Miranda uttered a squeak of dismay. “Laury, please.”
“Lady Laurana’s efforts on the behalf of the poor are highly admirable.” A sixth figure emerged from the shadows by the fireplace. “Good evening, Charmian.”
“Dredmore.” I turned to Lady Diana so I wouldn’t have to look at him for longer than a blink. “I hope you were able to rest undisturbed the last few nights,” I said in a lower voice.
“I was, to some extent.” She looked as if she wanted to say more, and then a footman stepped in from the dining hall and announced that dinner was served. “I hope you enjoy pheasant, Miss Kittredge.” She went from me to Nolan, and when the Walsh siblings followed them into the other room, I was left alone with Dredmore.
“You look like a winter sylph,” he said as he came to take my arm. As soon as he did, he bent down. “I told you to stay away from here.”
“And yet, here I am,” I replied, starting forward to follow the others.
He pulled me back round to face him, but he didn’t look at me. He watched the dining hall and talked over my head. “Make an excuse during the meal to leave, and go.”
I raised my brows. “Any suggestions?”
“A migraine. Your monthlies. A sudden eruption of boils on your ass,” he grated. “I don’t care, just get the hell out of here.”
“Go suck a tube,” I suggested gently before leading him in to dine.
Chapter Eleven
A dining table of glossy cherrywood parted the hall, ready to serve fifty comfortably, but fortunately the servants had set three facing three on either side of the master’s chair, or we would have had to shout our remarks to each other.
Lady Diana sat at her husband’s right, Laurana at his left, with Montrose and Miranda seated by their sister and me between Dredmore and Diana. The candlelit centerpiece, a small, frothy volcano of porcelain and gold flowers, cast a warm glow over the exquisitely set table.
As the footmen placed small urns with some sort of pinkish-gray shellfish on ice, I counted the utensils. Accustomed to three, I had to now manage twelve, and Lady Diana was politely waiting for me to start. I glanced at Dredmore, who was no help, and then Lord Walsh, who employed the smallest two-pronged fork to stab one of the shellfish. Leashing in a sigh of relief, I did the same and gingerly tasted what turned out to be half-cooked clams.
“Where do you reside, Miss Kittredge?” Laurana asked before she sampled her cocktail.
“I keep a flat on Estarlin,” I said. “Near the fruit market, if you know it.”
“I shop there several times a week,” she said, grimacing as she set down her fork and gestured for the footman to take away the little urn. “They always have the best apples and nuts in Rumsen.”
“My sister delights in playing the servant,” Montrose drawled. “I fully expect to come round some day and find her scrubbing out the loos.”
Miranda choked and buried her face in her napkin as she tried to control her blush as well as her coughing.
“Do you play kitchen maid, Cousin Kit?” Montrose continued. “I should dearly like to watch you turn a spit or two.”
“My cooking is dreadful, sir,” I admitted freely. “You’d do better by bucket.”
He laughed, too long and too loud, until his father snapped something low and harsh at him. Montrose didn’t show an ounce of remorse. “She’s got a quick tongue, Dad, why not let her employ it for our amusement?”
I felt something touch the top of my thigh and looked down as Dredmore spread his hand over it and dug his fingers in. I slipped a knife from the collection by my plate into my hand, taking care to let only him see it. Before I could stab him, however, he took his hand away.
To avoid eating the rest of the clams, I engaged Lady Diana in another meaningless discussion of the weather, turning now and then to include Dredmore in the conversation. The second course, a steaming shallow bowl of green turtle soup, proved slightly more edible, although I picked out the blanched fernheads floating on the top and pushed them out of sight on the plate under my bowl. Baby fernheads were said to be delicious, but if picked too late in the season they could be poisonous.
Dredmore reached for his wine and murmured to me, “They’re too young to make you ill.”
“I know,” I muttered back. “I have you for that.”
“You and Lord Dredmore are acquainted, I understand,” Nolan said.
As soon as I realized he was speaking to me, I set down my spoon. “Yes, milord. We’ve met several times in the course of our business.”
Miranda had gotten over her coughing attack, for I heard her ask, “Have you no family to look after your concerns, Miss Kittredge?”
“Di’s family hasn’t two coins to rub together,” Montrose said, handing his empty wineglass to the footman and holding his hand aloft until it was refilled. “What of your mother’s people, cousin? Isn’t there some broad-backed farmer among them who would take you to bed?”
