanced around. There was a knife on the table beside his chair. I plucked it up and centered it in his hand and closed his fingers around it.
But he didn’t look like he had attacked me. I got behind him and shoved him to his side. And arranged his limbs so he looked as if he had been lunging with the knife in hand.
I pulled my dirk from the sheath on my belt and laid it on the ground, and then I pulled my makeup from my bag. There were some places on his cheek that were black and did not look good. I smeared some there, rubbed it out. I did not like touching him, but the makeup made his death look more fresh. I pulled out some rouge and rubbed a bit on his cheeks as was fashionable in this time and like I had seen in a painting of him.
His wig was on the table. I laid it on the ground beside him so it looked like he knocked it off when he lunged.
I thought about Mairead, and how afraid she had looked. Though beautiful, she was mercurial and sometimes cruel, but I had grown used to her. I could manage her well enough, and truthfully, I had become devoted to the whole package. Now, coming to the eighteenth century, I had added a depth to my character. I was husband to Lady Mairead, stepfather to the King. Stepfather to Sean and Lizbeth, the children of the Earl of Lowden, and brother-in-law to the Earl of Breadalbane, now dead at my feet.
I was taking the fall to save my step-daughter.
This was the role of a lifetime: I had to become the man who would win the duel.
Outside in the corridor I heard the muffled sounds of the crowd, the shuffling of feet, a lowered voice, the hush of many people trying to listen.
I glanced around to make sure most everything was in the right place, no incriminating evidence. This was the eighteenth century, what kind of things would make someone suspicious?
I realized one of his slippers had been kicked away. I put it back on his foot. I did not like touching his foot at all. I said, “I have come to speak to you,” I raised my voice so the audience in the hallway could hear, “about mywife!”
Then I waited a beat as if he replied, then said, “I am merely here demanding you make this right!”
I pulled the tubes of fake blood from my bag, thinking about how I had been his brother-in-law. I had been here for one day, as Mairead had pointed out, and already I was covering up a crime.
I said, under my breath, “Actors deceive, it’s what we do.”
I unscrewed the cap on the first tube and said loudly, “You called my wife a whore. In front of the servants. In front of me. In front of your own household.”
I squirted some on his blade. And put some on my own blade.
