Lady Fanchere gestured to Tia, who pulled a chair to the side of the bed. As Lady Fanchere seated herself, she said, “Tia, would you please remove Miss Chegwidden’s tray and get us a new pot of hot tea?”
Tia’s bright face dimmed, but she took the tray, bobbed a curtsy, and moved swiftly out of the room.
Lady Fanchere waited until the door shut behind her before asking, “Could you answer a few questions now, Miss Chegwidden?”
“Of course. I’m delighted to do so.”
“Do you remember how you got here?”
“No, I’m sorry. I . . . I remember some of last night, but then . . .”
“The wolf?”
“Yes.” The memory of pale, glowing eyes burned in her mind. “There was a wolf!”
“There are few wolves left in the Pyrenees, and the ones that remain are far into the wilderness.”
“I
was
far in the wilderness!” Seeing Lady Fanchere’s cocked eyebrow, Emma added unsteadily, “I think.”
“Tell me what you know, starting with”—an unexpected dimple quivered in Lady Fanchere’s cheek—“the fish.”
Appalled, Emma put her hand to her temple. “The fish? At the ball?”
“Exactly.”
“I hope you don’t think badly of me for that. You see, Lady Lettice wanted her handkerchief dampened, and I got lost. I found my way into the garden, which was very dark, wet the handkerchief in the fountain—”
Lady Fanchere gave a gurgle of merriment.
“—and apparently a small, very small fish found its way into the linen folds. I fear I must have stunned it when I wrung out the excess water. I handed Lady Lettice the handkerchief, not knowing . . .”
Lady Fanchere chuckled through every word.
Distressed, Emma said, “Lady Fanchere, please believe me. I didn’t do it on purpose. I would not be so foolish as to jeopardize my only employment in a strange land!”
“Ah, yes. You English girls are too sensible for that.” Lady Fanchere leaned forward, eyes dancing. “But is it true the fish slid down Lady Lettice’s cleavage?”
“Yes, it did, and then . . .” The remembrance of Lady Lettice’s nimble jig as she tried to dislodge the fish rose in Emma’s mind, and unexpectedly, hilarity caught her by the throat. She giggled, stopped herself, tried to apologize, and giggled again.
Lady Fanchere waved her to silence. “I beg you, don’t say you’re sorry. It was the highlight of the dullest evening of a completely dull season! I thought I would die laughing. Lady Lettice is all wig and no hair, if you comprehend me, and while I’m not one to judge someone by their intelligence—one of my dearest friends is Aimée de Guignard, a darling and the greatest ninny in all Christendom—one cannot say the same about Lady Lettice. That woman is venal in her gossip and her clever cruelties. She wouldn’t be accepted in society at all, but here in Moricadia all one needs is a fortune to be Sandre’s best friend.” She bit her lower lip as if regretting that last comment. With a determination Emma admired, Lady Fanchere changed the subject. “Now, tell me what happened after you left the ball.”
“After I was thrown out like a strumpet?” The humiliation added a surprising bite to Emma’s tone. “I walked and walked. It was cold. I was afraid I was lost, and afraid to turn back for fear lights and warmth were around the corner, and then that wolf stepped in front of me. It was a wolf. It was! I am not mistaken about that.”
“All right. I believe you,” Lady Fanchere said in a soothing tone. “How did you get away?”
“I turned. I ran. And then . . .”
“Then?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know!” Emma rubbed her head with both hands, trying to coax some vestige of remembrance from her brain. “There’s nothing. I don’t know how I escaped being a wolf’s late- night meal. I most certainly don’t know how I got here.”
“You have a bump on the back of your head. Do you know how that happened?”
With cautious fingers, Emma explored her scalp and winced when she found the lump. “I must have fallen. Did someone find me in the woods?”
“You were left unconscious on our doorstep like an orphaned child.” Lady Fanchere watched as Emma absorbed the news. “You truly don’t remember?”
Emma shook her head in bewilderment.
“There was no rescuer that you recall?”
Emma frowned. Something stirred in her brain. Some vague recollection of hands turning her to face—
A strong whiff of ammonia brought Emma to consciousness with a jolt. She opened her eyes to see Lady Fanchere leaning over her, holding the smelling salts and wearing a troubled expression.
