Page 44 of From the Ashes
"Well?" Seth urged. "What did Gilly say?"
"I told him I knew about his wife's ability to change her form. He was shocked that the secret was out."
"He certainly looked shocked," Seth said with a tilt of his lips. "He was white as a ghost, and his hands were shaking."
"Perhaps he was ashamed, too," I said. "Ashamed that you know who—rather, what—he's been…intimate with."
"She wasn't in that form during intimacy," Seth protested.
"How do you know?" Gus said with a wicked gleam in his eye.
"She wasn't," Lincoln answered for him. "She told me as much."
"Even so," I said, "Lord Gillingham strikes me as someone who wouldn't want others thinking him a lesser man because of his wife's other form. Other, more dominant, form."
"True." Seth nodded knowingly. "Go on, Fitzroy. What did he tell you?"
"I asked him if his distaste for his wife colored his perceptions of supernaturals in general. I suggested to him that he hated her animal form, and he took that hatred out on others who are different."
"You accused him of being the killer?" Gus blew out a breath. "That's bold."
Lincoln merely lifted one shoulder. "While I don't expect him to tell me outright if he is, I wanted to gauge his reaction."
He should have asked one of us to remain with him then. Lincoln wasn't very good at reading people's expressions. "How did he react?" I asked.
"He went pale, as you saw, and he stutters when he's anxious. He told me that he doesn't hate his wife, but she does disgust him, and he's not sure how to react to her anymore. As his wife, her place is beneath him, so he told me. He considered her the inferior half of their marriage."
"Good lord," I muttered. "His thinking is positively barbaric."
"And yet not unusual among men, in my experience," Lincoln said quietly. I looked up sharply to see him watching me, his dark gaze heating my skin.
"Don't look at me," Seth said, hands in the air. "I happily put women on a pedestal. All the better to—"
"Shut your hole," Gus said with a roll of his eyes. "No one was talkin' about you, anyway."
I cleared my throat. "Go on, Lincoln. What else did he say?"
"He made a very clear case for not being the killer," he said. We all sat forward. "He claimed that if he was going to kill a non-human, as he calls supernaturals, he would have started with his wife."
I pressed my hand to my chest. "I suppose."
"I don't necessarily agree with that logic," Lincoln went on. "He used to care for his wife. He has been intimate with her before he learned of her true form. The memory of that affection could stop him from hurting her. He has no such connection to the other supernaturals.
"I tend to agree," Seth said with a nod. "The heart plays odd tricks. While I don't doubt that her true form disgusts him, it takes quite a monster to kill a woman you've been intimate with. Not that I'm speaking from experience, mind. I adore all my previous lovers. Except for one or two," he added with a glance at the door.
"So we are none the wiser," I said on a sigh. "He's still a suspect."
"As is Marchbank."
"Ah, yes. What did you learn about him?"
"In his anxiety, Gillingham tried to throw suspicion onto others. He told me that Marchbank has very good reason to hate people with supernatural powers. One of them killed his father."
Chapter 9
"He wasn't killedby a supernatural," Seth said with smug certainty, as if he'd caught Gillingham out in a lie. "Marchbank's father tossed himself off a bridge one night, in front of witnesses. The river police fished the body out of the Thames the next day. The key here is the word witnesses, plural."
"According to Gillingham, Marchbank was hypnotized into killing himself," Lincoln said.
