Page 32 of Winterset

“Yes, miss?”

“Did Estelle ever talk to you about this man whom she was meeting?”

The girl’s eyes welled with tears, and she quickly looked down at her task. “I should have asked her more. I feel so terrible. It’s all my fault, isn’t it? I should have told Mrs. Michaels what she was doin’.”

“You couldn’t have known,” Anna assured her, reaching up and curling her hand comfortingly around Penny’s. “You thought you were helping her. I will tell you something—I didn’t tell on Estelle, either.” She told her maid about seeing Estelle sneaking into the house one morning, and when she was through, Penny visibly relaxed, breathing out a sigh.

“Oh, miss, I’m that glad to hear you say that. Mrs. Michaels says I’m a terrible person not to have told her. She says I’m a sinner and—”

“Never mind that. I am sure that what you did was not a sin. You were trying to be a good friend to Estelle. It isn’t your fault she was killed. It is the person who killed her who is to blame.”

“You think it was the man she was seeing?” Penny asked. “John the footman thinks it was the Beast. He says he got her because she was out alone in the woods at night, going to meet that man.”

“I don’t believe in the Beast. I have never seen it. Have you?”

“No…”

“And if it is the sort of thing that kills people like this, don’t you think it would do it more often? Or that it would kill animals the same way? But I’ve never heard of a farmer losing a cow or a sheep or even a dog to this creature.” Anna pushed from her mind the thought of the wounded dog she had taken to Nick Perkins.

“No. I haven’t, either,” Penny agreed, although she did not look entirely convinced.

“Kit thinks that there was a lovers’ quarrel, and he killed her, maybe even accidentally, but then he tried to make it look as if the Beast had done it, just to avert suspicion from himself.”

Penny nodded. “Master Kit has always been a brainy one.”

“So I thought, if we just knew more about this man she was meeting, perhaps they would be able to find him,” Anna went on persuasively.

“Yes’m, but the thing is—I don’t know much about him. She never told me his name. Fact is, she was dead quiet about him—” Penny sucked in a breath, looking shocked “—ooh, I didn’t mean that. That’s an awful expression, isn’t it, miss?”

“Yes. I guess we frequently say things without thinking about them. But, Penny, if Estelle never said his name, surely she must have said something else about him—how he looked, for instance, or where he lived.”

Penny frowned, concentrating, and her hands stilled on Anna’s hair, the brush poised above her head. “She kept him a secret, miss, and that’s the truth. I asked her about him. I was curious, like. But she wouldn’t tell me anything ’cept that he was a gentleman.”

“A gentleman?” Anna asked, surprised.

Penny nodded. “I was that surprised. I told her she was fibbing, but she swore it was true.” She hesitated. “I think it was the way he talked and dressed. She told me he looked as fine as Master Kit, and he treated her real polite, like she was a lady.”

Anna nodded. It made sense that Estelle’s judgment of a man as a “gentleman” would have had more to do with his manner of speech or his way of dressing, rather than his status in life. Estelle might have labeled anyone from a lawyer’s clerk to a dancing tutor as a “gentleman.”

Moreover, while she had been assuming that the man lived nearby, the fact was that he could even live in a neighboring village rather than right here at Lower Fenley. He could easily have ridden a few miles from Eddlesburrow or Sedgewick to meet with Estelle. Of course, she could not imagine how Estelle would have met someone from one of those villages, given the fact that she spent all but one day every other week working here at the Manor. But, then, Anna would not have thought that the girl could have kept up secretive meetings at night for weeks on end, either. Obviously Estelle had been more resourceful than anyone had realized.

Penny had nothing else to tell her, Anna felt sure. Therefore, she would have to ask someone else. The other people who seemed most likely to know anything about Estelle’s secret lover were her family. It would be expected of her to call on the family, anyway, Anna thought, to offer her condolences. She could easily ask them a few questions, as well.

The next afternoon, Anna embarked on her plan. She had just come downstairs, gloves and bonnet in hand, to have her trap brought around when there was a knock on the door and the footman opened it to reveal Lady Kyria on her doorstep.

“My lady!” Anna paused in the midst of pulling on her gloves. “What a pleasant surprise.”

“I am sorry,” Kyria said, glancing down at Anna’s hands. “You are obviously about to go somewhere.”

“Yes, I was going to drive into the village to call on Estelle’s family. But I can postpone it for a bit. Won’t you come in?”

“Oh, no, I wouldn’t wish to make you change your plans.” Kyria paused for a moment, then went on. “If you wouldn’t mind, I could go with you. My carriage is already at the door, and I would like to make my condolences to the family. I did not know her, I realize, but since we are living at Winterset, it seems as though I should.”

Anna understood doing one’s social duty. She had spent much of her life occupied with such things. “I am sure they would be honored, my lady.”

“Please, call me Kyria. I have spent the last year in America, and I have come to like the lack of ‘lady this’ and ‘lady that.’”

“All right. Kyria. And you must call me Anna.” Anna smiled at the other woman. She liked Kyria, and she suspected that if things had happened differently between her and Reed, she and Kyria would have become good friends.