“Word reached the Prime of our order that there might be some kind of supernatural cause behind Lady Willoughby’s shocking collapse. She wished for my companion and I to offer our services, if needed.”
Lord Willoughby straightened. “We’ve had the priest look at Eliza?—"
“Yes, I would expect such a thing.”
“There’s nothing more to it than a… mild illness.” Anger mottled Willoughby’s throat. “I’m considering bringing a case against the doctor for sheer malpractice in pronouncing her dead. And that’s it. There’s nothing sinister or supernatural about any of this!”
Sterling held up his hands. “Of course.”
“Willoughby,” Lady Willoughby chided, before gracing him with a smile.
Her husband paced, rubbing at his mouth. “I’m sorry. I’m being very abrupt. This is all just so very distressing.”
“Don’t be sorry,” Sterling said. “You love your wife and wish nothing more than to protect her. And we understand. We simply wished to offer our assistance if need be. And perhaps there might be something we can find that the priest can’t see?”
All of Willoughby’s focus locked upon him.
He paled.
It was one thing to deny supernatural involvement when all one worried about was gossip. But if there was some threat to his wife….
“We were so sorry to hear of your troubles,” Edwina broke in, directing a sympathetic smile toward Lady Willoughby. “And especially so soon after your marriage. All you must want to do is relax after your honeymoon, and now this happens.”
“Oh, we haven’t yet taken a honeymoon,” Lady Willoughby replied with a gentle sigh. She twisted her engagement ring on her finger. “Willoughby’s sister has entered confinement so we planned to see the Lake District this summer, once the baby is born.”
“Do you think you could tell us about what happened?” Edwina murmured. She took out her notebook. “There was some mention that you felt as if there was a creature sitting on your chest…?”
Lady Willoughby bit her lip. “It all sounds so very silly now. It was probably the shock of the moment. Faint light crept through one of the windows up high, and when I first woke I swear there was something there…. But when I sat up with a scream, it was gone. I swear it was just the fright.”
“Of course,” Edwina soothed. “But why don’t you tell me everything? From the beginning?”
Chapter
Four
“Well, that went well,” Edwina muttered as Sterling escorted her down the stairs of the manor.
Lady Willoughby had been gracious, but told them little. It was almost as if she didn’t want to remember.
And then Lord Willoughby had insisted she needed her rest.
He’d practically thrown them out of the house.
“He’s older,” Sterling mused. “And if Willoughby knows my father, then it’s likely he’s not too keen on sorcery. I’d hesitate to call him someone who’d be swayed by that ridiculous Vigilance Against Sorcery committee that’s picketing in London, but I suspect he sympathizes with their cause. Willoughby’s power is tied to the land and to his ancestry. He no doubt sees magic as a freakish mutation that dares to impinge upon the old way of things. He can’t control it, and so he fears it.”
“There is a creature,” she said, “and then there’s not. It’s just her imagination. It’s just a fright?—”
“All perfectly reasonable answers.”
“True,” she pointed out. “If one doesn’t consider the fact that she clearly described a shadow with malevolent golden eyes and two hands reaching out to lock around her throat. That’s a very particular description for something that doesn’t exist.”
“I wondered if you’d noticed that.”
She gave him a very direct look.
Sterling grinned and held his hands up in surrender. “What else?”
It had always been like this between them as if he liked to talk through his thoughts on a case. She’d never realized how much he’d always treated her as if she was part of the investigation, and not merely a scribe.
