“Caro, darling, blast, let me see your neck.”
Her body immediately went still and she raised her chin for him, showing him her throat. He could see the cut was shallow, only a trickle of blood coming from it. He put his handkerchief to it.
“Are you hurt anywhere else?”
“N-n-n-no.”
“I want you and Miss Lavinia away from here. Go to your bedchamber and lock the door.”
“Phineath, no.”
“Yes.”
“He’ll hurt y-y-you.”
“He won’t, darling. I won’t let him. But I need you to go. Now.”
At that moment, Albion limped to the doorway of the office.
He smiled at Phineas. He raised the knife. He put it to his own throat and sliced.
A scream as blood appeared and Albion crumpled to the floor. Phineas knew it wasn’t Albion who had screamed. He thought it might have been himself.
But it wasn’t. Mrs. Fox, the housekeeper whom he had hired on Albion’s recommendation, hurtled down the passageway, pushing Caro and Phineas to the side, throwing herself onto Albion’s body.
It was a macabre tableau. A gruesomepietà. Mrs. Fox had pulled Albion’s head into her lap, was holding his neck and wailing.
Phineas herded his wife back down the hallway. “Let’s get you away from this, darling.”
Mrs. Fox raised her head and pointed a blood-covered finger at Caro.
“You! You did this. If Albion dies, you’re a murderer!”
Phineas put both hands on Caro’s waist and turned her away.
“Go upstairs. I’m safe now. You and Miss Lavinia go upstairs. I need to take care of this.”
He waited until his wife was all the way down the passageway with her dog before turning back to his still-breathing steward and the wailing housekeeper.
Thirty-Five
In hindsight, it was a mistake to have sent Caro to her bedchamber with just Lavinia. Phineas should have gone with her and let others manage the sending for the magistrate and the doctor, the care for his wounded friend, and the quieting of the blood-soaked housekeeper.
He should have gone with his wife and cleaned her neck and bandaged it and held her and let her kiss him as she had wanted to do.
But he hadn’t. He had thought she would wait for him to come and comfort her.
But she didn’t.
When he finally got upstairs to her bedchamber, she was gone. Along with the one creature on Earth who could have found his wife for him quickly.
He set Jones and Dashwood and his butler and the chambermaids to the task of searching the house. But he knew she wasn’t here.
He went out to the stables. He didn’t wait for a groom. He saddled his horse himself and rode out into the lane. He thought she might have gone to the woods as she had before, so he rode in that direction.
He tied his horse to a tree and walked and called and walked and called. But there was no answering bark from Lavinia. He came to the stream where he had laid Caro down in the mud and forced her to say his name, but she wasn’t there.
Finally, he gave up on the holt and went back to his horse and started riding toward the village.