“Thank heavens,” Lady Fanchere said. “I’ve never had anyone faint during a conversation before.”
“I’m sorry.” Emma tried to struggle back into a sitting position.
“Please lie back.” Lady Fanchere seated herself again and waved the smelling salts under her own nose. “We’re both shaken. Let’s calm ourselves and make sure there are no repeats of that incident.”
Emma sank back onto the pillows. “I must have hit my head harder than I realized.”
“I think you are right.” Lady Fanchere rested her hand on her waist above the curve of her belly. “Well! You may know the Englishman Michael Durant is our prisoner—”
“Yes, I met him last night.”
“So he said.”
“Did he have something to do with my presence here?” If that was true, she owed him a very great debt.
But Lady Fanchere waved that suggestion away. “Not at all. I was fatigued, so we returned early from the ball. As you may know, Michael is under house arrest, and we’re responsible for his custody. Last night, he went to his bedroom in the dowager house”—she waved a hand out the window—“which I assure you is luxurious and befitting his station despite the bars at the windows and the door, and we locked him inside.”
“Ah.” It was silly of Emma to scorn Durant’s easy acquiescence to his imprisonment. Obviously any resistance on his part would be futile and lead to his injury. But to go like a lamb to the shearing . . .
“This morning, after we had discovered you on the doorstep and identified you as Lady Lettice’s companion, Michael suggested, and my husband concurred, that
I
need a paid companion.” Amusement cut a quirk into Lady Fanchere’s cheek. “All the highly fashionable ladies have them.”
“I am grateful, my lady.” The thought of having a secure future with this woman brought tears to Em-ma’s eyes. But . . . “If you don’t mind my saying so, you don’t appear to be the type of person to, er—”
Lady Fanchere interrupted, “Care about keeping up with all the other highly fashionable ladies? No. I don’t care. But Lord Fanchere’s lineage is not so exalted as mine, and he does. So I indulge him.”
Emma inclined her head in reply and in thankfulness. “In that case, let me assure you I am well versed in a companion’s duties, as well as trained in many aspects of medical care.”
“Really?” Lady Fanchere lifted her brows. “Where did you learn that?”
“My father’s parish was poor, didn’t merit the attentions of any kind of physician, and the barber-surgeon in our little town was a drunkard. So Father taught himself to be the de facto physician and I was his assistant. As I grew older and we dealt with females, we discovered women preferred to speak with me of their problems and seek my help. So I am very good with rubbing away backaches and helping dispel pains in the head and feet. It was for those reasons Lady Lettice kept me in service.” Emma experienced a deep satisfaction in knowing Lady Lettice would miss those ministrations. “Although my bag of medical supplies was left in Lady Lettice’s room and, I fear, is irretrievable, let me assure you I am especially good with ladies who are with child, so I can be of special assistance to you.”
Lady Fanchere rocked back in astonishment, and asked fiercely, “How did you know that? How did you know I am breeding?”
Oh, heavens. Had Emma put her foot wrong already? “I’m sorry. Have I spoken out of turn?”
Lady Fanchere stood, walked to the window, and looked out for a long moment. Finally, she faced Emma. “I’ve been married almost twenty years, since I was eighteen, and I have always failed to conceive. I’ve been to spas. I’ve prayed at shrines. I’ve tried every remedy medical science and the Church could suggest. And at last, our dearest desire has come true and I . . .”
“You fear to tell the world of your joy before it has come to fruition.”
“Exactly. I can’t keep it a secret forever, of course, but until I’m sure I’ll carry the baby to term, I have been most discreet. So again, I ask—how did you know?”
“As with all happily increasing women, you have a glow about you.” Emma smiled at her. “May I say that in my experience, a woman who is slow to conceive does not necessarily have trouble producing a healthy child.”
“Thank you for that.” Lady Fanchere nodded. “I think you and I will do very well together, Emma Chegwidden.”
A knock sounded, and before Lady Fanchere could call permission, the door opened. A man of perhaps fifty stood there, tall, bald, and distinguished. Emma pulled the sheet up, but for all the attention he paid her, she might as well have not been in the room. Instead, he extended his hand to Lady Fanchere. “My dear, I bear sad news.”
