Stephanie Laurens - Beyond Seduction

Who shook his head. “Not a clue. He walked into taverns in London, hired them, and gave orders to gather down here in a run-down cottage. He spoke to them there a few times. Other than that, they never saw him and have no idea where he might have been staying. He always wore a muffler and hat to shade his face, even when he was pacing up and down on Kynance beach.” Christian looked across the table at Edmond. “Edmond’s description was the same.”

Edmond smiled shyly, shifting under their gazes, then he glanced at Dalziel. “Perhaps Lady Hardesty knows his name.”

All conversation halted. Everyone turned to stare at Edmond, puzzled…

Dalziel made the connection first. “The lady in the curricle?”

Edmond nodded, but the action was uncertain. He looked up the table to Madeline and Gervase. “I haven’t met her but I think it was her. Tall, oldish, dark-haired-and she wasn’t from around here. She was wrapped up in a cloak and kept the hood around her face most of the time, but she had a London accent, like the man.”

Further down the table, Belinda leaned forward, peering at Edmond. “Did she have a mole-just here?” She pointed to a spot just above the left corner of her lips.

“Yes!” Edmond nodded. “I saw it. It was black.”

Belinda looked at the others and nodded. “Lady Hardesty. Katherine and Melissa mentioned the mole.”

Madeline recalled, nodded too. “She does have a mole there.”

Around her chairs scraped as all the men got to their feet.

Dalziel set down his napkin. “You’ll have to excuse us.” He nodded to Madeline, then Sybil. “We need to reach Lady Hardesty as soon as we can.”

Madeline remembered that their villain had a habit of killing all those who could identify him. She felt herself pale. “Yes, of course.” She pushed back from the table.

Gervase had already sent a footman flying to the stables for four fast horses to be saddled and brought around. He exchanged a glance with Madeline, then led the men to the gun room for pistols.

The ladies looked at each other, then, breakfasts forgotten, everyone rose and went out to the front hall, milling before the open front door.

The men came striding back, each carrying two pistols, checking them while Gervase described the way to Helston Grange, Robert Hardesty’s house.

Hooves clattered in the forecourt. Charles bussed Penny on the cheek as he passed. Gervase paused to brush his lips across Madeline’s. “I don’t know what we’ll find, or when we’ll be back.”

She squeezed his arm, nodded and released him. “Go-and good hunting.”

Dalziel heard and saluted her as he went past. His face was set.

The four checked saddle girths and stirrups, then mounted. In less than a minute, they were wheeling toward the forecourt’s entry arch.

With Sybil and Penny flanking her, Madeline stood on the porch and watched them go. “I just hope they get there in time.”

Sybil patted her arm, then gathered the youngsters and ushered them indoors.

Penny remained beside Madeline, staring at the dwindling figures of their men. “I hope they reach her before him, but from all I’ve heard of this blackguard, we’re going to be disappointed in that, too.”

Madeline glanced at her, met her eyes. After a moment, they turned and went inside.

They covered the distance to Helston Grange at a blistering pace. It was the first time Gervase had ridden with Dalziel; he wasn’t surprised to learn his ex-commander was as bruising a rider as the rest of them.

They arrived to discover the majority of residents at the Grange had yet to rise for the day. When summoned to his drawing room, Robert Hardesty came rather diffidently in, puzzled rather than irritated by the intrusion.

“Lord Crowhurst.” He smiled at Gervase and extended his hand. “It’s been rather a long time.”

“Indeed.” Gervase grasped his hand, nodded curtly. “I apologize for the abruptness, Robert-we’ll explain in a moment, but it’s Lady Hardesty we’ve come to see. It’s urgent that we speak with her.”

His grim expression-and those of Charles, Christian and Dalziel ranged at his back-made Robert’s eyes widen. Then Gervase’s request sank in. “Ah…they-my wife and her friends-tend to keep London hours. I doubt my wife would be awake-”

“Lord Hardesty.” Dalziel captured Robert’s gaze. “We wouldn’t be here, making such a request at this hour, were the need not great. If you could send a maid to summon your wife?”

Robert Hardesty blushed. His gaze shifted away. It was apparent he didn’t know if his wife was alone in her bed. But then he swallowed, flicked a glance at Gervase and nodded. “If you insist.”

He rang the bell, gave the order.

Gervase was conscious of the urge to pace, something he rarely did; he could feel the effort Charles and Dalziel were making not to circle the room. Tension rode them all, unnerving Robert Hardesty even more than their expressions.

Then they heard the first scream.

Gervase pushed past Robert and headed straight for the stairs, Dalziel on his heels. He didn’t have to look to know Charles and Christian had gone the other way, out of the front door to circle the house. Just in case.

There was no need to ask for directions; they followed the screams, gaining in intensity, rocketing toward hysteria.

Reaching the room at the end of the wing, they opened the door. A maid was backed against the wall a few feet away, her knuckles pressed to her mouth, her eyes huge, her gaze fixed on the bed.

On the figure sprawled across it.

The bulging eyes, the protruding tongue, the necklace of bruises ringing the long throat, the indescribable horror of what had once been a beautiful face clearly stated that life was long extinct.

Dalziel pushed past and went to the bed.

Gervase grabbed the maid and bundled her out-into the arms of the butler who had come rushing up. “Lady Hardesty’s dead. Sit her”-he nodded at the maid-“downstairs in the kitchen and give her tea. And send for the doctor.”

Although plainly shocked, the butler nodded. “Yes, my lord.” He turned the now-weeping maid away.

Gervase went back into the room.

Dalziel withdrew his fingers from the side of Lady Hardesty’s bruised throat. “Not cold, but cooling. She’s been dead for hours.”

