Page 44 of The Marchioness Who Tempted Fate
“I know that,” Tiffany gritted out between clenched teeth, “because Smithers usually comes down with the tray and glass about now.”
“To be sure, he does,” Sophie said airily. “Well, I will be off to our room now. Do not stay up too late. You know how Mrs. Twitchel despises that.”
Tiffany forbore to answer, simply drying her hands on a kitchen towel, and straightening her apron and cap. Then she hurried up the servants’ stair and down the hall to Percival’s study where she could see light spilling out into the hall.
“I am here, My Lord,” she started to say as she entered. Then she screamed.
Percival was slumped over the desk, her father’s old knife protruding from his back.
Tiffany’s screams echoed up and down the corridor. Lucas was the first to reach her. “Here, Miss Bentley,” he said, “come away. This is no sight for you.”
Smithers was next. He hastened past Tiffany as Lucas drew her away from the door. He knelt beside his master, laying one hand against his throat. “Alive!” he pronounced. “Lucas, run for the physician.”
McClellan came charging up the hall from the other direction, and shrugged around Tiffany and Lucas just in time to hear Smithers announcement.
“Yes, Lucas. Go immediately. Miss Bentley, go to the kitchen and send Mrs. Twitchel up.”
“Yes,” Tiffany replied, and hurried below stairs, trembling in every limb.
She met Mrs. Twitchel coming up the stair. “Tiffany! Was that you emitting that unseemly racket?”
“Oh, Mrs. Twitchel! The Marquess has been stabbed.”
“What!” Mrs. Twitchel broke into a run. “Bring the medicine kit,” she flung over her shoulder. “And send up Michaels.”
Tiffany hardly knew how she made it the rest of the way down the stairs. “Michaels!” she shouted. “Where is the medicine kit? Mrs. Twitchel wants you. The Marquess has been stabbed.”
Michaels swung the roast from over the fire, wove around the tables and opened the cupboard near the door. He grabbed a cloth bag out of it, and bounded up the stairs, with Tiffany trailing behind.
By the time she arrived, Sophie had joined the group of servants milling around the door. “What did you do?” she hissed. “Isn’t that your knife?”
“My knife? I don’t know. I didn’t see it very well, just that it was sticking into the Marquess. Why would it be my knife?”
“How should I know? It looks like that one you keep under your pillow.”
Just then the Marquess cried out sharply. “Steady now,” Michaels said, “Tis only a flesh wound. Were it not for the wicked notches on this old knife, we could pull it out again. As it is, the surgeon will need to cut it out. I could do it meself, but you need someone official-like to see to it.”
“Tiffany,” the Marquess said. “I sent Sophie to have Tiffany come up. Is she all right? Ow, have a care. By all the saints, that hurts!”
“Miss Tiffany found you,” McClellan said. “Screamed like all your ancestral banshees were wailin’ at once.”
Tiffany could not see what they were doing in the room, and she wanted desperately to get back in and to learn how badly Percival was hurt.
Just then Lucas, two members of the Watch, and the Northbury Watch physician, Dr. Abslom, hastened from the front of the house.
“Make way, make way,” said one of the Watch. “All of you standing out here in the hall, go the servants dining hall and wait. No one is to leave, do you hear?”
Obediently, the milling servants trooped back down the hall to the dining room. Tiffany slipped down the stairs into the kitchen, where she began to assemble the makings of tea. Her hands shook so much that she spilled tea leaves all over the table, and nearly burned herself on the tea kettle. Tears slid silently down her cheeks.
How could this be happening? Who could possibly hate Percival so much that they would want him dead? Who could be so strong and angry as to bury a knife in his back?
Grace came up beside her, and took the tea kettle from her. “Let me do that before we need the physician down here as well as upstairs. We are all worried and upset, but I do not wonder that it should hit you harder than anyone—you have spent so much time working directly with him.”
Tiffany scrubbed at the dampness on her cheeks. “I don’t understand. How could someone do that to him? He is all that is good and kind and wonderful . . .”
And I love him.
“I know,” Grace said. “It surpasses anyone’s understanding. Of all the people in the world, His Lordship is the last person I would have expected to be murdered.”