She rose and hurried to his side. “What has happened?”
He put his arm around her waist, pulled her in to lean on him, and looked into her eyes, his deep concern obvious. “Your cousin Rickie was killed last night . . . by the Reaper.”
Chapter Seven
“O
ne more time, Aimée. Tell me what happened to my cousin Rickie.”
“I’ve told you a dozen times since this morning, Your Highness.” Aimée sat huddled in a straight-backed chair in the middle of the antechamber in the royal palace, weeping from fear and exhaustion. “Why won’t you believe me?”
“Because what you have told me is absurd.” Prince Sandre could barely contain his fury. Aimée had always been a pretty fool, the woman his cousin had married for her fortune and her body and then talked about killing to rid the world of that high, thin voice.
Prince Sandre had always stopped him—no one would have believed it an accident, and the de Guignard family already had a shady reputation. But the irony of having her outlive Rickie had not passed him by.
Sandre knew only that if he yelled at her or threatened her, she would collapse in a damp heap of panic and he would never get the information he needed. So, keeping his voice low and kind, he said, “Now, Aimée. You were riding in your carriage on your way home from the ball.”
“I was telling Rickie about the Reaper.” For the first time in Sandre’s memory, Aimée’s distinctive auburn hair was badly mussed, her plump cheeks looked drawn, and her ivory complexion was blotched.
“He informed you there was no Reaper.”
“That’s what he said, but I knew he was wrong, and this
proves
it.” She lifted her head and stared pitifully at Sandre. “Do you think that by denying the existence of the Reaper he raised its ire?”
“If there is a Reaper, then it is a man in a silly costume, and I will find him and make him sorry he ever dared to ride my roads and kill my cousin.”
“Rickie said that, too.”
“What?”
“That the Reaper was a man. But he couldn’t be. No mere man could have put my husband to death.”
She had a point. Who in Moricadia had the nerve to lure Rickie de Guignard, tall, strong, and cruel, out of his carriage with the intent to hang him?
Sandre intended to find out. “I must ask how a ghost could tie a noose and string Rickie up?”
“Maybe he frightened Rickie into committing suicide.”
Sandre wanted to take Aimée’s skull between his fingers and crack it like a melon, and see whether there were brains inside, or simply a jingling bell.
She continued. “I saw his body. The only bruise he has is around his neck. How else do you explain his death?”
Sandre flicked a glance at his guards. Two Moricadian men stood immobile beside the door, holding swords, with loaded pistols in their belts. They went everywhere with Sandre. Their jobs were to keep him safe. And Sandre secured their loyalty by keeping their wives and children within easy reach—the whole family lived and worked in the palace. So while he never doubted they would defend him to the death, he did not intend that they would go back to their wives and whisper that the Reaper was the ghost of the old king, or a harbinger of the new king’s arrival, or that the Reaper had a vendetta against the de Guignards . . . and had killed the most fearsome of them all.
Oh, Rickie. We had such fun together.
The world felt as if it had tilted on its axis, but he was not a man who allowed a ghoul to strike down him and his regime. Stroking the bandage that wrapped his palm, he crooned, “Tell me everything that happened.”
“I already told you.” She wore black crepe, the garb of a new widow. She dabbed at her blue eyes with a lace handkerchief. Yet all the public markings of mourning could not convince Sandre she had nothing to do with Rickie’s death. Not deliberately, of course. She was too stupid for that. But as an unwitting dupe to be used in a scheme to take down the de Guignard family.
That would not happen on Sandre’s watch.
“Tell me again.” He paced across the room.
“We got in the coach at the party. Everyone was leaving.”
“Other guests saw you leave?”
“Of course they did! The main road was crowded. It wasn’t until we took the turnoff that it got quiet and . . . and dark. Which made me remember what Lady Lettice had told me about the ghost. So I told Rickie, and that I had a horrible premonition that something awful was about to happen.” Aimée took a breath and looked around, all too obviously worried that Sandre wouldn’t believe her.
He flicked his fingers at her. “Go on.”
“The carriage stopped. Rickie got impatient—you know what he’s like—and got out.”
She was talking about her husband in the present tense.