I tilted my head to look at him. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand what you mean.”
“It’s believed that tomatoes invigorate the male humors,” Laurana said, her expression as serene as her words were shocking. “They are never served to ladies in good society.”
“Lest they drive you to uncontrollable lust, Miss Kittredge,” Montrose tacked on sweetly.
That remark finally undid Miranda, whose fork clattered on the table. “Father, I’m not feeling at all well. May I be excused?” At his nod she slipped out of her chair and hurried out of the hall.
“My younger sister is a widow,” Montrose told me. “She dislikes being reminded that she is no longer free to indulge in nightly congress. Ouch, damn you, Laury.”
“You need to eat more and drink less, Monty.” Laurana, who had rapped his hand with the handle of her fork, took his nearly empty goblet and handed it to her footman. “No more wine for you tonight.”
Her brother scowled as he jerked to his feet. “To the devil with all of you.” He stomped out of the hall.
Nolan said nothing but watched the footman clear Montrose’s setting. I glanced down at my beets and saw my plate half-filled with tomatoes. I turned my head to see Dredmore calmly eating my beets.
“Clear for Miss Kittredge,” Lady Diana, who must have seen the switch, said quickly to her footman.
The cook, a stout little man in immaculate chef’s whites, brought in the fifth and main course, a fully dressed pheasant with feathers intact, perched on a lifelike branch made of bread. Glowing dark-red roses, sculpted from what appeared to be jellied cranberries, clustered around the bird, along with sprigs of dark chocolate twigs with candied violets. The bird’s long brown-and-black-striped tail feathers rose at a steep angle and shifted along with the cook’s movements, making it seem as if the pheasant were about to launch itself from the platter and take flight.
After receiving a nod from Nolan, the cook carried the bird to a side carving table and skillfully removed the feathered sham from the carcass before beginning to carve it to pieces.
The scent should have made my mouth water, for I dearly loved roasted fowl of any variety, but what was left of my appetite deserted me. Seeing the exotic bird dressed to appear as it had been in life made me feel like a murderer instead of a dinner guest. Fortunately I was served only a small slice, which I forced down and complimented as best I could.
I ate a few buttered peas from the seventh, mixed vegetable course and drained my water glass to ease my tight throat while Diana told a long and relatively dull anecdote about the new fashion of wearing flounce-brimmed hats. Then the eighth course arrived, an aromatic potato-herb tartlet flavored by slivers of black truffle and topped with a layer of toasted bleu Cheshire.
The pheasant had likely been the most expensive dish I would ever eat in my life, but the tartlet was surely humble pie.
I’d only tasted bleu Cheshire once, when my father had spent an inordinate amount of coin to purchase a small wedge of it for my mother, whose secret vice was exotic cheese.
“I don’t know whether to eat it,” Mum had teased, “or have it encased in glass and carted over to the art museum.”
In the end Mum had insisted we each have a bite of the precious stuff, and I’d fallen in love, probably because I’d known I’d never taste it again. Now and then when I had a few extra coins I’d buy a little half round of Danish blue, but it was nothing by comparison.
It would have been criminal to send it back to the kitchen untouched, I told myself as I began eating it. The first taste almost brought a moan from my throat, and sent tears to sting my eyes. I rested my hands against the table, mainly to keep from shoving the tartlet by the handfuls into my mouth.
Dredmore’s fingers brushed over mine, sending a jolt of pleasure up my arm and into my chest. As he reached for his goblet, he murmured, “Don’t weep.”
“Drop dead,” I whispered back, furious with him and myself for lowering my guard.
The final, cold courses were frozen puree of cress and maple-almond iced cream, both of which I ate in hopes of cooling off. Like the other ladies I abstained from drinking the coffee offered at the end of the meal and commented as favorably as I could on the cook’s menu.
Nolan didn’t excuse himself or Dredmore to his study for the gentlemen’s after-dinner ritual of bourbon and cigars but stood and spoke to his remaining child. “You must be very tired, my dear.”
“I’m fine, Father.” Laurana gave him and Diana a sharp look. “However, I do have some letters to write. Miss Kittredge, I hope someday to bump shoulders with you at the fruit market. Dredmore, Stepmama.” She nodded to the others before departing.
“We’ll go to my study now,” Nolan said, taking his wife’s arm in a decidedly unaffectionate grip.
Dredmore had a hand on me before I could dodge him, and he used it to guide me out of the hall behind the Walshes. “You should have left when you could, Charmian. This will not be pleasant.”
“I knew that the moment I saw you by the fire.” I drew my arm from his, but he only put his hand at the small of my back. “Stop touching me.”
“No.” When I would have walked ahead, he hooked his fingers in my waister and tugged me back beside him. “Listen to me, you stubborn wench. Whatever accusations Walsh makes, say nothing. I will do the talking.”
“The day I need you to speak for me,” I said, “I’ll cut out your tongue.”
As soon as we were gathered in the study, Nolan closed the doors and went to stand with his back to the painting of an Elizabethan Walsh whose weak chin had been disguised by his black goatee and wide white ruff. Both Lord Walshes regarded me with expressions of haughty disgust, but the one who was still breathing had a decidedly ugly gleam in his eyes.
“Miss Kittredge, while I’m sure your behavior goes unnoticed among the commoners, I find your involvement in our private family matters entirely intolerable,” Nolan announced. “Whatever promises of remuneration my wife has given you, I will not abide your interference for another moment.”
My lack of breeding had nothing on his rudeness. “I came to speak on your lady wife’s behalf, milord,” I said stiffly. “That is the only reason I came.”
“I have no interest in anything you might say to me,” Nolan snapped before he regarded Dredmore. “Lucien, I will have the truth of the matter. Tonight.”
Before my nemesis could employ his trickery to make matters worse, I said, “You will hear what I have to say, Lord Walsh. Your wife hired me to dispel a curse she believed had been put on her. I am the one who first discovered the panel under her bed, along with evidence that someone in this household has been assaulting her person. It is possible that both of you are being drugged each night as well.”
Nolan whirled on his wife. “How much did you pay her to lie for you this time? Fifty pounds? A hundred?”
“I have been paid nothing,” I told his back. “Your wife is the victim here, sir, not the transgressor.”
“The victim.” He strode over to me. “My wife is nothing but a lying, cheating whore who smuggles her lover into the house under my very nose.”
“Why would she bring this imaginary lover to the house, when it would be far more prudent to meet him in town on one of her shopping excursions?” I pointed out. “She could have a dozen lovers in town, and you’d never know it.”
Diana uttered a distressed sound.
“Wherever she conducts her affairs, my wife hasn’t the wits to conceal them,” Nolan assured me.
“I have seen the evidence with my own eyes, milord, and it is inarguable. Your wife is being tormented.” I went to Diana and put my arm around her. “Someone in this house has been stealing into her bedchamber, painting terrible words on her body, and then removing them a day later. When she came to me, she truly believed the words were being cut into her skin.”