He turned to the long windows giving onto a balcony; one was open. Gervase followed Dalziel out; the balcony looked toward a stretch of woodland bordering the Helford River.

Dalziel pointed to muddy scrapes on the railing. “No mystery how he got in.”

They looked over and down. A gnarled wisteria with a trunk a foot thick wound up one supporting post to weave its tendrils through the ironwork railings. Gervase grimaced. “It couldn’t have been easier.”

Charles came out of the woodland along a path. He halted below; hands on hips, he studied their faces. “Dead?”

Dalziel nodded. “Anything down there?”

“He came up from the river.” Charles waved at the path behind him. “His footprints are clear, definite-he knew what he was doing, where he was going. There’s a rowboat drifting-he probably stole it from somewhere along the other side.”

Dalziel exhaled. “I doubt there’s anything left for us here, but in case anyone knows anything, we’ll speak with all the guests.”

Christian had appeared from the other direction; he and Charles nodded, and headed back to the front of the house.

Gervase and Dalziel reentered Lady Hardesty’s room to find Robert Hardesty standing just inside the door, staring at his dead wife. His face was blank, empty; the expression in his eyes, when he looked their way, was lost.

Dalziel inclined his head and stepped past; at the door, he glanced back at Gervase. “I’ll speak with the butler.”

Pausing before Robert Hardesty, Gervase nodded. He caught Robert’s bewildered gaze, and spoke calmly, soothingly. “The doctor’s been sent for-he’ll be here soon. He’ll know what to do.”

Dumbly, Robert nodded. He glanced again at the bed; his composure wavered, threatened to crack. “But who…?” He looked at Gervase, stricken and frightened. “People might think it was me. But I didn’t -”

“We know it wasn’t you. She was killed by a man-a London gentleman-we understand she was acquainted with. She was seen with him for a short time yesterday afternoon. The man is a known killer and a traitor-we believe he killed her so she couldn’t identify him.”

Robert Hardesty stared at him; Gervase couldn’t tell how much of his words he was taking in.

Then Robert turned and looked again at the bed. “My sisters, and my aunt, were right. They said she, all her London connections, weren’t…good. I should have listened.”

Gervase gripped his shoulder. “When it comes to women, sometimes even young girls see more clearly than we.” His sisters certainly had. He took Robert by the arm. “Come and have some brandy. It’ll help.”

Without resistance, Robert let Gervase lead him from the room.

It took them over two hours to interview all the guests at Helston Grange. All of them were accounted for; none of them was their villain, or at first blush knew anything of him.

Dalziel and Gervase handled the interviews while Christian spoke with the staff and Charles roamed outside, speaking with the gardeners, grooms and stable hands.

When they finally met up on the front steps, their expressions were unrelentingly grim.

“Our man never stayed here,” Dalziel replied in answer to Charles’s arched brow. “However, two of her ladyship’s bosom-bows are certain she had a long-standing liaison with some gentleman of the ton, one that predates her marriage by some years. They believe the liaison continued, although very much more sporadically, after her marriage. The lady was free with her favors and had many other lovers, but the only lover she treated with absolute discretion, to the extent of not sharing his name or any detail of him with these two friends, was this old flame.” He paused, then went on, “They believe he’d come down here, and that she’d been seeing him over this summer, but neither knows anything more.”

Christian shifted. “Her maid, who’s a local, thinks much the same-that despite the other lovers, including some of the men currently here, there was some man she knew from her past who she was seeing again clandestinely. According to the maid, he never came to the house.”

Charles grimaced. “One of the gardeners thinks she and some London gentleman-tall, dark-haired, our usual suspect-have been using one of the old garden sheds down by the river for assignations.”

“Which,” Gervase said, “confirms that our man wasn’t one of the guests, but very likely was this old flame.”

“And,” Charles went on, resignation filling his voice, “there’s a horse missing. A nice chestnut gelding, plus a good saddle and tack.”

They fell silent, then Dalziel quietly cursed. “The blackguard’s escaped. He’s gone.”

For one instant, they all toyed with the notion of giving chase, then remembered in how many directions a man on a horse could have gone.

His face set, an impassive mask, Dalziel stepped down from the porch. “All that’s left is for us to go home.”

Gervase Aubrey Simon Tregarth, 6th Earl of Crowhurst, married Madeline Henrietta Gascoigne, of the Treleaver Park Gascoignes, in the church at Ruan Minor just over four weeks later.

The church with its strange serpentine stone was packed, people standing in the aisles and overflowing down the steps to fill the churchyard, all gathered to witness the joining not just of the two major local families but also two people who were widely known and admired. Those inside the church were mostly local gentry; the only outsiders were Gervase’s colleagues and their wives, Madeline’s godmother and a few far-flung relatives. The day was one the people of the peninsula weren’t about to miss, and intended to celebrate; the formalities were observed, but a relaxed, joyous air pervaded all.

A stir went up when Madeline’s carriage halted before the lych-gate. Delighted exclamations rippled through the crowd when she stepped down in a cloud of silk and lace. Radiant, on Harry’s arm she walked into the church and down the aisle to the strains of the organ.

Harry gave her away; he placed her hand in Gervase’s, then stepped back to sit with Edmond and Ben. Charles and Gervase’s cousin stood alongside him, while Penny and Belinda had followed Madeline down the aisle.

The service was short, uncluttered, direct. When the vicar named them man and wife, Madeline beamed, put back her veil and stepped into Gervase’s arms. He smiled, kissed her, too briefly but they knew their roles. Turning, arm in arm, their faces serene, showing their joy, they walked slowly up the aisle accepting the congratulations of all who leaned close to kiss their cheeks and shake their hands.