Page 79 of Bound By her Earl

“But we don’t know that she didn’t,” he said, closing his eyes briefly, as if he needed a moment to himself, to reset and become ready for this world in which he had reason to suspect his mother a murderess.

When he opened his eyes, he looked resigned in a way that pained Emily to her core. She reached out and grasped his hand, needing to offer him some comfort, no matter how paltry.

“We need more information,” she said, tending to the practical concerns because the emotional ones were too unruly to handle.

She also knew they would not be dismissed—the look in Benedict’s face told her clearly enough that he could not rest easy until he had an answer. She knew that look all too well—it was one Diana had worn for years while she’d insisted, despite nobody believing her, that there was more to Grace’s murder than they’d ever suspected.

Oh, Lord, Diana, she thought with a pang. How would her friend react to learning that the final incident with Dowling—which had led to her husband being shot—had possibly been due to the machinations of one horrible, scorned Dowager?

But Emily couldn’t worry about that, not now. She needed to follow her own advice—she needed to gather more information.

Benedict, too, was nodding along to the suggestion. “My mother certainly won’t tell us anything,” he said grimly, and Emily’s heart went out to the boy who had grown up with such a miserable force in his home, motherly love denied to him not by the force of death but merely because the woman seemed incapable of loving anyone besides herself.

“No,” Emily agreed. “I think we shall—and trust me, I hear how absurd it sounds—have to look for clues.”

He gave a humorless chuckle. “I fear we have gone far past ‘absurdity’ today, my dear.” Emily wanted to blush over the endearment, given at a time when no physical intimacy greater than held hands occurred between them, but Benedict continued speaking, a furrow creasing his brow. “But she’s leaving—she’s leavingnow. Our window to learn more is rapidly closing.”

“Blast!” she said with feeling. His mouth quirked in wry recognition.

Down the hall, a door slammed with undue force, and the Dowager’s furious voice, muffled by the closed doors betweenthem, echoed as she stormed toward the front stairs then descended.

Emily stared at Benedict; Benedict stared at Emily. And the same truly terrible idea lit in both of their eyes.

“We could,” he said slowly, “preempt her.”

This was obviously ludicrous, and Emily should say so. No matter how badly Priscilla had behaved, one did not go snooping through someone else’s chambers. This was likelymoretrue, not less, when that person was suspected of having taken part in a murder. The rationale shifted from simple decorum to self-preservation, to be sure, but it was stillthere.

Emily ought to chide her husband for his hypothetical recklessness and let him apply a cool compress to her forehead even though he was the one making insane suggestions.

“We could,” she agreed instead.

And as those words passed her lips, Emily felt an instinctive and heretofore dormant identification with her sisters. There was a giddy sort of glee at doing something foolish, even when it was dangerous—perhaps evenbecauseit was dangerous.

“Right,” Benedict said, nodding smartly. “Good. You stay here, and I’ll?—”

“Not on your life,” she interrupted, pushing to her feet. “We’re in this together, Benedict Hoskins, or not at all.”

She expected him to argue, to use her supposed frailty after being slapped as an excuse. Instead, he smiled, like this was precisely what he’d wished to hear but hadn’t known as much until he’d heard it.

“Very well,” he said, holding out his hand to her. “Together.”

Hand in hand they crept down the hallway, which was silly, really, as it was their own house, and they were perfectly entitled to move around within it. But the action felt appropriate, made Emily feel as though this was just one more thread in the ever-growing web tying them together.

They could hear the various shouts and screeches from the Dowager as she moved about on the ground floor, likely trying to pilfer any number of household possessions before she was ejected from the building. Emily could not focus on this potential theft, nor on remaining silent, when Benedict pushed open the door to the Dowager Countess’ now-former bedchamber.

Emily gasped. The room looked as though it had been looted—or perhaps struck by some sort of cyclone. There were articles of clothing strewn everywhere, papers scattered about, one shoe, lying upside down, only inches from the door.

“Is this from her packing in such a hurry,” Emily asked her husband, who was looking just as gob smacked as she, “or doesshe merely always live like this?” It seemed an impossible level of mess for the short period the Dowager had been given to gather her belongings—and a highly inefficient way of finding what she wished to take as well.

Benedict looked at her helplessly. “How would I know?” he asked. “I hardly spend much time poking around my mother’s bedchambers. I’m not best pleased to be doing it now.”

That was…a fair enough point and reminded them of their mission to boot.

“Right,” she said briskly. “You take this side, and I’ll take that one?”

He nodded, and they separated, the intermittent banging from the broader house useful in keeping them appraised of the Dowager’s whereabouts. Emily began at the woman’s dressing table—the rooms did not contain anything remotely resembling a writing table; no doubt that would have made things too easy—and almost immediately stuck her hand in spilled pot of some kind of cream.

“Ugh,” she said in disgust, wiping her hand on a nearby handkerchief which she sincerely hoped was clean. She took considerably more caution as she returned to searching the table.

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