“It’s a note: ‘Here is the address. Do him, and any family you find there.’ Well, that’s fairly clear. And this scrap has the address of Alexander’s shop written on it. In a different hand.”
Daniel nodded. “I think I know whose hand wrote the address. Carter Brook.”
“The first man killed at Thornleigh?”
“That’s right. And I bet any money Mrs. Westerman and Crowther will be able to tell me who the other writer is. We have it! We’ll get the vipers out of your house, sir.” He nodded to Jonathan with a wink. “So by the time you come to it, it’ll be fit for you.” He looked around at the faces. “For you all, I hope. But I must go. Hunter will give me horses, and I should get this into Mrs. Westerman’s hands as soon as I may.”
Miss Chase put up her hand. “But Mr. Clode, you’ve hardly slept for days! You are injured! You must rest.”
He shrugged at her, feeling the tender place of his jaw with his free hand.
“There will be time for that later, Miss Chase. This is the endgame, the last cards. I’ll rest when this is done.”
He turned on his heel and headed for the door again. There was a soft patter of feet behind him, and he felt Susan’s arms close around him. She stood on tiptoe to kiss his dirty, stubbled cheek.
“Thank you, Mr. Clode.”
He blushed and as she freed him, gave her a formal bow. “My pleasure, Miss Thornleigh.”
He looked up and caught Graves’s eye. They nodded to each other and in a moment he was gone. Susan watched the space he had occupied for a long time.
Harriet had managed a few ragged hours of sleep, but it was not long after the early dawn that she found herself walking in her woods. Something drew her back here again and again. It was a pleasant situation, right enough, but she knew it was more to see the patch of earth on which Carter Brook had fallen that she came here. She paused there now, her hand resting on the thorn tree where the scrap of embroidery had been found, and walked through her actions of the last few days. Was there something she should have done differently?
Turning back to the bench, she sat down heavily, dropping her head into her hands with a sigh. Images swam around her tired brain. Nurse Bray, hanging in the old cottage, the foul depth of the wound on Brook’s neck, the hissing hatred of the letter that had found its way into her hands last night, the pathetic struggles of Michaels’s little bitch in the face of the poison, Wicksteed, his hand raised to whip Hugh’s lover. Could the poison be tracked? She would ask Crowther who might have such a thing. Why would Hugh not say that the bottle had been put into his hands by his steward? What possible hold did the man have over him?
She heard a movement behind her and leaped up, spinning round to see Wicksteed in the flesh smiling at her.
“Wicksteed!”
“Yes, Mrs. Westerman. You are having an early walk?”
His manner was oddly brash. He had become less watchful, more triumphant. The deference was stripped out of it. He looked straight at her, and she could not help feeling that he was amused at the sight of her. She drew herself up very straight and tried to look at him with an air of cold command. A smile twitched the corner of his lips.
“Yes. As you see,” she said coolly.
“I like to have a little look around my lands before the work of the day begins, Mrs. Westerman.”
“Your lands?” The laugh she tried to give to her voice almost choked her.
“The lands of my betters, I should say, shouldn’t I? Though, if Captain Thornleigh hangs, the heir will be the son of a cripple and a whore, and I think my blood is as good as his.”
He took a seat on the bench with studied ease and smiled up at her, blinking. She stood in front of him.
“Will they still employ you, do you think, Wicksteed, if it is known you speak of Lady Thornleigh in that way?”
A sudden tenderness touched his face, and for a second he seemed almost gentle. He drew a snuffbox, extravagantly jeweled, from his waistcoat and offered it to her, but she waved him away with disgust. Shrugging, he took his time balancing the powder on the inside of his wrist and inhaling. He then spun the little box in his palm as he replied. She noticed that when he was relaxed in this way his voice had a pleasant tenor lilt; it made his words all the more violent.
“Oh, my lady knows what she is, Mrs. Westerman. She is fearless in the face of truth. But what of you-who are you? Some sailor’s bitch charging about the countryside turning over one affair or another like one of your pissed-up crew on shore leave.”
Harriet felt suddenly nauseous. She swallowed. “How dare you speak to me in that way?”
He smiled. “What have I to fear from you? You and your knife man have tried your best, and done nothing but put Mr. Hugh’s head more neatly in the noose and the squire in my pocket.” He tilted his head to one side and his right hand lifted and danced in the air as if directing the flow of affairs with its lazy parabolas. “No, sweetheart. You should be afraid, not me. I do not like you, and I do not think you should continue at Caveley.”
Harriet blinked. “What have you to say on the matter?”
“Come now! Haven’t I just said? Pay attention, dearie! In a month Hugh will be dead, and I’ll be the power in the house. You know it, just as clear as I do. Then my first, my only task, will be to make your life here hell on earth. None of the gentry will speak to you, you will not be able to supply your household from any concern that has trade with Thornleigh. Your reputation, such as it is, will be beyond respectable, and your sister will be despised.” He paused and said kindly, “This will happen, Mrs. Westerman. Be assured.”
She took a step back from him, as the image of a yellow lizard who shot out a pink tongue to trap flies in Barbados came back to her. It was like seeing the beast again, dressed and conversing.
“Don’t be so sure of yourself, Wicksteed. There is more to come from this. And those scratches on your arm may well condemn you yet.”
He looked genuinely surprised. “Scratches?”
He shrugged off his coat in a moment, and rolled up the loose linen sleeves of his shirt to his shoulders, turning his wrists slowly so Harriet could see that, shoulder to hand, the skin was unmarked. Buttery and pale, but unmarked. He saw her surprise and laughed again.
“You mean to scare me, and leave me all the more secure, honey!”
Harriet felt her heart beating fast; his face was pink with pleasure. Without thinking, she lifted her crop, aiming to strike him. He was too quick for her. His flying right hand darted across and caught the end of it on his palm. He closed his hand around it and pulled hard, so she stumbled forward. He was breathing hard and the amusement of a few moments before became anger. She could see it glinting in the chips of white in his pale blue eyes.
“Tell you what, bitch.” Their faces were so close she could feel the heat of his breath. “You leave. Just you. Leave your husband, your sister, your children, go somewhere else and I’ll be the sweetest neighbor to them in the world. You stay, or sell and take them with you, and I’ll hunt you through society. Your fortune, your husband’s, your sister’s … It’ll be gone. Ruined. Nothing left by the time I’ve done. But leave, and you can save them from your punishment. Yes. That’s even better. I’ll take your whole family from you.”
His spittle hit her face. He released the end of the crop, and her mind nothing more than white horror, Harriet turned and plunged back down the slope to Caveley.
5
“She will not speak to me!”
Crowther patted Rachel’s hand as it lay on his arm. “What happened?”
The young woman looked at him tearfully. “She came running in just as I came down to breakfast-crying, I think, and Harriet never cries. Then went straight up to her room. I’ve knocked and knocked, but she just asks to be left alone.”