Following the family’s example and ignoring the little skink grew harder by the moment. “My mother was an orphan,” I answered Miranda. “She passed away while I was still in school.”
The footmen presented the third course, a golden fillet of flounder trimmed and garnished to look as if it were ready to jump off the platter and wriggle its way back to the sea. No one else seemed especially impressed by the presentation but me. Nolan dissected his fillet with stiff displeasure; the Walsh sisters picked daintily at the delicate flesh with their forks, and Montrose simply drank. Lady Diana made a brave show of appetite but I never saw her actually eat more than a single sliver or quarter spoon of any dish served.
I’d seen too many forms of mold in the tunnels under the city to have any desire for the fourth course, an assortment of mushrooms poached in sherry. The fifth course actually made me angry, as the men were served braised slices of tomatoes swimming in pinked cream, while the Walsh ladies and I were instead served creamed beets cut out to resemble tomatoes. I despised beets, but objecting would have been rude, so I just pushed them around with the right fork.
“Miss Kittredge seems unhappy with her lady’s dish,” Montrose observed aloud. “Doubtless the working class allow their females to consume vast quantities of lord-apples.”
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 ang
le 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.”
Dredmore stepped between us. “That is enough, Charmian.”
“Who in this household would do such nonsense?” Walsh bellowed over Dredmore’s shoulder, his face mottling dark red. “No one, I say. No one but this whore, my wife.”
“It will be someone who has theatrical or military experience,” I said tightly. “Probably military, as it’s a soldier’s trick. The assailant wishes you to believe that your wife is greedy and promiscuous. Someone who wants to drive her out of her wits with terror and give you just cause to divorce her.” As Diana sagged with my words, I led her over to an armchair. “I’d say it’s working, wouldn’t you?”
Dredmore stared at me. “What do you mean, soldier’s trick?”
“They’ve been using wound paste on her,” I told him. “When it dries it looks like the real thing, and if you try to remove it, it tears the skin, like a fresh scab.”
“I’ll not listen to another moment of this!” Nolan said, sweeping his arm toward the mage. “Do your work now, Dredmore.”
“I can do nothing with Miss Kittredge present,” Dredmore replied. “She must be removed from the house.”
Diana suddenly revived and latched on to my arm. “You can’t leave, Kit. Not before you make him understand what’s been done to me. Please, I beg you.”
“We’ve arrived at a stalemate, milords,” I told the men. I pried Diana’s fingers away and went to Lord Walsh. “Dredmore will not perform for you in front of me because he knows I will expose him for the fraud he is. Your lady wife desires me to stay and prove her innocence.”
The red patches on Lord Walsh’s face turned purple. “You dare challenge my authority, in my own house?”
“My only wish is to investigate the matter further, milord,” I pushed on. “Allow me to speak with your servants; one of them has surely witnessed something to lead us to the—”
I didn’
t expect him to backhand me, but once I was on the floor, my face throbbing, I saw Walsh draw back his boot and suddenly understood Diana’s bruises and why Dredmore had wanted me to go. I brought up my arms to protect my face and waited for the next blow, which never came.
“Allow me, my lord.”
The kick never landed; instead two strong arms snatched me from the floor and carried me away. By the time I dropped my hands from my face, Dredmore had me through the front entry and halfway to his coach.
“No.” I twisted and nearly freed myself before he shifted me up and over his shoulder. “I can’t leave her like this. He’ll kill her.” I pounded my fists against his back. “Put me down.”
“He won’t risk beating her now, not when she can use her injuries against him in court. You, however, will not get off so lightly.” Dredmore tossed me in the coach and slammed the door, securing it from the outside. When I tried to dart out the other door, I found it locked. The windows were too small for me to crawl through, so I sat and watched as Dredmore walked back to speak with Nolan Walsh, who had come out of the house after us.
Walsh blustered while Dredmore soothed, and while I couldn’t hear what they said, it was obvious it was about me. Then Walsh did a curious thing; he gestured for the butler, who handed Dredmore a large satchel. Dredmore nodded before he returned to the coach and handed off the satchel to his driver before climbing in with me.
“My turn, is it?” I lunged at him only to be pinned against his body. I maneuvered my arms between us and pushed at his chest. “I can still scream.”
“I can still have you gagged.” He ducked my fist and jerked me closer to pin my arms between us. “And bound, if you like.”
Being an inch from his face brought on all sorts of ugly feelings and ideas, but he grabbed my hair and held me in place.